The Power Of Embracing The Suck

[MUSIC] In times of rapid acceleration, high pressure, and general uncertainty, the reality is clear. Professionals are struggling. They have become more mentally and emotionally exhausted, less curious, more stressed, and less giving. Adding to this is the complexity around solutions, with the overabundance of protocols, supplements, and so-called performance hacks. The end result is leaders are more distracted and have less mental agility, poorer performance, and struggle to be the belief builder and energy multiplier for their teams. We don't want to accept that. Our passion is to help professionals be more. These conversations help illuminate your thinking into sustainable human performance, learning real solutions to improve your energy, focus, and ultimately increase your impact. This is the TIGNUM Thought Cast. Today's episode, the power of embracing the suck with special guest Jeff Rosenblum. Jeff is an active investor in private companies, former executive vice president of FS Investments, and a survivor of Guillaume-Barré syndrome. We hope you enjoy it. [MUSIC] Hello everyone and welcome to our Bold Round Table. I'm Scott Peltna, one of the co-founders of TIGNUM. Today at our table, we of course have all of you and we have a very special guest, one of our honorary members, Jeff Rosenblum. And today's topic is going to be about the power of embracing the suck. And that may at first sound a little brutal, but I think you're going to all grow to love this topic as much as I do, and also as much as Jeff does. For those of you that don't know Jeff, he's an active investor in private, closely held companies, and he always takes kind of a similar role where he helps the CEOs and the founders prepare their organizations to scale, which is almost always the founders goal. He's also a board member of several companies, but I know one of his most passionate, one that he is most passionate about is being on the executive committee of the foundation board of overseers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. One of Jeff's professional bold projects was at FS Investments, which is where I met Jeff. And there he held many roles, one that he was most, I think known for was building the corporate culture, the strategy, the overall operational excellence, and that company is an amazing company today. But today we're going to focus not on Jeff from his business acumen, which is profound, but actually more around his personal story, and a personal bold project that Jeff's been on and is still on, and he's going to share with us. So as usual, I'll start the conversation with Jeff, but all of you please jump in, share your questions on the chat, and we'll get going. So welcome Jeff, and let's jump right in. Very good morning. Yeah, Jeff, I could try to tell your story, but I could never do it justice, as you know. And so one of the things that I would love is how about we just start with you sharing a little bit of this journey that you've been on and continue to be on. Thanks, Scott. You know, I want to thank you too. I appreciate you, you know, making the time for me to tell the story. It's, I always mean to write these things down. I've often tried to put notes down and kind of make sure I don't lose sight of those things. So, you know, getting to tell it and talk to you about it is not only helpful for me, but it also helps crystallize things. So it's been a good week just thinking about it and preparing for today. Yeah, so basically, you know, we can go back to April of 2020 of the COVID year. And like the rest of us, we were sort of, you know, in that in that strange transition, Scott and I would argue about whether this was a good thing for me to be doing or not, but I had recently retired from work from FS investments and had not yet really moved fully into the mentoring of other CEOs and businesses. And I decided that, you know, I'm 55 years old at that point. And, you know, why not try to make the national CrossFit games? Not necessarily what you put on your list. And there's a long and sorted reason as to why I took that route that goes back to my son, Zach. But so it's not as crazy as it may sound altogether. But I was making really good progress. I was just at the edge of the top 200 in the world. I was probably overtraining a little bit in the process. And I got a stomach virus, a stomach bacteria, a Camp Leobacter. And my body, instead of attacking the virus, took out the Mylon on my arms and legs. And basically, overnight, from taking the garbage out after a good workout to coming up the driveway and feeling something a little funny in my right foot, I woke up the next morning and was basically ambulatory. I couldn't use my arms and legs. And so, you know, overnight, I went to a state of, you know, total confusion and not being able to, literally, I tried to put my socks on, I got on the floor. I couldn't get off the floor. And I had to have my family kind of carry me to the car. So right in the middle of COVID, I may have been the only person in the hospital who wasn't COVID-based for a number of months. So that in and of itself was quite an experience. But yeah, I'd contract this something called Guillaume Buracin from our GPS, which is basically as I just described where your autoimmune system, instead of being weak, it goes the opposite direction, it goes nuclear. And it can't discern the difference between the virus is trying to attack. And as it turns out, the miren on your nerves. And it just wiped out my neuromuscular system. Yeah. So at that moment, Jeff, when this happens, and for those of you who don't know, the miren sheath, the swan cells that cover these nerve fibers is why we can move the way we move, because it allows the rapid transmission of a response from the brain to the muscle to tell it to move. And if you take away that, the process is completely broken. It's like putting a roadblock on the street. Now you have to drive, drive around it. Did you think you were having a stroke or did you think something else was going on? Like, how did you know? Yeah, I didn't know. And the doctors initially thought that I just had like, um, herniated discs or, you know, they, they just come from my, from my neck. They, they went through a number of areas and ultimately they tested my proteins. And that told them that, you know, gave them the map of what was taking place. So the, you know, the one shining light in that whole thing that, that I was, you know, extremely fortunate and still see myself as being extremely fortunate too, is that unlike a lot of other conditions, the nerves do, the under GBS scenario, you know, sort of unlike MS and other, other things like that, the nerves regenerate or have the capacity to regenerate. As long as the nerves, them, so I should say the myelin sheath has the ability to regenerate as long as the nerves themselves were not damaged in the process. And, you know, going back to what you said before about the transmission, the speed of the transmission, and how the myelin sheath works and, and what that does your movement and, and, and a hundred other areas, um, is that you don't know, you don't know what damage has been done or what, you don't, you don't, not only don't, you know, it's been done as you're regenerating. You don't know, you don't know what's regenerated. So you can't, you, you, I'm I'm skipping ahead a little bit, but you can't outwork it. You can't get in there and just, you know, brass knuckle it and just go as hard as you can because until those things regenerate, until that network comes back in whatever capacity it comes back, um, you know, you just, you, you can't just work harder, um, which, which is, you know, an amazing lead in to, you know, mindset, nutrition, movement, and recovery, right? Because you can't, without, without recovery in this particular instance, there's nothing, you know, the other three things are just whole treading water until the recovery happens. Yeah, I may push back against one, which we're sure we're going to talk about, which is mindset for sure, but, yeah, yeah, because I just, like, as you were coaching me from the hospital, you know, no, no, no, but I, I'm just teaching me personally, and I, it's not about me, but if I were at that moment and you talk about embracing the suck, I mean, that's a horrible moment, like, so I went from, you went from competitive working out, I mean, a super fit elite athlete at your age group. And then literally they're now telling you, well, I don't know what your prognosis is going to be because every one of these cases is unique. Let's just wait it out and see and you're like, What, like, how does that even register? So what is going through your mind at that moment? And I'm imagining your family can't be with you because of COVID in the hospital. - Yeah, you know, it's funny. I, you know, as bad as bad, at least it's only looking back that you realize how crazy it was. But as bad as all of those things may sound, you're exactly right. My family wasn't allowed to come in. You know, at the time, my kids were ranked, right, right, right, you know, now they're 25, 23, 21, and 19 plus or minus. But at the time, they were college age or high school age, you know, three years ago. They were, one was just finishing school and one was just starting and two were in high school, during COVID. So, you know, you're not there as a parent to help them through what COVID is doing. You're not able to be dead. You're not, you know, you're not, you're not, you have, your strength is clearly been minimized on a number of levels. And you just don't have, you just don't have the contact and love and nurturing. You're really alone. I mean, you're crazy alone in the hospital because even the doctors and the nurses, where, you know, they could really only see me for bits of the day because of COVID. So, you know, they were like, it has mat suits, right? So, they were, you know, they, they, there wasn't a lot of human contact. So, you know, you mentioned mindset earlier. It was, it was definitely a mindset test because you're, you're just inside your own head with no answers and, you know, no. So, you're, I guess the analogy I was trying to make when I first started the answer to the question is you're way below zero. You know, you're not at base level. You're, you're, you're still, you know, you're still finding out how many, how many holes there are in the boat and trying to, you know, keep your head above water and, you know, just, it's, it's, you're spiraling a little bit. Yeah. So, at that moment, how long do you stay in the hospital before they put you in a rehab center? Because I think that's, we might have talked it when you were in the hospital. I know we talked when you're in the rehab center. Yeah. What was that process? Yeah. So, so essentially there's a week. I mean, three to five days, every case is different. I unfortunately got a really bad case. So, you know, some people recover from this in months. They basically tell you you're gonna, you're gonna get what you get in, in sort of one to five years. You know, and I'm, I'm definitely a five year case. And not to, you know, there are people, you can get it worse. It didn't go after my lungs, which you could have. And I didn't even realize that it, that could have been part of the process. So, mine was arms and legs, but I did keep my trunk, my torso, my core, which was really helpful because I could use it to kind of whip my arms and legs to move around and do things. And we can talk about that later. But, but I, so you get a week in the hospital for them to stabilize you. They use, you know, IVIG, it's kind of a super blood infusion. To, you know, effectively what they need to do is stop your body from attacking itself. Right, so once they stabilize that, that's it. That's the treatment. Like stop the body from attacking itself, and then you go to rehab and you just try to get back everything you can get back. - Yeah, so now you're in rehab and let's just say, this is where really the bold journey begins because before this, it's been the assault, the trauma on your body, the trying to understand it. Now you're in rehab and this is your process to get back to whatever normal will be for you. And I know that one thing that you and I've talked a lot about, and I don't even know if I fully understand, but, you know, this dark side that you talk about, that your brain takes you to. - Yeah, yeah. - Can you share a little bit about that and what that meant? - Yeah, that's how you think of it. - That starts in the hospital. That was before you get to rehab. So, you know, to add insult to injury, right? Like every injury you've ever had in your life. So you don't realize how much your body has accommodated and built itself and, you know, whether it's facial sheath, whether it's tendons, whether it's muscles, you've, you know, I have, you know, torn meniscus and a torn laborum and, you know, I have a handful other, I broke a collarbone, I was younger and all sorts of, you know, we all have all the things that we've done to our body over the years, right? Well, when your muscles atrophy, when the system goes down, in essence, all those injuries come back. 'Cause so I would lay in bed between two and four in the morning and the hospital and be in just excruciating pain because not only would those injuries the pain come back, but you said it really, really well to beginning about what the, the sheath, what the milein does. Your brain is sending signals to the muscles, but the muscles don't understand them. So you go into these horrific cramping spasms. Like where the muscle, and I still have them a little bit, but not like that, where the muscles essentially want to shear from the bone. Right there, there the cramps like you've just not had before. And they always seem to happen when you were like, at your quiet, is trying to go to sleep, your system is shutting down. And, you know, in the systems the way they work today with the nurses and not, they can't, like once you've gotten whatever medicine you've gotten, and they would only give me this sort of form of Advil, like a liquid Advil. They can't open the pain drawer again till morning. So I was like an athlete, I would sit with like bags of ice all over my body and try to sleep through the night and get through these things. So, so to your point, you know, that, that was the mental, that was the mental low. I actually would start laughing some nights. It's like really, like this is like the more, you know, it could actually hurt more, you know. So, yeah, you, but, but, but, you know, Scott there, and I don't want to, you know, over-dramatize it, right? The, you know, you and I have been talking about what we're talking about here in a different format, you know, for years. I mean, this has been, my life has been dedicated in many ways to try to come up with what I describe as the ultimate integrated operating system around the principles of sustainable high performance. You know, I knew people like you, I knew, you know, I can go on and on for all the people I was able to speak to and talk to, I had the, the role of Dexas, the role of Dexas. So, I had equipment for that moment, right? Like, you know, nobody has, nobody's prepared for it exactly, but I was able to kind of pull in everything. And I, ironically, the thing that, of all the things that you taught me over the years that I did the most during the time, and the dark time in the hospital is use audible to learn how to meditate between two and four in the morning when it was like just out of my, you know, beyond my skill set. - Yeah. How did you avoid not feeling sorry for yourself? Because I'm sure all of us are sitting here listening to this story and think, picture in ourselves in that moment. And there has to be a moment of drama where you just feel helpless and you just want to feel sorry for yourself. Did you reach that moment? - It sounds so, it sounds like the monious. I don't think I did. So, you and I've had this conversation. And like I said, first of all, I have four teenage kids, college kids, and you know, people around me are so scared. So, you know, that's the first part. It's so easy to rise up to be there for your family to make them, to try to make them feel like, you know, something good is gonna come out of this. But I think I, you know, I've had this conversation a lot. And I still never, I haven't, I still come up with the right way to do it to thank them. But I watched during COVID, I listened during COVID to people and patients and family. Like, you know, I really, and I think you were just going through this, you know, the energy giver string was really, was really big in what we were talking about and taking them at that point. I made it, I committed to myself. So, you know, I'm a big, you know, besides, besides TIGNAM, I'm a big Steven CoV-7 habits, you know, and I thought about, you know, the ethos, pathos, the logos, right? I just committed that I was gonna be an energy giver in the hospital, that these nurses and doctors, I watched what they were going through. And they were, I mean, they had no idea if they were bringing death home to their families every night. And some of them were working insane amounts, not some of them, all of them were working insane amounts of hours. And I would listen to the patients in some of the next rooms and I mean people were yelling at them and being abusive to them. This is more in the rehab center than it was at the hospital, it was pretty quiet at the hospital. But I just didn't think I had the right to go there. Yeah. So it is an interesting phenomenon and at the roots of it one of the ways that we learned about being energy multipliers is this idea of team sports that often when you're struggling as an individual athlete, the more emphasis you put on making those around you better, the better you become. And it takes a lot off of not all your own mindset, but you become a multiplier to your team. And we all would love to be part of a team where everyone has that attitude, that mindset. And therefore multiplies the energy of each other. And now you have an unstoppable team. And you've talked a lot about teams sports. It gives me a excuse to talk about my fillies too, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to talk about I'm a diamondbacks fan. So we're about. Yeah, but before the trade turner was going through the most horrific slump of his career, this is the batting champion for two years ago. And when he was at the lowest point, the fans stood up and gave him three pro long standing innovations. And he flipped the switch and has been playing like an MVP since that day, but he was, it's a great, like people just, they just willed him to be better. Yeah, which is very uncustomary for anyone who's listening. It doesn't know Philly fans, but aside from that, though, because that is a great example that you just gave, what did you actually do that would multiply the energy? Because I know that your family's outside holding signs, they can't have an impact on you. Like you said, therapists are coming in to treat you, doctors, nurses. Yeah. What actually did you do that maybe we can take learning from? Well, then you get into the, that was my ethos, then I went to my pathos, right? Which is you just, you know, you empathy. I mean, you said it a minute ago. You focus on other people, you become other centric. You know, you, you make that part of how you evaluate your day every day. Did I do that? Was I successful? Did I, did I get caught my own little pit? I mean, there, I tell the story. I had one, one nurse who, you know, you have to understand, I can't do anything. Scott, I can't, I can't go to the bathroom. I can't, like I can't, I can't, you can't do anything for myself. It's a very humbling time. So when I wake up in the morning, you know, someone's got to kind of roll me over and like everything, like there's nothing. And there was, I had one, one nurse who was, you know, she could come in the morning first thing and she was, you know, a little rough around the edges with me and wasn't, you know, wasn't sweet and loving in the process and I couldn't blame her and so I just decided that I had a, like we were, we were going to be friends. I was going to figure this out. And so I just, I just engage with her and I, at one point, she told me that every morning when she comes in, she listens at like 3, 4, 5 in the morning to her, her minister, you know, his sermon for the day, right? His, his, and so I said, well, you know, you're, you're, you're devout Christian. I'm Jewish. So we've got a great starting point. I said, why don't, why don't we, every morning, why don't you come in and teach me your sermon. And while you're getting me ready, let's just talk it out. And so it just changed the whole dynamic. So we look, we both looked forward to it, you know, every morning. And so, you know, she, she was still, you know, she was still tough love. But it was, it gave us a chance to kind of want to find out, you know, we both, you know, we both have deep faith. We both, we both care about other people for, you know, we found our common areas. And we, and we truly became friends, you know, because I was there for three, four months, you know. And this, this went on for it. This wasn't it. This is a lot. Yeah. I mean, it is incredible, you know, because the reason we started bold was this whole idea. We had a hypothesis that there were a lot of bold people that could outperform the current politics in the world, the current life in the world, the constant crisis that were having, and it could make a huge impact. And you just hit on a couple mindset skills that help with that. And you started with one of the most simple ones, curiosity. I mean, isn't that incredible? Just by being curious about that nurse and asking her a couple questions, you learn something about her. She learned something about you and you bridged what could have been insurmountable differences. Because, you know, here we're talking about you embracing the suck and you just described her job, which I'm thinking, yeah, maybe we should be interviewing her because she has a horrible job, you know what I mean? And then reflection, you know, you talked about the mindset skill of reflection at the end of each day, asking yourself, how did I do? What did I do well? Where could I have done better? Did I touch people? Did I make an impact? Was I true to who I said I was going to be at the beginning of the day? So that reset you every night to wake up the next day and want to do it more, you know? And then of course, empathy could be a mindset skill. This idea of getting out of your own way and not thinking about yourself because we're all going through something. And it's so easy to just look at ourselves and think the world revolves around me, but you, even as a patient in this horrible position, didn't do that. I just find it, it's a remarkable example. Well, in Skylisten, I had some pretty good prompts, right? I could literally look through my windows or I had a pretty cool automated wheelchair. I could go around the campus and I could see that the proverbial, there's always somebody out there who hasn't worse than you. Like it was right in front of me. Like, I could feel sorry, but I could also see that, you know, I had a lot of checks on the positive side that they weren't all, you know, right? They weren't as accessible as they'd been in the past, but I had a lot of really great support system. I have an amazing family, an amazing wife, amazing children, you know, I could go around the circles. There are a lot of people out there who had a lot worse than I did. Yeah. Which is another reflection, right, on gratitude and that helps you keep your perspective and renew your perspective every day, which I think is great. So I know that we probably have a bunch of questions coming in from the members. So, Anne, maybe I'll hand it over to you and see what kind of questions are coming in for Jeff. Yeah. No, we have a lot. We've had some that came in kind of before this session as well as some that are being shared here. So I'll try and sort of sift things together. So this is stitching together a couple of questions. But Jeff, you talk about, you know, giving, becoming an energy giver and you talked about the curiosity and the reflection and empathy of that. But how did you actually, like, where did that energy come from? How did you find that energy to give to others when, you know, your body was in so much, was going through so much? You know, it's a lifetime of practice. It's not, this doesn't mean you can automatically throw the switch and this goes back to that, you know, if you believe these things, that, you know, that God only gives you what you can handle or, or, you know, I, this wasn't like, like, I've lived by based my life on being other centric on, like, these are not things I just started to do. I've always had that, you know, that curiosity of a child and of trying to approach, of found that if I wasn't doing that, that that was the switch to throw. And so these were all skills that I had worked on and developed previously, right? So this was just that masterclass. This was just the, the PhD of going after all the things that I had been doing. And, and I was, you know, reflecting, going, preparing for today to the presentation that Deb did, I think that was our last or the time before last, where, you know, there's that balance between being a creative and having a solutioning, creative, you know, right brain mindset. And then there's sort of the left side, which is, you know, where you go in and every day practice your skills, right? You still have to go hit the rock every day and be present and kind of learn so that when the creative moment comes, you have the skills are there or if you don't have the skills, you know what skills you need to go back and work on, right? So I had a lot of that. And that's what I was referring to earlier. I was pretty well set for this to happen. And you know, not to throw gas on the fire, but with Scott. My system attacked my mile in. But you know, as crazy as it sounds, let's see, Zach was, I think was seven or eight years previously. And that's why my involvement in Chop that Scott was referring to is so high. My son, my nine-year-old son at the time, had a similar thing where his body attacked the mile and around his brain and put him in a coma. And I, you know, lived with him in the hospital every day. But he walked himself out of there, you know, four months, five months later. So I had all these things that, you know, they talk about your children teach you, had a little. So I knew as possible, I knew it was different. But you know, when my business partner and I, when he started, Franklin Square started F-S, we joked and it's something that happens. I think to a lot of us when we reached that, in our mid-50s, maybe even sooner than that. But it was one of these times where I was able to, you know, you get this point in your life where you're able to use all the things, all the skills that you've learned that you've been taught. You know, you, yeah. And it was like, it was that type of moment where you're like, all right, I, you know, I, I, I have them all. I don't know the right combination. I don't know the one and where and I don't know where it's going to go. I don't know if I'm going to be in a wheelchair the rest of my life. I don't know. But, but I did have a lot, a lot of training. Is it, Jeff, isn't it interesting? You just hit something that I think is so profound. These skills we develop that we don't know when we're going to need them as if we're all really preparing for something that we don't even know what it is. Yeah. Or when it's coming, you know, and when I think of this group that we have as members of bold, I can so many examples from so many of our members. Even like you mentioned, Deb Bubs, you know, we start developing our curiosity as a child. And we have no idea where or when we'll need that curiosity. When that curiosity will cure polio or take someone to to the moon or solve some major problem, but we start developing it long before we're going to need it. And one of the challenges that of course we have when we talk about sustainable human performance is that we're challenged. We're facing a different paradigm, which is people don't usually care about investing in themselves until they're in a crisis or it's too late. Yeah. We're trying to sell something sells probably a bad word, but you know what I mean? They'll help them. Absolutely. They're after themselves now because you will need it guaranteed you will need it. And I just find that a very profound thing that you just said. I don't want to stop anchoring going down the question track. And I just I did want to say this one piece because this is this is sort of the the been the next chapter of this part for me. And I'll leave it out there for I won't go too deep. I'll just leave it out there, which is, um, you know, I remember calling you and being a little frustrated about embracing the suck and saying, you know, that's not it. It's better. It's bigger. It's wider. It's deeper than that. It's not just it's not just wow, you know, I'd be happy when you're in that moment or it's I think I told you this story. Like I didn't swim before this happened, but I figured out that I could sort of propel myself by using my cord, I whip my arms and legs and and and swim, you know, for all intents and purposes and it became part of my daily therapy and and I it's something I still do every day. Um, but you know, that fear like when I would get to the deep end of the pool and you know, here I am, like I don't have really arms and legs. I like I have a little bit of use, but um, it's coming back, but like you get to that deep and you're like, oh my gosh, like what happens if I get my my technique doesn't work, you know, I'll just think like a rock. Um, and and somebody taught me this when I was learning how to swim, they said, you know, if you can get comfortable with yourself face down in the water, like a dead man's float, you can teach yourself to swim. Um, and I think I called you and I said, Scott, the, the, it's the bottom of the breath. It's the moment when you have no air, you can't, you, you, you, you, you've, you've expanded all your air and you, you, you've sort of have no control. You know, because we're all that logo side of us that have that desire to want to control everything is really high. And most of the people I imagine on this phone on this call, um, and it's at that moment that you get amazing clarity. That if you're to your point about the left, the right brain, sorry, if you're open to it and you can stay present and it's not easy because you want to control so badly, right? You just want to, you know, put your head up, get air or reach for the wall, whatever it is at that moment in the pool. If you're able to sort of have that moment, you know, whether that's the, the zone and sports or flow and yoga or Buddhism or, but it's that is staying present there. It is amazing. The amount of answers or ideas or creativity that you can find, but and it kind of goes back to the premise, I think, of the call is that is learning how to, how to embrace that moment to me. That's embracing the suck is, is, is actually finding comfort and then the last premise and I'm teasing this out. I don't, you know, there's so many horrific things going on in the world. I don't want this to sound wrong, but, um, but knowing that trauma and suck is, is as much a part of life as happiness is. Um, and to your point, you have to prepare for it. You, and if you can actually be good at it and find opportunity in it and see some beauty in moments of it, even as horrible as it was, like those conversations I had with art, my nurse and there's 10 other people like that. Um, it doesn't mean it doesn't, it's not horrible at that moment, but you can, if you're able to stay present in it and breathe through it and, you know, get your, get your, your parasympathetic and sympathetic system set right for the moment. Um, there, there is, there is, there is a lot of answers in that, in that moment. No, amazing. And again, stitching together a couple of questions, um, here that have come in, like how kind of with that, that, that being sitting present in the pain, like how has that changed? What you've done for, you know, your habits around mindset, movement, nutrition, recovery, maybe some of the kind of recovery and creativity strategies that you've used in the past, have they changed now as a result of that? Completely. It's a great, I have to really good question. It's not what I've thought through, so let's trim a consciousness on this one. Um, I think, I think it's the openness to go in places with my recovery that I would not have allowed myself and my, and my practitioners to take me. Um, so, you know, I, I, the, GBS is one of these things and life is one of these things, right? Where it's a different path for everybody, GBS, there's no two cases that are alike. Scott pointed that out earlier. It, nobody can say, here's the playbook. So it kind of forced me to bring together, um, in my mind, you know, a world-class integrated medical doctor, a, um, you know, some, a, um, movement coaches. Um, I found an amazing podiatrist, uh, gate, because I have to, I have to relearn how to walk, how to move, how to, the whole kinetic system of my body and none of it comes back programmed. If it comes back at all, you, you have to retrain your body and now your body, and this is it alludes back to something Scott went to earlier. Um, but I just didn't let him pull that thread at the time was that, you know, a lot of the times your brain is not your friend. Right. It's learning how to turn off your brain, and that's that whole meditative side of it. It's learning how to, how to just be present, and not, you know, so, so because your brain is trying to protect you and even, and so where I was going with that is that, um, I had to go back and completely, it's a two point of, I had to rebuild it from the ground up, and I decided, you know, well, I'll just build it back better, right? I'll just, you know, I'll fix my movement patterns. I'll go from being quiet dominant to glute dominant. I'll, I'll just, I'll rebuild all of it, but that meant I got my DNA tested. I had a, My microbiome tested, I had my gut tested, I had, and I've rebuilt the system. So to your point, I changed how I ate, I changed how, and I was pretty good before this. I changed how I did everything, I changed how I recover. I learned that I don't clear toxins. Well, I don't methylate. I have two broken alleles on methylation. So I didn't realize that two days, the late onset that I had was a little bit more than everybody else. And I had to change how I went about doing those things. It wasn't a woe is me, it's just a different script. And so I had to go about changing how I recover, how I sleep, how I do everything, and some of them were just tweaks, and some of them were out of the, it's crazy. Even when someone's trying to help you, and you've all seen this, and we've all been this person, as you fight it. I know this stuff, I've been doing this for years. I teach other people how to do this stuff. It's like, no, you gotta completely start over. And that's very humbling. And I have an ego like everybody else, and I was pretty sure I had all the answers, and I had to really go in places that I didn't even know existed. I had treatments done where I put my vagal nerves to sleep, because I couldn't stop my fight or flight. So they put in the sleep and they effectively reset. Fascinating. I'm out of 100 of those, but. (laughing) I had to open up my eyes, and sometimes it meant I couldn't have those conversations with my family or my friends because one they didn't understand, two, they have their own lives, your three, I scared my wife after death. You know, you're doing what? - Yeah. And Jeff, what if you, sort of your learnings from this, your insights, you're kind of looking at everything differently? How have you translated that into your kind of business, work, enterprise? How has that changed? How you approach things? - Well, so just a little thing, like every day, I used to go out in the morning and sort of work out hard every day, and you know, some days harder than others and try to use my whoop or things like that to tell me what was too much or too little. Now, even with work, I try to work on, you know, I get, I mentioned this Stephen Covey stuff, you know, the sharpening of the saw. I realized, and this goes back to, I think what Scott was saying earlier, I have to intentionally work on skills or a skill that either needs working on or that will help me tie together other functions. You know, I'll spend, you know, a minute, I'll spend an hour in the morning on ankles and feet and toes and, you know, not the kind of workout I used to do, but really understanding my balance. And then I'll go into squats to like, to feel the earth, like I think, so the same thing in work, taking a longer view, taking a more patient, taking a more other centric view, you know, I work with a number of entrepreneurs and they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. And, you know, I might have, I was previously, I was too dogmatic, I was, you know, more do this. You're here as a script, why aren't you listening to me? Kind of thing versus, you know, meeting them where they are. And then, getting, helping them to see that they're, you know, working on a skill with them to make them better so that the integrated operating system that I want, or I think is helpful to where they're trying to go, will make more sense in that they'll have the tools to do it with. So, you know, again, that was going back to that conversation we had with Deb about, you know, how much is strategic and how much is tactical, how much, but to keep out of the activity trap, that even the day-to-day work should be transformational. I think is, probably the piece that, that you don't waste energy, that you have to be really thoughtful. You gotta go in and do the work, you gotta be, you have to be intentional about the stuff that needs to get done, but do it with an eye towards where you may want to go. And has this changed, you know, you invest in a lot of businesses? Like, has this changed who you might invest in, as well as you talked there a little bit about the way that you'll work with those people and the leadership and the way that you'll build those teams, but actually has it impacted kind of direction where you might put your focus? Yes, a good question. I wouldn't say yes and no. I was already going down that path where, you know, Yogi and Scott can appreciate. You know, effectively for me, if it wasn't sort of a sustainable, high performance kind of company, if it didn't make the world a better place, if it wasn't going to make others healthier, or I'd kind of reach some, if it was money to make money, I just wasn't going to do it. You know, I mean, it had to have more benefit than that. And, you know, my kids are pretty good about making sure that that's who I am as well. So they'll hold me accountable if they think it's just a money grab. And I don't, that never has motivated me very much. It's got to be bigger. So I think it really comes down to, they have to be really good people too. I just don't have patience for people who don't want to learn, don't want to go on the journey with me. You know, I know by no means in my finished product. So, you know, it's my journey, it's their journey, it's our journey. They have to see me for that. And then at the same token, the business itself should, it should solve a problem that needs solving. Right. So here's one that's just come in. So this kind of focus on the new future and that kind of possibility orientation. Couple of questions here. How do you think about those new possibilities and what skills, like what are the tangible skills that you bring to imagining that new future? And maybe that you can kind of, what can we all learn from that? What can you share with other people about how do we, what are the skills we bring to imagine that future? Boy, they're getting to sound so, they're going to sound too simplistic, I think. And maybe it's just where I am in my journey. But the skills really are about allowing myself. And I've always been somebody who embraced change. And I, you know, my father taught me a long time ago. And I find something that everybody needs, but that nobody likes to do, and that's a business. And to me, that was always the idea of change management. That ironically, you know, change is this constant. But people are so uncomfortable with change. It's, you know, the ambiguity is so uncomfortable for folks. And so, you know, my poor children, even my children, like this, the one thing I asked them, instead of sort of the basics of, you know, reading the philosophers and all those things, I asked them to at least minor in organizational change or learning in organizational change or embrace, be skillful and find opportunity in change. So I am not a good, you know, ops person, I don't make, I'm an 80/20, not a 20/80 person. So you know, when things get to a certain place, I get bored and I need to move on to something that needs fixing. So I think that would probably be the one thing that the one skill is to work. On accepting the statement that there's going to be, you know, the trauma, the disruption in the world, in your life, in your world, and micro macro world, to make sure you have the skills and the comfort and to truly embrace it. to move forward, that progress to refine it. And then I really, you know, that all the answers are out there. You just have to be open and willing to answer them and then kind of like Russell Crowe in a beautiful mind. You got to kind of think, you got to be comfortable with that moment where it looks like complete disarray. But that the answers will present themselves if you're, if you can free your mind to do that. I don't know if that answered you or not. No, I think it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a difficult one. There are no easy answers. But I think that's, I kind of captured four points from that, which I think, which I think are great. And maybe, you know, a lot of, a lot of members are, you know, on that entrepreneurial route, either with startups or kind of in the projects, the very bold projects that they're involved with in their enterprises. So what, what advice can you give them? And this, this, this came in from somebody like, is that advice any different now than it would have been previously? I don't think the advice is different. I think it's deeper. It's more, you know, I made the comment like, what did our parents do before integrated operating systems? Like, how, how deep and why those threads and that, the, the fiber optics need to go and like, just learning how my feet connect, my right foot connects to my left shoulder and the whole kinetic chain. And like, like, you can go as far and as deep as you want. And this is true for business as well. So allow yourself time. It's so hard when you're not your printer because, you know, I always joke, you're a minute away from being a millionaire and a minute away from being bankrupt. And you have to be comfortable there. And you know, Scott and, and Yogi always talked about the VUCA world and, and, and being comfortable there. And I think the, the one, the one, the one thing I do talk about with, with, with all the groups I work with and the people I work with, is, you know, that I, I used to joke when I, when I had my own, my own small companies. The thing I always wish on my competitors is success. And again, I'm just pulling off of a, of a slide from a TIGNUM, right? That people aren't really prepared for success. They're prepared for failure. And with your business, you have to let yourself have some version of time. You, you're trying to keep the doors open and you're trying to make payroll. You're trying to do all the things that you're trying to do every day. But most people are not ready for success. And in many cases success, similar to what I was describing, I feel like I did for my own self. And I think this may be the answer to your question, means you have to do a complete two point out. Like you'll hit a level of scale and success that it's not about more computers and, and more good people. It's about completely reinventing yourself. And changing the tires, moving 60 is really hard to do. But you have to prepare yourself for that. If you're going into this, you're going into this to be successful. And that means you, you know, the things that you do that make you successful today aren't necessarily the same, same things or same people. You might have five or six heroes in your group who don't transition or translate to you when you scale. And you know, shame on you as a manager if you're not preparing them and your company for that. So you have to, you know, and that goes like to the back to the brain, you have to picture it, you have to think about it. And sometimes it seems silly to be thinking about wild success while you're, while you're an inch away from bankruptcy or going under, but you have to do that all the time. Now, I think I'm going to take an engine, we'll wrap it up. And I know there's probably way more questions and we'll get to those in the Q&A afterwards. And we'll share that with everyone in the follow up email. But Jeff, the discussion you had is so, has, has so many levels and is so deep. And you mentioned something earlier about trauma. And it is fascinating how we've all had these traumas because life is traumatic, like you said. And how we deal with those traumas is so unique for all of us. And for many people, those traumas hold them back from ever moving forward or ever becoming who they can't, can be. And one of the things that you've shared in a session that we did earlier about round, the importance of self image. We're constantly recreating this image of who we need to be to be successful on the future. And what success looks like. And one of the things that I really commend you on that you've done so well is that you are constantly recreating where you want to go. And so this process, whether you spend an hour working on your toes and your feet to be able to squat or whether you're working on a skill that you need to help a business grow. It's this constant forward looking rather than looking back at the trauma you have and, and allowing that to hold you back. And I just think that's such a good takeaway for so many of us and such a great lesson that we all need to keep in our minds if we want to continue to create something amazing in the future. No, I appreciate that. And then, you know, it's all words that we know, you know, is someone to stay present and stand the moment and the past is the past and the future is fiction or, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's so hard to do that. But there's, but we, it's amazing. It's amazing how many of the answers we know the answer to if we just kind of allow ourselves. Yeah, it's funny because one of the things we do a lot is taking people stopping the speed train for a day and doing whiteboarding and some reflection. And I often think maybe that's actually the thing that's missing is the pause for you. Unfortunately, GPS gave you a huge pause probably more than you wish you had right now. But, but it sounds like you're doing amazing things with that. And, and I want to thank you for engaging in the conversation. I want to thank all our members for sharing all their questions. I want to thank everyone who's a member of bold. And if you know other people that would benefit from these conversations and would love to join in these conversations, please invite them to become members because that's what we, what we're looking to grow. And thank you everybody. Have a great week and we'll see everybody in, in our future sessions. Thank you for listening to the TIGNUM Thoughtcast. If you've enjoyed this or any of our other thoughtcast episodes, please subscribe so you don't miss out on future releases. If you'd like to get in touch with TIGNUM, please email us at [email protected]. Until next time, be bold, be more, and keep ruling your impact.