From Hardship to Hope: Navigating Through Stage 4 Cancer - Twice! - MANIFEST the Big Stuff

Episode Transcript
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Greg Kuhn (00:12):
Hello, my wonderful manifesting friends and
beautiful souls.
It's Greg Kuhn and welcome toanother episode of Manifest the
Big Stuff Today.
I am super excited.
I want to welcome you to afantastic episode of Manifest

(00:33):
the Big Stuff.
We love to talk about the bigstuff health, wealth,
relationships, our love life,those really important things
and how to manifest them morelike we truly want, how to be
more influential architects ofour life.

(00:56):
And today I have a guest whohas done this at such a level.
You're going to be astounded.
You're going to want to hearfrom this gentleman.
I want to introduce you toHoward Brown, my guest today.

(01:16):
Howard is a Silicon Valleyentrepreneur.
He is the best-selling authorof Shining Brightly.
He is an award-winninginternational speaker, an
inspirational podcaster.
He's a survivorship coach, ahealth technology consultant and

(01:38):
a two-time stage four cancerpatient and survivor.
30 years apart, howard sharesthe keys to leading a resilient
life, as you can imagine, withhope that drives successful

(01:59):
community leadership, which he'sdemonstrated.
Business innovation andinnovators, of which he's won.
And healthcare advocates, whichHoward now is doing in earnest.
Be prepared to be inspired, beprepared to meet a miracle man,

(02:23):
a man who has already livedthree lives.
Howard, please say hello.

Howard Brown (02:31):
Greg, thank you for having me on.
What a grand introduction.
I'm humbled by that because Ijust try to be me each day and
wake up.
I am honored to be on your showand to share my story and some
wisdom and learn a little bitand share a little bit with you

(02:55):
today, thank you.

Greg Kuhn (02:56):
Well, howard, my viewers, my listeners, are
wonderful souls who are veryinterested just as I am and I
know, just as you are in makingthe most of this gift that we've
been given, making advantage ofthe opportunities that we're
being afforded in each moment tomake the most of our life.

(03:20):
And, of course, the perspectivethat you are bringing to the
table is that you havemanifested a life where you have
survived beyond all odds.
Let's start with Howard Brownat age 23 and learning that you

(03:44):
have stage four non-Hodgkinslymphoma and being told, howard,
you shouldn't expect to surviveas a 57-year-old.
Looking back on it, how did yousurvive?

So, god, I thought I graduated Babson College, at
the number one school forentrepreneurship, and I started
my career and, like any youngperson, I thought I was kind of
like a superhero, invincible,and I got to my career.
I got promoted and I'm drivingdown the Pennsylvania term pike

(04:31):
to Dayton, ohio, for a promotionat age 23.
So exciting.
I had the world as my oysterand I noticed that I actually
had a little red bump on my leftcheekbone and I got out of the
car to get gas and this is 1989,in August, and I used a pay
phone.

Greg Kuhn (04:53):
Remember those.

I called my mom and dad to check in and I said
you know, I noticed a littlebump, because I keep looking in
the rear of your mirror and Isee a little red bump there and
it's probably nothing.
So my mom's like, well, keep aneye on it.
What are they going to do?
Right?
So I get to Dayton Ohio and itkeeps getting a little bigger.
But I have a temporary housing.

(05:14):
I'm looking for an apartment, Ifind an apartment, I'm going to
work, I'm the new guy in DaytonOhio and I'm working.
I'm going to the gym, I'mplaying basketball and I'm
starting to plan my travelschedule.
This is in the disaster recoveryworld for banks and for retail

(05:35):
supermarkets, and the banksactually had to put together
disaster recovery plans.
So I'm doing great.
My mom comes out because Ithink you need sheets and dishes
and all that stuff for anapartment.
So she came out and she this isat the time you could actually
meet someone at the gate at theairport.
You didn't have to wait behindsecurity.
So she sees me and I'm wearingglasses at the time and this

(05:56):
little red bump.
She goes what is that?
We got to get that checked out.
I was like mom, it's okay, it'snothing, I'm fine, I feel
really strong.
So she spends a weekend with meand I actually she spent like a
Wednesday night till like aSunday night.
So I worked actually Thursdayand Friday.
So I'd come home but she wouldwalk across to this big mall and

(06:17):
start buying stuff for theapartment Sheets are good,
towels are good so she did whatmoms do and we'd go out to eat
at night and we really didn'tknow anybody there and I kept
pushing it off.
She goes let's go get thatchecked out.
I was like, nah, it's fine.
And fortunately a couple ofweeks later I had to come back
to Boston.

(06:37):
I grew up in the suburbs ofBoston, in Framingham,
massachusetts, and I came in.
My speech was on a Monday and Icame in on a Friday night and
Saturday morning my dad sayslet's go play tennis.
And instead of playing tennishe took me to the community
hospital and we waited in theemergency room and the doctor
looked at it, says it's assist,take some antibiotic, you'll be

(06:59):
fine.
Great, but it was kind ofpurply and getting bigger.
So imagine it started, you knowsmall, and it's now starting to
look like a small little marble.
And my dad and I didn't go playtennis, we went to breakfast and
I saw some friends on Sundayyou know what is that thing on

(07:20):
your cheek?
And I ended up, you know, kindof making excuses.
You know I got hit inbasketball or weight lifting,
you know I didn't know what itwas, but I felt fine.
So I do the speech.
The speech is great, and my goback and see my parents before I
leave and they, we go back tothe community hospital and this

(07:43):
time they actually say, oh, themedicine doesn't work.
I wasn't feeling great either.
It might have been theantibiotic and they took
actually a biopsy.
And then they said wait.
And then they said they tookanother biopsy and then the
waiting game started.
Well, my parents took me to theairport, I left on my way and I
didn't realize it at the time,but they were freaking out

(08:04):
because we didn't know what wasgoing on.
And I get a call to come back.
This is I don't know.
It could be even like five orsix weeks later, I don't even
remember, but it was enough timethat maybe three weeks later
and I ended up coming back and Igo see this community hospital
and there's seven doctorswaiting for me seven.

Greg Kuhn (08:22):
Not a good sign, right.

No, never a good sign.
And at the end they say youhave a 2pm appointment at
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
At 2pm, don't be late.
Well, I'm in an Armani suit,okay, and I'm ready to basically
fly back out to continue mylife.
And it doesn't even reallyregister.
Why am I going to Dana-FarberCancer Institute?

(08:44):
I actually tell you.
It didn't register with me atall.
Maybe it's a form of denial orprotection in what I'm doing,
right?
And so I get there and I walkinto Dana-Farber and they try to
make it light and all thatstuff and nice.
There's a waiting room for theadults, which I will call the
old people, and there's awaiting room for pediatrics.

(09:05):
So Jimmy Fund is for kids withcancer.
I didn't have a place for me.
I'm 23.
Do I go sit with the adults andthe older people or do I go
with the kid?
Well, I actually sat with thekids.
Then they called me.

Greg Kuhn (09:20):
You were like an adolescent.

Yeah Well, they called that young onset, you
know.
But I was still young, but Ididn't fit with the older people
in their 60s or 70s right.
So what I ended up doing was Iended up going with the kids and
then I get called back after abunch of tests to this doctor's
office that inventedchemotherapy for blood cancers.

(09:42):
And there was a young doctorbehind him my parents were
actually behind me and he saidHoward, you have stage four
accelerated T cell non-hungerlymphoma.
It's a blood cancer, lymphaticsystem, and we're going to try
to pound it out of you.
And I didn't hear another word.
Let's just say I was a deer inthe headlights, my mom's ball in

(10:03):
her eyes, out my dad's a statue.
And I look up at this youngdoctor who was sort of close in
age, maybe seven or eight yearsolder than that.
I mean I guess you know he's afellow.
I go.
What is he saying?
So he was talking doctor and Ididn't know anything, and so we
listened and we went home andthe car ride home was dead

(10:24):
silence.
We invite my twin sister that'sa really important fact to
dinner.
My dad runs out to the libraryand gets a book on cancer.
We knew nothing.
We had dinner, we cried a lotand I was to go back to the
hospital for more tests.
Little did I know that DanaFarber was going to be my home,
away from home, and I probablywas still in denial.

(10:47):
Now, 1989, no cell phones, nointernet, and now computer use
was really, you know, juststarting.
So this is the analog days.

Greg Kuhn (10:58):
So we had a lot.
Like you said, your dad went tothe library.

Yeah, went to the library and we had a landline
that was always busy.
The busy signal.
I mean people couldn't getthrough because we wanted to
tell people about it but peoplewould call.
The phone was always busy,right?
So roll the clock forward, Istart chemotherapy.
And when I get there to startchemotherapy, they test your

(11:21):
blood and Dr Rubin, the youngdoctor, comes out and says
there's no chemo today.
I said wait, what are youtalking about?
You told me that you know, andI did the.
I looked up.
You know the prognosis forsomeone with stage four.
You know lymphoma, which islike leukemia, blood cancer, six
months to live or less.
Right, anyone I knew that hadthat.

(11:41):
You know that cancer or knewsomebody said you know the
descendants.
So he says we're not doingchemo.
I go, yeah, but you told me I'mgonna die.
We better do chemo.
And he says nope, it's not safe.
But I scheduled a field trip andhe scheduled the field trip to
the cryogenic center and I saidcryo, what?
What is that?
And he said it's the sperm bank.

(12:02):
You're gonna leave a sample.
I go, why should I do that?
He goes, just do it.
What else are you gonna dotoday?
It might actually feel good,you'll come back tomorrow, we'll
tuck your blood and you'll dochemo the next day.
So I went to the cryogeniccenter and I left a sample and I
sort of forgot about it becauseI had other things that were
more pressing, right.
And I did chemotherapy and thechemotherapy I was doing was

(12:25):
extremely toxic.
I lost my hair within 10 daysand I went.
It was very harsh side effects.
I was on steroids.
My whole world changed and theone thing that my mom learned is
that my immune system I wasvery susceptible, so I actually

(12:47):
suffered from masks and glovesand anyone that would come over
and visit actually had to kindof wear a mask and gloves
because they could get me sickand that could kill me faster
Any type of virus, bacteria,fungus.
So my mom was basically incharge of the cleaning patrol
and so having guests was aluxury and we spent a lot of

(13:07):
time.
We commuted to Dana-Farberbasically daily and I had some
overnight stays when I needed it, and the chemotherapy was harsh
.
I went to my fifth year reunion.
Okay, I'm 23 and a half yearsold and I walk in there.
I'm bald, I'm wearing gloves, Itook my mask off.

(13:28):
My mom would like put that maskback on.
She came, she knew my friendsand I was the vice president of
my high school class.
I was all state and basketballright and so they knew me and I
delivered some opening remarksfor people to pray.
But this is the first time thatmany of these people had had
touched with cancer.
Maybe they had an aunt or uncleor grandparent, but no one
their age had had cancer.

(13:49):
And so I heard the guys poorbastard, dead man, walking, you
know and again they didn't meananything by it, they just how do
you deal with this as a healthy23 year old?
But I look like I had cancernow because I was bald.
Well, none of the treatmentswere working.
I was getting sick.

(14:10):
I was starting on bloodtransfusions, platelet
transfusions.
I went down to Florida to visitmy grandparents to get some
warm weather.
I immediately got rushed backhome because I actually looked
like a spotted purple spots allover and then this you know,
basically a big red mark on mycheekbone turned out to be the

(14:31):
size of a golf ball.
I mean, thank God it came out,because if it didn't come out I
would have died.
It was the warning sign.
Now we didn't have any goodnews.
The therapies were not working.
They tested my sister for bonemarrow transplant.
It's now called a stem celltransplant.
She was an exact match.
Okay, that's a one in 25,000chance.

(14:53):
Okay.
And people?
now still swabbed their cheeksand they become a match To
donate their bone marrow andstem cells.
And that was the only good newswe had.
I had a brutal, a brutal,brutal winter there because I
was failing all their therapiesand I was in the hospital a lot
because my immune system was sofragile and I didn't know.

(15:18):
I didn't know I was gonna live.
So they got me ready for a bonemarrow transplant On May 17th I
went in and they hit me up withsuch toxic chemo and full body
radiation that they eliminatedmy bone marrow.
And this is the protocol in1990.
They're following the orders.

Greg Kuhn (15:36):
Okay, I was you know I wasn't like that anymore.

They changed?
Oh, they've changed theprotocol substantially, but they
put you in an isolation room.

Greg Kuhn (15:43):
Okay.

Think John Travolta and the boy in the
bubble movie with no immunesystem.
Right, I did not have an immunesystem, so when people came in,
they had to scrub, put onmasking.
All I could see was their eyes,and they did that every single
time.
They came in or out, and my momwould sit with me or my dad
would sit with me in theevenings, and I had my own

(16:06):
prison.
I was in prison.

Greg Kuhn (16:08):
I had to be terrifying.

It was.
It was terrifying.
So you know how much TV can youwatch?
I mean, I didn't feel greatanyways, right?
What do you talk about?
Well, you talk about memories.
You talk about the good times,right, because you don't have
really that crystal ball knowingwhat's going on.
And while they're prepping youfor bone marrow transplant, you
sign a document that said itcould kill you right away when

(16:33):
you take someone else's organ orblood system and put it in
fusing in you.
It could kill you right away.
I mean, your body will rejectit, you will die quickly.
You could die over time or itcan give you very significant
side effects, called graftversus host disease, where the
body's sort of figuring out whatthis is and is rejecting it and
there's some significant sideeffects.
There's some significant sideeffects to that.

Greg Kuhn (16:55):
You're willing to do this because you want to live.

Yes, and also I had no other choice.
The therapies that they sentfor, therapies that mean they
didn't work.
The cancer was growing.
Every scan you would do thatthe cancer was growing.
I'd light up like a Christmastree on the gallium scans.
So this was a Hail Mary.
And again in the analog world,the information getting out and

(17:20):
coming in was slow.
It was really slow Now becausemy mom and I were showing up at
the cancer center a lot.
We became to get to know ourenvironment.
People would know us.
My mom and I are very outgoing.
She's talking to everybody,getting to know the staff and
the way that she works is thatshe endears herself because

(17:45):
she's a candy holly.
My mom loves candy Now at thecancer center, even though sugar
is not good for cancer, itmakes people happy.
So they had candy all over theplace Tootsie rolls, m&m, any
lollipops and kids like candy,right.
So one day we show up andthere's no candy.
My mom is devastated.

(18:06):
So one of the staff peoplethere, carol, says yeah, we're
out of candy.
We don't have any more in mylittle supply closet.
Oh my God.
My mom, who's a force in nature, called 10 candy companies and
had pounds and pounds that candydelivered for years, for years.

Greg Kuhn (18:22):
Yeah.

Because candy was the way of her sharing her light
and goodness, it was kind ofcool to watch she's just a force
, and she was making that herspace.

Greg Kuhn (18:32):
I mean, she was making herself a part of things,
right?

Exactly so.
We got to know a lot of peoplethere.

Greg Kuhn (18:38):
You're so fortunate that you had advocates and
allies.

Well, I moved back home with mom and dad.
I didn't make it back to DaytonOhio to my apartment.
I moved back home.
I actually, eventually my dadwent out there with some friends
out there and put it all instorage and drove my car back
home.
So we lived there, we made itour place.
But you meet people there goingthrough the struggle.
So some people were dying, somepeople were getting worse, a

(19:03):
few people were healing and Imentored a young kid with
leukemia.
Unfortunately he passed and Igot to this bone marrow
transplant and I did get tospeak to some other people that
had gone through it and it wasjust terrifying.
It was really frightening.
My whole world had changed.

(19:24):
I had.
Now I was a patient, I was asick young man and that's how
people saw me.

Greg Kuhn (19:32):
Your identity was changing.

Correct.
It changed and so my sistergives me the bone marrow.
She donates it.
It's basically injections outof her hip bones.
That morning at a differenthospital and I had gone through
all the radiation, which wasvery difficult, and they bring
in a bag of purple bag with herbone marrow at 5 o'clock that

(19:57):
evening and I got a lot ofpeople in the room.
They're waiting to see if thisthing kills me Because they
don't know.
They hang the bag, they injectit in me.
I think they gave me somedemoral.
I don't know why, but they'rewatching and waiting to see if
my body rejects it.
So slowly but surely, after acouple hours people are leaving

(20:17):
the room and eventually it'sjust me and my mom in the room.
My dad came across and wheeledmy sister because she was in a
different hospital connected,and she came to the window and
she waved and I just said I loveyou, thank you for trying to
save my life.
It was a beautiful moment in aterrifying time.

(20:39):
And the bag is empty and it'ssitting there and I looked at my
mom and I said take that bagand put it in your purse.
And she said what are youtalking about?
I said take that bag and put itin your purse.
This right here is my bonemarrow bag.
This is my bag of life.

(21:00):
This bag of my sister's stemcells saved my life.

Greg Kuhn (21:07):
Bag of love.

Bag of love too.
Exactly so this bag saved mylife.
And so, rolling the clockforward because it's a long
story and it's in my book isthat I did a clinical trial to
strengthen my immune system, mynatural killer cells, and after
six months of that theybasically say you're on your own
, you're on surveillance,quarterly surveillance, you need
to get gallium scans and bloodtests.

(21:31):
They don't tell you what to do.
So survivorship is a whole newadventure, a whole new journey.
And what do you do?
So I moved to Florida just toget myself on 135 pounds in bulk
.
I needed to repair myselfemotionally, physically.
Now, financially I was good.

(21:52):
I was still on disability,getting paid, and I just didn't
get to see a lot of peoplebecause I didn't have an immune
system.
So I wasn't around people a lot.
But I moved to Florida.
My friend, david Herman, wasgetting divorced.
We moved to.
He lived on a golf course nearTampa and two of my high school
friends came down to babysit me.
My parents needed, thought Ineeded babysitting, and I

(22:13):
probably did.
And I started to golf.
I started to play basketball.
The Super Bowl was in Tampa.
We started to go to theamusement parks, started to live
life a little bit.
I needed to get strongerbecause I was really scrawny and
my stamina was weak.
And I did that and while I wasthere I typed a letter this is

(22:35):
typewriter time to go on thecompany award trip that I missed
to Acapulco.
And I typed a letter to the CEOof the company and I got a type
letter back that said you cancome if you get a doctor's
letter.
And I got a doctor's letterthat I was healthy enough to
travel and the trip was inHawaii and the big island of
Hawaii that just got devastatedand I went on that trip and I

(23:00):
got to experience some joy.
But at that trip to Hawaii Ihad lunch with the CEO and the
president of NCR corporation andthey said are you going to come
back to work?
We have a job for you.
And I said I want a job in warmweather.
I want to leave New England fora couple of reasons I have to
tell you.
My parents were the bestcaregivers in the world.

(23:22):
They were hovering like bearswould on their cubs.

Greg Kuhn (23:29):
You were so enmeshed in your life by nature and you
needed them to do that.
But I understand now.

It was time to, but they gave up their entire
lives, except for my dad working.
They basically gave upeverything to basically look out
for my care and well-being andI also needed to break that.
I needed to give them theirlife back and I needed to get my
life back.
So I took a job in Californiawhere I could have warm weather

(23:59):
and I took an apartment near thebeach so I could play
basketball selfishly and I hadto work on myself.
And so I called that HumptyDumpty version one, putting
myself back together againemotionally, physically, in my
career and also in community.
And so it takes time.

(24:21):
It takes time.
It doesn't happen overnight.
Everybody's a ball of clay.
I was working on myself, whichis healthy, healthy to do.

Greg Kuhn (24:30):
Well, you went to a precipice that I mean it's
unimaginable really.
And now you're back, a humanbeing and everybody's going
around doing their thing andliving their life, and life is
moving just as fast as it everdid and you're getting

(24:53):
acclimated or re-acclimated.
But you certainly did that.
You did wind up making theworld your oyster, like you
originally described before thatthat tremendous experience with
the lymphoma and you became aSilicon Valley superstar.

(25:21):
You brought companies to market.
You led companies thatgenerated over $100 million of
new revenue growth.
You also met your wife duringthis time.
So you really you had a bookand you had advocacy born from

(25:43):
your initial experiences withsurviving cancer.
You've got experiences worthyof talking about and learning
from in your second life betweencancers.

I do.
So I have to tell you that Idon't judge cancer diagnosis as
complex, and it was analog times, so learning things were paced
a little slower than they aretoday, and I had people that
were helping me along the way,but really I had to take it on

(26:20):
my own initiative as anentrepreneur, as a self-starter,
to work on myself, and this wasnot an overnight thing.
It took time.
So in California it's 1991.
Now I have to tell you inretrospect, I got sick fast and
I got better fast.
It was really not this long10-year journey, it is, and I

(26:45):
call it a miracle, you call me amiracle.
Miracle number one is my sister, sure.
Her bone marrow being an exactmatch, saved my life, without
question.
So that is a miracle that gaveme my life back, and so I
actually had to make the best ofit, and so I did.
I worked hard at my stamina, Iworked hard at living healthy

(27:07):
and getting back up, and I willtell you that re-acclimating
into the workforce was reallyhard.
It was hard because it moveswithout you, and then, slowly
but surely, my hair grew back.
People didn't know I was acancer patient, unless I told
them, and so my career wasgetting back on track.
I was getting into a rhythm andmy friend says, go to check out

(27:31):
this young leadership group atthe Jewish Federation.
And I did and it's who yousurround yourself with and I
started to go and I enjoyed thetopics and the people.
They were all young workingprofessionals that were also
interested in making the world abetter place and I actually
felt at home there because I haddone charity work.

(27:52):
My mom had always done charitywork and I really enjoyed it.
And there were some reallyyoung, good-looking women there
as well.
That was a big bonus factor.

Greg Kuhn (28:02):
And.

I saw what.

Greg Kuhn (28:04):
Plus.

Yeah.
So I actually met Lisa thereand it was a beautiful love
story because I met her and wemet at this retreat.
We had a lot of common valuesand she was really a beautiful
soul because her work was allabout children, youth and

(28:25):
families from legislationfederally and nationally and
also locally in Los Angeles, andour hearts met and we called it
Becheret.
Becheret in Judaism is the wordfor you met your match and so
we met.
We were a match and we startedthis beautiful love story, got
married and she really pushed metowards even greater service

(28:51):
and community.

Greg Kuhn (28:51):
So you're talking about this beautiful woman that
you met through your experiencesvolunteering and being an
active part of the Jewishcommunity.
Is this prior to youradventures with Silicon Valley?

Yeah, I ended up.
I was still working for thelarge computer company and then
they got bought out by AT&T andit became not a pleasant place
to work.
I took early retirement at age26 and I went to my first
startup and it was in thebroadcast television business
and so the change from analog todigital was happening and I got
very fortunate to participatein growing a large sales and

(29:37):
business unit and it was reallyexciting.
It was a very cool thing tosell broadcast television
equipment to television stationsand the television networks and
travel to Alaska and Hawaiithat all have TV stations and
cable companies and it was ablast and I was making great
money and enjoying the work andstill able to do the

(30:00):
volunteerism.
But Lisa was the lead for that.
But she was working too forchildren the Department of
Children and Families in LA andwe started our life together and
we moved into her apartment.
Then we bought a house togetherin Pacific Palace, sage, which
was absolutely beautiful andthings are great and she's an
older woman.
I was 27 and she was 32.

(30:22):
We got married at Shudders onthe beach overlooking the
Pacific.
We had 120 people come becauseit was an earthquake, so some
people didn't want to come.
Beautiful, beautiful wedding.
It was such a beautiful romance.

Greg Kuhn (30:36):
Like a storybook.

Yeah, in my book we call it the Hollywood wedding
and Hollywood romance.
It was really, really was.
And then a decision comes isthat I get recruited to move up
to Silicon Valley and she didnot want to leave LA.
We had great friends, a greatlife in LA.
I convinced her to come up andeventually then she did join me

(31:03):
in LA.
We gave up our beautiful house,we moved into a small tiny
house in Menlo Park nearSandhill Road where all the
venture capital is, and she grewto love San Francisco because
she got involved in the Jewishcommunity.
She again was leading the youngleadership stuff and I would
come to help clean up and then Igot involved raising money and

(31:26):
she loved wine country.
We love Monterey.
And she then tells me that I'mworking too much and I was, even
though Humpty, Dumpty 1.0should have learned a lesson.
You just get caught up in thisvortex of Silicon Valley because
everybody is sprinting and Ieven say in my book 2 plus 2

(31:47):
equal 200, the new math.
It didn't make sense, but itwas the time.
This is the late 90s and stuff.
So I'm traveling around.
She sits me down and says,listen, do we want to actually
have a family and you got tostart to be home and it made
sense.

(32:08):
So miracle number two is wecalled for that sperm sample.
Eleven years later, through invitro fertilization, a process
called ICSI, we actually got toactually have a daughter.
And it's a big process and it'sexpensive.
But think about that time back11 years prior, when my liver

(32:30):
function was too high and Ididn't do chemo, because if I
would have done chemo I wouldhave been sterile.
We would have actually had tolook towards adoption or
surrogacy or other things rightor a sperm donation, I got the
blessing of having a healthybaby girl, so we actually call
her our miracle girl and ourfrozen kidsicle.
She, emily Lauren Brown, wasborn August 20th of 2001.

(32:54):
I mean, how blessed is that?

Greg Kuhn (33:01):
Almost just one of those things that you look back
on and say, wow, that happened,just like it was supposed to.

Well, I don't know , because Dr Reuben didn't know.
I mean, he sent me to thecryogenic center.
Was that God talking to him?
Was that a vision?
Or was it good doctoring?
Or was he just sending me on afield trip because you wanted to
change the environment?
For me, all of that doesn'tmatter, okay.
The fact is is that frozensperm became my beautiful
daughter, emily Right, ourdaughter.

(33:31):
So it was just amazing.
And so we're living the SiliconValley life and I get to take
some companies to go public andmake a ton of money and use that
to help other people throughphilanthropy, but also buy a big
house which is not easy to doin Los Altos, california.
And then I get this telephonecall Okay, and if you want to

(33:53):
dig more into Silicon Valley, Ican.
But I got this phone call frommy twin sister that says I'm
moving to Michigan.
Well, what I didn't tell you isthat leases from Michigan and
it hit me like so strong thatEmily needs to grow up with
family.
We're alone out in California,it's expensive out here, okay,
and at that time I'd started myown platform so I could work

(34:16):
anywhere, I didn't have to be inSilicon Valley.
And I approached Lisa and shewasn't, so she loved San
Francisco.
She did not want to move backto Michigan, although for family
reasons she did.
Her parents were there some ofthe time as well, and her step
sister and half brothers werethere, and my parents can come
out there a lot easier thangetting to California.

(34:36):
I convinced her and we went ona house hunting trip.
It snowed in April and in 2005,we actually moved from Silicon
Valley here and my sister movedat the same July of 2005.
We moved at the same time andit was beautiful that the kids
grew up together and Emily gotto know her cousins and her
grandparents and family, becauseat the end of the day, that's

(34:58):
what it's all about.

Greg Kuhn (34:59):
That seems like a great decision.

It was.
It was, and we've been here 18years now in Michigan.
So did you want to touch baseback in the feeling of Silicon
Valley or continue?

Greg Kuhn (35:11):
on.
No, I appreciate you sharingthat.
I just I think it's importantto you know one of the things
that we talked about as wetransition into life number
three.
When we talked earlier, howard,you talked about us in some of

(35:33):
your training that you do nowthat you, you have a message
that you, I think, deliveredvery recently, that you, you're
not a patient, you know you're,you're much more than a patient,
and that your second life, Iappreciate you going there with

(35:54):
us.
I think that's that's veryemblematic of that principle and
also seems to be foundationalperhaps to that, that focus
being so important to you now,considering that you, at age 50,

(36:14):
go in for a colonoscopy.
I did the same thing at age 50.
I had a.
I had a polyp that, of course,you know it was.
It was snipped and and it wasbenign.
However, I was asked to comeback in three years.

(36:34):
So an early schedule and that,and when I came back in three
years I was given a I guesswould call the green light.
Hey, you're good.
I, I know I took some steps.
I took it very seriously, youknow increased my level of
exercise eight more fiber.

(36:54):
I hope that played a role inwhere I am now, so I'm back on a
five year schedule.
You had a far differentexperience at age 50.
You go in and you do that andyou learn you have stage for
cancer for a second time.

(37:15):
This time it's advancedmetastatic colon cancer and once
again you're told that youprobably shouldn't expect to
survive it.
So what, what I mean, I can'teven imagine.
Where do you begin, what is?
And yet here you are, of course, but take us through that.

(37:44):
You know Howard, at age 50 tonow a healthy Howard.
How is that even possible?

So it's being blessed, being grateful and
being lucky.
As I say, I look in the mirrorevery day and say that I am here
because of miracle number threeokay, which we'll get to, and
either that or if you believe inGod, god has a plan for me and

(38:16):
that my cancer burden got takencare of, where many people that
their cancer burden is too greatand God calls them to heaven,
and so it's hard to explain that.
But positive attitude, hugeresilience, huge mental
toughness.
You know I kind of alreadystarted to build that up from

(38:39):
cancer number one.
So all right.
So we moved to Michigan andwe're here in 2005,.
And my daughter's growing upshe was for my sister has twins,
girlboy twins and therefore andmy new sister, my sister and my
niece is six.
My Lisa's half sister, beth,has two boys there, for six kids

(39:00):
know each other.
They're growing up.
It's a beautiful thing we ableto buy a nice house here in the
suburbs of Detroit and life iscontinuing.
I'm doing basketball guys.
I'm doing where Lisa and I areaccelerated into leadership
positions in the Jewishcommunity here.
My startup, planet Jewish andcircle builder are running and

(39:21):
I'm busy and life is good.
Also, I was only about 40minutes from my twin sister,
which I really liked andappreciated, because my twin
sister is not only, you know,save my life, she's my wife's
best friend and my best friend,she's an angel on this earth,
hey where, by the way, where,during this time, where did you

(39:45):
keep that bag of love?
Oh, I keep it with me.

Greg Kuhn (39:49):
The back of my.
It was with me.

Yeah, I keep it with me.
It's in my top corner of mydesk here.
I look at it all the time.
I touch it.
I bring it to my heart.
No, no, I keep it with me.
Now, I don't usually travelwith it, but I keep it with me.
Yeah, Absolutely.
This is a symbol of love andlife.
So you know it is a lot.

Greg Kuhn (40:08):
And is that true?
You know?
Had that been true throughoutyour life?
Up to that point?
You know before you know,learning about the second
diagnosis.

That you kept it with you all the time.

Greg Kuhn (40:22):
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Oh yeah, I keep it with me all the time.

Greg Kuhn (40:24):
Yeah, this is that.

This is, this is my.
I don't have many pictures ofme and during cancer one, very
few.
I didn't want my picture taken.
Plus, also, we were lookingwith, you know, film cameras.
We have digital cameras, wehave film cameras, so I didn't
want my picture taken.
There's very few pictures of mewith cancer one, but this is my
.
You know, like you carry a rope, like a rock, that says hope on

(40:49):
it, which I actually do carryyou wear a bracelet or you wear
something.
You know, some people wear across or they wear a hive,
meaning life.
This is.
This is basically my symbolthat I, my remembrance and the
thing that I hold dearly,because that's why I'm here.
This bag is why I actually gotmy life back again, and so it

(41:13):
means a great deal to me, and soit's like a wedding ring or
anything like that.
It's a symbol to me that gaveme life.

Greg Kuhn (41:22):
So I carry it with me and look at it, and so I carry
it with me mostly every now, andnow you're carrying it into
this second diagnosis.

Sure.
So I had my colonoscopy on anathlete.
I didn't really have manysymptoms, so let me let me take
a break here for a second andjust say that your cancer
screening is how most cancerscreening should turn out.
Okay, get a polyp snipped, comeback in three, five or eight
years.
It's not a lot of time.

(41:53):
But the screening age is 50.
Now it's 45, because youngerpeople are getting colorectal
cancer and this year alone,155,000 people will be diagnosed
with colorectal cancer.
52,000 of those people will die.
Okay, it's a second leadingcancer and it's a second leading

(42:14):
cause of death outside of lungcancer.
So, it's very serious.
So, two things that we didn'tdo during COVID, which was go to
the doctor, okay, or go getscreened for your mammogram or
for your prostate or for yourcolo.
You can actually do a poop testwith ColoGuard or fit test, or

(42:35):
the gold standard is acolonoscopy.
Go get your cardio checked andstress tests for your arteries.
Go to the dentist.
If you're not at optimal health, you can't function to your
best, you, and so part of selflove and self care is your
health, and so which Iunderstand first and foremost,
and so I really do stress peopleto do that and unfortunately,

(42:57):
people in the African Americancommunity, latino community,
indigenous communities, poorcommunities don't go get tested,
and you that they are thehighest incident of colon rectal
cancer, and so I will juststress everyone to go get
screened.
Go to the dentist, because it'syou know I'm dealing with a lot

(43:20):
of problems with my teeth andimplants now because of
chemotherapy and all that.
So I'm at I basically go forschedule my colonoscopy.
It's June 4 of 2016.
And Lisa, you have to have adriver.
I wake up in the recovery roomwith Lisa holding my hand and
the gastroenterologist I knowhim from the Jewish community

(43:43):
and I say, dr Phil, everything'sgood, right.
And he looks at me with justserious eyes and he's got a mask
on and he says, no, I foundsomething.
And when I find something andhe called it the seek them, I'd
now know it's the connectionpoint between your large and
small intestine.
And he says when I findsomething, I take a piece of it,
I mark it and we're going tosend it out for pathology.

(44:05):
He goes I also snipped a fewpolyps and we're going to test
those.
Well, very quickly theyactually went through an
accelerated pathology.
I think by the next Tuesday Ilearned that I had stage three
colon cancer.
I had an eight and a halfcentimeter tumor in my seek them
and I actually had this did.

(44:28):
My niece was graduating highschool.
My parents were out here whenthey all heard the news that
weekend and lightning struckagain.
I mean, I had cancer for asecond time.
Now people now talk aboutroundup and getting other
cancers from chemicals and stufflike that.
My doctor's like did you cutlawns and use roundup?

(44:48):
I said, yeah, he goes.
How many other friends did?
Everyone.
Did they get lymphoma?
Did they get?
No, did they get colon cancer?
No, they said the reason thatyou got cancer and, again, most
people don't know.
But it can be from diet and itcan be from hereditary.
Mine is neither.
Mine was because of my bodydidn't create an enzyme to

(45:09):
control the polyp growth.
Now, if I would have beenscreened at 40, I wouldn't be
talking to you right now.
I might not have had coloncancer.
I would have had an early stageyeah, one maybe If I got
screened at 42, it took 10 yearsfor this tumor to grow to eight
and a half centimeters.
Okay, so I did an immediate.
10 days later I did animmediate what's called a
hemicollectomy or called a colonresection.

(45:31):
The men have six to eight feetof colon like a rubber band.
Women have four to six feet ofcolon.
It's very stretchy and they cutout with margin the tumor and
lymph nodes and they test thoselymph nodes and one was positive
.
That's a bad sign actually.
And they installed achemotherapy port so they didn't
have to use my veins and Iwaited a couple weeks.

(45:56):
I went to the nationalchampionships for soccer with my
daughter and in early August Istarted chemotherapy and I was
back in the chair watching itdrip and the chemotherapy in the
chair was seven hours, slowdrip chemotherapy.
So you, I am reintroduced tothe infusion nurses.
You know, my Lisa is now myprimary caregiver, trying to

(46:17):
keep track of records andappointments and medicines and
side effects.
My mom comes out and helps whenshe can, my sister's close by
and helps when you can.
But we're living in the digitalage so I have a decision to
whether to share my diagnosis.
Many people like to keep itprivate and I totally respect
that.
I decided to share my diagnosisbecause I have such a big

(46:40):
network.
Now I'm not sharing every gorydetail, but I'm sharing what's
going on, and that's Facebook.
Okay, it could be linked in,not as much, but that's text
messaging, that's instantmessaging.
You know this isn't a pager.
You know, back in the analogdays.
This is digital and so peopleare checking in and trying to

(47:01):
show their support and othersthat went silent on me for their
reasons.
They couldn't deal with it.
They had other things to dealwith their life.
But this is what happens whenyou're dealing with the fragile
emotional, you know, physical,financial and relationships in

(47:22):
this world that we did thejourney called life.
So it was.
I was actually more prepared nowthis time.
Okay, I did allow my walkmyself in darkness.
I did get angry.
I did actually, you know, wasupset because there was more at
stake.
I had a daughter that I didn'tknow if I was going to see

(47:43):
graduate high school.
I was married 22 years.
All right, there was.
There was more at stake for meand I was actually already a
veteran of cancer.
I had been to the front linesand made it through Right.
So I had a differentperspective.
So I knew that I had to learnas much about this disease to

(48:04):
become educated so that I couldcollaborate, connect and
communicate with my cancer team.
And I called my old doctorsfrom cancer one, even though
they weren't colorectal cancerdoctors, to find out their
expertise and to be able tobring them into the equation.
I needed to build my army andmy network to be able to get

(48:27):
make the best decisions at thetime.
And chemotherapy hadn't changedin 30 at that time it was 26
years.
It's the same horrible stuff.
It's basically that pumpingthat poison to see if it can
actually kill the cancer cells,right.
So cancers.
I actually defined cancer asbuilding a bad you know, making

(48:50):
a bad batch of brownies, and thebody continues to build that.
It's called mismatch repair.
The body just doesn't recognizethat you're building these bad
cells.
In blood cancer, it's the whitecells that are the fighters
versus the red cells and theplatelets that are actually
healing this in solid tumorcancer.
You want to stop thatprogression.

(49:10):
Okay, so you're in the chemochair and you're with other
people now okay, that are goingthrough cancer and getting
chemotherapy Right.
And I had already done this.
I had already been through thisdoesn't make it any easier, but
when I was able to look forresources online to learn about

(49:30):
this and to get with my peoplethat had been through it are
going through the battle, Ifound Coulin town.
I found other cancer researchcalled the colon cancer
coalition that does screening,and I found the colorectal
cancer alliance and I foundfight CRC and I basically went
into Coulin town and I learnedfrom Coulin town is a it's a 501

(49:53):
C3 nonprofit.
Basically, that is now 10,000colorectal cancer patients and
caregivers and families.
Once you get diagnosed, youenter a private online network
of 125 private Facebook groupsto meet you where you're at in
the disease, whether it's earlystage, late stage, whether it's

(50:13):
your caregiver or, and again,it's this learning network to
help you and walk alongside ofyou.
I didn't have that.
I had a support group that Iwas in at Dana Farber, which was
a face to face support groupcalled stepping stones how to
build your life up again and,quite frankly, it wasn't for me
because it was very negative.

(50:34):
I actually went there a fewtimes with my mom and then I
decided not to continue with it.
This support group was peoplewalking alongside of you,
meeting you where you're at,whether that you were a deer in
the headlights or you wereactually someone that wanted to
consume as much informationabout the science and about the
future being on the front linesof colon cancer.

Greg Kuhn (50:56):
And I was where you were at the time.

Correct, and the fact is is that, although we
were actually understanding thatpeople were dying around us,
people were living, they wereliving in treatment, they were
living with what's called noevidence of disease.
There were people successstories that I actually got to
gleam on to and talk to, and Icall this was that oh my God, it

(51:22):
was, it was.
It was the lifeline calledcancer whispering that I labeled
it.
They were cancer whispering tome and giving me guidance and
actually giving me the questionsto ask my care team and they
were offering me helpful thingsof how to deal with the side
effects, how to deal emotionally, physically and how to deal

(51:44):
with, you know, negativity andall that because they were
giving their shared livedexperience.
It was powerful.

Greg Kuhn (51:51):
And you took their advice and counsel very
seriously.

Yeah, because I wanted to get where they were.
I wanted to get to either apatient that was living on
treatment or a patient thatcould actually living with
regression, or a patient thatcould get.
The goal was to get to noevidence of disease.
And why?
Because I wanted to see mydaughter graduate high school.

Greg Kuhn (52:13):
Yeah, it was not a star not guaranteed.

It was not a guarantee.

Greg Kuhn (52:19):
I remember you telling me in an earlier
conversation that you made adecision to remove as much
negativity as you could fromyour life.

Correct, and that's a discipline.

Greg Kuhn (52:35):
Was that so?
So you're making changes, asyou know, as as led by folks who
have been there and done that,or and are doing it and have
been successful.
Now you're one of those peopleyourself, or more so, I should

(52:55):
say then, especially in thisarena.
It was a pretty hard one pathto get here that your advocacy
led you Am I am I rememberingthis correctly?
Your advocacy led you to to beaware of an experimental surgery

(53:20):
technique.

I learned about that in coal and town.
So I have to tell you that thereason that things got bleak is
that things weren't working.
I failed the first 12 cycles ofchemo that what I got was a lot
of side effects.
I got chemo brain, which isPTSD.
I got stage three peripheralneuropathy, which is burning and

(53:41):
numbness of the of the handsand the fingers and the feet and
the toes.
And we've actually solved thatbecause putting an ice cap on
your head and your mittens andbooties on help relieve that and
we learned that through colontown.
It's beautiful innovation frompatients to the medical
community.
But I didn't have that.
I was failing the surgeries.

(54:02):
I had a second colon resectionand then I had to make a
decision to do more salvagechemo Hail Mary chemo or to do a
clinical trial.
Well, I actually weighed that,weighed the evidence, talk to my
care team and I did a clinicaltrial.
Well, I failed that clinicaltrial.
So, a year from being diagnosedstage three colon cancer, the

(54:23):
cancer spread to my liver, to mystomach lining called
peritoneum and momentum, and tomy bowel.
When it spreads and you becomemetastatic and you actually
doctor, google that 4% chance ofliving six to eight months, 4%
chance of living for.
And again they.
That's a range and you know thedata.

(54:43):
You know no one knows yournumber, but you're faced with
your mortality, your life clockis shortened Right, and you're
still dealing with some harshtreatments.
So I did learn about thistreatment called it's called CRS
, high pack, cider reduction,hyper interpranarochemotherapy.
So I went through a surgery inMarch of 18.
Okay, after failing everythingelse, okay, they cut me from

(55:09):
chest to pelvic bone and theywent in with microscopic glasses
.
A surgical oncologist removeddead in live cancer cells that
they could see, shave my liver,remove my gallbladder, remove my
peritoneum momentum, cut a tonof my bowel out, and then poor,
hot chemotherapy to kill microcell cancer.

(55:30):
It's fairly controversial, okay, but it's supposed to give you
life extension from two monthsto two years at, with a 30%
chance of success.
But that's better than zero,better than four or zero right.
And then zero four percent Wow.
Massive 13 hour surgery.
My job was to wake up in theICU and press the morphine drip

(55:53):
button with 90 staples fromchest to pelvis.

Greg Kuhn (55:58):
It's insane.
I once again had to beterrifying.

You don't have a choice.
You dealt the hand that youhave to play out.
It was absolutely terrifying,but the fact that I had been
through cancer before helped me,because my mental toughness was
at an all time high.
I was a Marine on a mission.
I was a cancer patient that hadto see his daughter graduate
high school even though that itwas stacked against me.

(56:27):
Now I want to get back to whatyou said about negativity.
One of the things that I had todo was I had to be focused, all
right, and the advice I give toanyone diagnosed with cancer
now and I do a lot of cancerwhispering Is it's your time to
be selfish.
And the number one thing thatyou can't do, okay, that's don't

(56:49):
be selfish.
The number two thing is don'tisolate, and I certainly did not
isolate.
Isolation breeds depression, itbreeds anxiety, it could be
breed addiction, alcoholism,anger.
It can breed a lot of bad stuff, and I we need to actually go
ask and accept help.

(57:10):
And so I was learning thoselessons, and the lesson that
they told me is that you knowthere's wars there, shootings
all the time and there'sfriction in relationships and
you, you have to take that outin order to heal.
And you have to be able tosleep.
Sleeping is healing.
You have to be able to hydrate,you have to be able to eat, you

(57:32):
have to be able to get enoughactivity.
But bringing all that othermischievous, which is a Jewish
word for, called craziness,doesn't heal, it doesn't help.
So if you can be disciplinedwith that mental toughness to be
able to eliminate that.
Now what happens is that you caneliminate watching TV, you can
eliminate talking about stuff,but you don't have to bear your

(57:54):
head in the sand.
You can be aware of what'sgoing on in the world and it's
always not pleasant.
There's a war going on in theMiddle East, there's a war going
on in the Ukraine.
We still have school shootingsand bad stuff happening around
there, but also personalconnection negativity I had to
be able to.
There's people that left me andthere's people that I actually
had to leave, including certainfamily members that I had to

(58:17):
just minimize my involvementwith them because it wasn't
helpful.
The mission was to walk, see mydaughter graduate high school
and to get to some type ofstability and cancer, and that
takes a lot of energy.
Just to get out of bed each day.
Thank God, the dog needed to gowalking right and I'm a pretty
self motivated guy.

(58:38):
But when you're loaded up onsteroids and you're puking your
guts out or you're living in thebathroom, okay, it's not as
easy to be able to say that justto get out of bed every day.
And some days I didn't, but manydays when I didn't want to, I
did and took a step forward andtook a step forward and boy was
I getting a lot of encouragementand a lot of support to do that

(59:00):
.
And Lisa was taking care of allthe life the bills, the
appointments, the medicines,emily to school, emily to soccer
I mean we were.
If I didn't have her, I how doyou get through?
So again, caregivers you knowthere's 3.5 million unpaid
caregivers are taking care ofelderly and kids and sick people
.
They're angels on this earth,because I don't know how you do

(59:23):
it alone I wouldn't have gotthrough.
I mean it's.
I mean again and again, if youdon't have a caregiver, one can
be provided for you, and sothat's when you get seek that
help.
And so many people came to myaid and I really learned a lot
from this.
But I had to heal again.
Now I had experience healing,you know, the first time in Los

(59:44):
Angeles.
But I'm healing now and I'm adad and I'm married and it's
still very long journey.
I have scar tissue.
They couldn't tell me if I wasno evidence of disease yet.
I'm on maintenance chemo.
I'm still on tons ofmedications and blood thinners.
I'm still getting surveillanceevery quarter.

(01:00:05):
But I was also immersed inCullin Town.
I joined the board of directors.
I wanted to help others.
I'm screaming at the top of mylungs to go get screened so you
don't have to actually gothrough chemo surgery, radiation
Ablation, which is basicallyburning it out who.
I don't wish that on anyone, sogo get screen.

(01:00:26):
And what I do is I actuallycarry a piece of blue with me
and this is really importantabout intentionality and being
authentic.
You is that I wear a pin on mysuit lapel.
It's blue.
Blue is the colon cancer.
Every cancer has a color.
I'm wearing blue today.
I usually have something bluenear me, okay, at all times, and

(01:00:47):
I wear blue sneakers when Ispeak on stage.
And what that means is that oneis to go get screened.
It's my reminder to telleveryone to go get screened.
Number two, it's honoring thosethat are still in treatment
cancer treatment, not just coloncancer.
I want to make sure that theyare recognized.
Because I've been there, I knowthat the journey is complex, it

(01:01:11):
is emotional, it is difficultfor you and for your families.
I want to make sure that I amintentionally recognizing the
people that are struggling andgoing through cancer or any type
of debilitating thing.
It could be alcoholism, itcould be another illness.
I don't care what it is.
Okay, I call it cancer.
And then the next thing is thatI know that this disease called

(01:01:33):
cancer kills people everysingle day, and I want to honor
their memory.
Okay, you don't, you don't evenget 140 characters on a
tombstone, but there's a lot ofpeople in the cancer world that
were my cancer whispers, thattaught me and guided me through
that, are now dead, and I do notwant to forget their memory and

(01:01:54):
what they taught me and whatthey shared with me, Because
they were heroic in their timeand they, they, they took their
time to help me get through, andso it is my obligation to
actually call their memory andso that I tell everybody and
that's the intentionality thatyou bring to the table.

(01:02:15):
Okay, and that's how I share mylight.

Greg Kuhn (01:02:22):
That's exactly what I want to say.
It's your obligation to shinebrightly, and I I know that your
passion is.
It's palpable and it'sinspiring.
You are shining brightly, youhave shown brightly.

(01:02:44):
You tell us about shiningbrightly as a, as a, as a
concept and as a book.
Of course.

Howard Brown (01:02:55):
I'll start with the book and then we'll go to
the movement.
Okay, because it's not aconcept, it's a complete
movement now and I'm buildingand it's really great.
So I meet a friend of mine thatI, the religion editor of the
free press, who's now a bookpublisher, the guy named David
Crumb, and we go for bagel andcoffee.
I figure you know we meet.

(01:03:16):
He's there to say goodbye to me.
He heard I'm going to die.
He wanted to just basicallyshare space with me for a bagel
and coffee.
And we get to talking and hesays to me would you like to
leave a legacy to Emily and Lisaand to the world and write a
short hundred page little Kindleebook or something?

(01:03:38):
I was like no, I said it'sdaunting to me, I'm not a good
writer, I don't believe I coulddo that.
And he says well, go home andask Lisa and Emily and you know,
think of about it.
But I did tell you that I go tothe bathroom a lot as a
colorectal cancer patient.
So I make one of my severaltrips to the bathroom during
coffee and bagel.
And actually the meeting was ina half hour, it turned out to

(01:03:59):
be about two hours.
And, silicon Valley style.
He writes on a napkin 10 kindof concepts of my, of what.
During our conversation he saidyou know we have the basis for
a book here on a napkin.
And remember, in Silicon ValleyI write an idea on a napkin and
go start a company and write abusiness plan.
So I resonated with that.

Greg Kuhn (01:04:20):
You're, you're, you're, you're, that's, that's
your style, right there.

Exactly so.
He has that napkin, by the way,I didn't take it, I actually he
kept it.
And I went home and I told LisaDavid wants to write a book
with me.
They put Emily, they laughed atyou write a book?
You go.
You know your punctuation andspelling aren't very good.
You know you bullet pointeverything.
And so I know I go, I go, I'mgoing to tell David.
No, I said, and then all of asudden I slept on it and I don't

(01:04:47):
know about you, but I actuallysleep with a pad of paper and a
pencil or pen next to my bed,because I wake up to go to the
bathroom and I have an idea andI write it down.
I don't know if anybody elsedoes that.
I think some people doAbsolutely.
I wrote I because remember wherewe went.
Now we're actually, you know,I'm still kind of immune,
compromise and all that, so I'mnot seeing many people and this

(01:05:08):
is right before coven I.
But I basically say you knowwhat?
I can speak my book.
So I wrote speak my book.
So I called David and you know,zoom, it started a little bit
and you know we had Skype and wehave FaceTime and we had all
that.
I said David, I said I have onerequest and he said well, most

(01:05:29):
authors have like 20, I got one,only one.
He goes to the easy.
I said, if you allow me tospeak my book, interview the
most influential people in mylife, like family friends, camp
counselors, doctors, mentors,business leaders, you know, and
we can teach and write a bookabout.
You know a life guide Okay, thepeople can relate to from their

(01:05:53):
own families, through my lifeexperience, including cancer.
I said I'll write a book withyou.
I heard dead silence forminutes on the phone.
He's like we've never doneanything like that and he said
to me I got to call you back.
He calls me back a day or twolater and he says Okay, we're

(01:06:15):
going to do this, we're going towrite this book.
But you, we have to beextremely disciplined to be able
to meet every Wednesday for twohours.
I'm going to rely on you to setthe schedule of who you want to
interview.
He goes it's going to take ayear and we'll write a book.
So we did what's called hybridpublishing, where I actually

(01:06:35):
paid for the half the publishing, they pay for half the
publishing.
We share some of the royalties.
I get a higher percentage andwe started this journey together
.
It took three years in COVID.
I have to tell you, to be ableto walk back, almost every step
of my life was so healing andreally cool.
All right, so I couldn't dothat with my grandparents or my

(01:06:59):
great grandparents, but everyoneelse.
I got to actually reconnectwith re correct, with my first
mentor, Mike Brennan, reconnectwith the doctors from 34 years
ago, reconnect with my campcounselors and when I was 12.
It was really cool.
I brought them on.
We recorded every session.
We've got a lot of b-roll andthose recordings became

(01:07:19):
transcripts.
The transcripts become drafts,the drafts become chapters and
then everything has to be editedso it's readable.
Okay, and we did this threeyears.
I think we missed twoWednesdays.
I mean it was incredible to howit came together.
It was hard work.
There's 901 steps to actuallyproduce a book.

Greg Kuhn (01:07:40):
It sounds like the journey of creating it.
Has it surpassed yourexpectations and represents a
reward in and of itself,regardless of what it's doing
now and what the book.
Obviously it's I think it'spretty recent, right, I mean it

(01:08:05):
just had it's your birthday.

Just had it's your birthday.

Greg Kuhn (01:08:07):
Okay.

So I got to press the green light on Amazon on
September 27 of last year and goon this year long book tour and
public you never stop publicpublicizing your book and what
you realize is that all thateffort and the three years to
publish the book, I am now abestselling published author.
I love it, congratulations.
Okay, it's amazing feeling andand to put your word and work

(01:08:32):
out in the world.
Books don't sell themselves.
I realized that I actually hadto put my entrepreneurial hat
and my marketing hat on and goamplify this book if I wanted
people to be aware of it, and soI've now started that journey
to be able to do that.
Ok, and here's.
The book is not a normal bookin the what you would actually

(01:08:55):
say, that the author is speakingto the reader.
I am not doing that.
I am inviting you into thosezoom rooms.
You get to be an observer inthe zoom rooms where my family
is fighting over If weremembered which grandma's
brisket is better than theothers.
Grandma brisket, normal familystuff that you had with your
family, you can relate to it.

(01:09:15):
Going on a family trip andthings going completely haywire
right, or things goingbeautifully and and and what we
do.
And at the end of every chapter, I actually actually give
homework, I tell people whatthey should actually, I give
them a call to action withdifferent websites and links
that I care about, that theyshould know about, and I
actually challenge them to do toshine brightly in some way

(01:09:37):
after each chapter.
And so this is a life guidebook, a book to live a resilient
life, and it starts with mygrandmother talking about
kindness and giving and healingand it ends with hope.
And in between are a lot ofcool stories in my life, from
Silicon Valley, from my happyplace called basketball Everyone
should have a happy placebecause that's your stress free
zone from my love life andmeeting the love of my life Lisa

(01:10:01):
from the Miracle Girl, emilyfrom mentorship is leadership.
This book is cool and I startwith a chorus of praise.
I reached out and so most bookshave 10 or 12 endorsements.
I had a hundred.
I cut it down to 65 because mywe some were repetitive.
My book starts with a chorus ofpraise in each phase of my life
from people that impacted me andI wanted them, in the book, to

(01:10:24):
share their wisdom.
And then we start with mygrandmother and our family
beginnings my grandfather, ok,and then my original mentor, my
dad and my work mentors and mebecoming a Jewish big brother
and then cancer one.
And so this book, ok, is reallybroken up and you don't have to
read it all at once, but it's aquick read.

(01:10:45):
And, again, for a new author,selling fifty hundred copies in
a year is actually everyone'stelling me oh my God, that's
huge.
Well, I didn't sell themselves.
I sell from stage, I sell.
I sell them to everything onwhen I'm on podcasts, your
listeners might want to pick upthe book on Amazon or the Kindle
, or contact me for multiplebooks and I sign everyone.

(01:11:05):
I do a book plate and I signthem.
If the people call me and abook plate looks like this it's
a sticker, because there's nomore real book signings I sign
this with a personal note andthey stick it on their book, and
so that's the exciting part ofthe book, and the book really
now changed the trajectory of mylife, right.
So, now I'm saying, ok, Iactually want to build a

(01:11:29):
movement so that we can actuallylift up others.
The world is a tough place, sothat's what a survivorship coach
is.
So I'm the only survivorshipcoach that I know about in the
world, but I'm a life coach.
I'm a mentorship coach.
I can help people from gettingout of bed to actually talking
to your kids, to job loss.
It doesn't matter it could be asmall speed bump or a big speed

(01:11:50):
bump, because we all getknocked down in life and in
business, and in health and inrelationships.
I'm not a psychotherapist, I'mnot a doctor, I'm not a dentist
OK, but I can, for livedexperience, give you the
breadcrumbs to get back up again, ok, from severe health to
something not as severe, such asa job loss or something like

(01:12:11):
that, or somewhere where youwant to do life improvement.
And so shining brightly actuallyallows you to build that
emotional well being, physicalwell being, financial well being
and relationship well being allthe cores in your life wheel.
And I ask people to join me, toshare their light, to go help

(01:12:34):
others, because the big lesson Ilearned from two big cancers is
it's not what you actually getin this world, it's what you
give, and if you can liftyourself up and then lift up
others, ok, then we shinebrightly.
Think about the thousands ofpeople that help me during
cancer these last seven years.
They allowed them to sharetheir light with me, and do you

(01:12:57):
think that lifted me up?
Absolutely, it did, and so Iwant people to be able to share
their light with others.
Ok, to become a forcemultiplier for good and positive
change.
And if we each do that andincorporate that into our
discipline and into ourintentionality and authenticity,
you'll see the change move.
And again, I'm not Polly Anna.

(01:13:18):
I know there's bad stuffhappening every day and there's
a major war and major bad thingshappening, but that's what I
try to do each day.

Greg Kuhn (01:13:26):
That's a great segue, howard, because I think you're
already touching on this lastquestion I have for you.
By the way, we're going to makesure all of Howard's contact
information is in thedescription of this episode.
Wherever you're watching, we'relistening to it, you know.

(01:13:50):
To wrap things up, howard,you've been so generous with
your time, and not just the timeitself, but how you spent it.
We talked, before we startedrecording, about our intention
to take advantage of theopportunity that we have right
now to create something of value, and you have gone places with

(01:14:13):
us and been very present for us,and I can't thank you enough.
I'd love to wrap things up hereby asking you, like I said, you
you have already started to talkabout this, howard the places
you've been, you know you'reinside and outside.

(01:14:38):
What is your advice?
What is your best advice forsomebody?
You know somebody listening tothis or watching this episode is
has received news recently thatis painful, unwelcome, even

(01:15:03):
perhaps threatening their youknow their sense of self and
their expectations that theyhave for their life.
What, what do you say to thatperson sitting in that space
right now?

So I actually have a guide on my website.
I have a guide on survivorship,a guide on mentorship and
leadership and a guide oninterfaith knowing the other and
the survivorship guide startsabout that.
You actually have to still loveyourself unconditionally.
Ok, you're OK and we you hadasked the question that before

(01:15:42):
and I didn't fully answer it isthat I don't consider myself a
patient.
Although I am labeled that,just like someone's labeled a
lawyer or doctor, I am a human,I am a son, I am a brother, a
twin brother, I am a husband, Iam a dad, I'm a friend OK,
that's who I actually am.
Ok, I am going through cancerand label the patient OK, but

(01:16:05):
that's not how I define myself,and so I want people to self.
Love is the most importantthing when you get this type of
news.
The second thing is to not toisolate and live in that
darkness OK.
The other thing is to go gethelp.
Then go educate yourself.
Be your own best advocate.
I went and got help atCoalentown and all these other

(01:16:26):
resources and people werewilling to help me, but people
sent me a joke, people checkedin on me.
All that added up to mypositive mental toughness to get
through this All right, and I'mnot saying I was positive all
the time.
I was angry, I was on steroids,I had a lot of downtime, and so

(01:16:48):
I expressed and learned howgratitude I learned actually how
to accept help.
I will tell you that theyounger me had a hard time
accepting help when I was 23.
And I now matured to understandthat I can accept help and I

(01:17:09):
did that Right.
People started to go fund me tohelp me with medical bills, so
I wouldn't have to worry aboutthat.
I resisted that, but I now.
I learned that people are thereto help, and so I I that the
advice that I give to people isto be able to Get through that

(01:17:29):
day.
But if you don't have help,help can be provided for you.
I get called all the time.
Someone has cancer, and it's adifferent cancer than colon
cancer.
I can still help them.
I am connected in the wholecancer world.
I know how to get the resourcesto get them a cancer mentor or
to get them a nurse navigator orget them a social worker or get

(01:17:49):
them a second opinion, and Iknow people who can do that, so
I can do it probably faster thanthey can do that, and so ask
for that.
Help is really, reallyimportant.
Get a caregiver, get people andsurround yourself with positive
people that are helping liftyou up Right.
And so some of this actuallytakes a little bit of work, but

(01:18:12):
people can assist you in doingso and it's I'm not going to
tell you, it's easy Right To putHumpty Dumpty back together
again as you were my third life.
I'm still going through thebuilding process.
I'm still a ball of clay.
Not everything's 100%.
Now people look at me and Ilike, oh my God, howard, you're

(01:18:32):
healthy.
Well, they have no idea of theindivisible disabilities that
I'm facing, and we spoke of themChemo, brain, ptsd, neuropathy,
digestive problems, bathroomproblems.
There's people don't know untilthey actually take a look
inside you and walk in yoursteps a little bit.
So I say be empathetic, walk intheir steps, walk alongside

(01:18:52):
them and you'll learn, be caring.
I mean, these are, these arethings that are manners and
politeness that we can do.
And then one last thing I wantto add that's really important
when you're actually suffering,okay, in a tight spot, whether
it's severe or or or or lesssevere, I actually take two

(01:19:14):
things actually one find yourhappy place, go to that, stress,
be placed.
It could be yoga, cooking,travel, music minus basketball.
Find it and go there a littlebit.
That stress be placed is reallyhelpful.
The second thing is that you,what you have to do.
I'm going through a chemo brainmoment for a second here.
Oh, you have to take thespotlight off yourself.

(01:19:41):
Go help someone else.
Go take yourself outside ofyour situation and go help
another the endorphins and itactually helps you.
It might help you figuresomething out because when you
come back to then, oh, me andI'm in that dark space.
So that's something that Icounsel and help in the
survivorship coaching.

(01:20:02):
Did you go help someone else?
Go do a random act of kindnessand buy someone behind you a cup
of coffee, call someone and letthem know that you care about
them.
Okay, and look in the mirror andsay what you're blessed and
grateful for.
There's got to be something,you got to find something, or

(01:20:23):
else the world's very dark andmy book uses the biblical
references to darkness and lightand on my book cover is they
actually wanted to use a Phoenixbecause I rose from the Phoenix
.
The Phoenix is a quite uglybird.
I didn't really love that.
This is actually a dove and andthat light bulb and I helped
design the cover with a worldfamous artist.
That light bulb is illuminatingmy energy through shining

(01:20:45):
brightly for peace, love andhope.
That's what I want toilluminate, and it doesn't
happen every day Some days aredimmer than most, but it happens
most days and that's my advice.

Greg Kuhn (01:20:58):
Love it and the added weight that it carries.
You know, howard, I can'texpress enough Thanks for having
you here.
As I mentioned, I do want toremind folks that let's continue
the conversation, let'scontinue to learn about

(01:21:25):
manifesting our lives more inline with how we desire,
especially with the big stuff,whether we're facing, you know,
major disappointment ortemporary inconvenience, the
parts of our lives that are mostimportant.
I invite everyone to make surethat you start by joining my

(01:21:48):
Facebook group.
It's called manifest the bigstuff with Greg Coon creating
our realities together.
The link is going to be in thedescription here.
There you're going to receive,every month, exclusive content
from me that's available nowhereelse and, like I said, we can
continue this journey together.
And you know, howard, you havenow become an important part of

(01:22:14):
that journey for my viewers, mywonderful listeners and viewers,
who are on spiritual journeysthemselves, as we all are, and I
can't thank you enough forgiving us everything you have.
It means so much that you haveshared your time here, just like

(01:22:36):
everybody who's watching youshare your time.

I want to give a final statement to you, greg, so
.

Greg Kuhn (01:22:42):
I'm going to put on.

I'm putting on my glasses because I actually want
to shine the light back on youfor giving me this space and for
the gratitude of letting meshare my lessons and my
experience and my ability toshine my light.
And so I want to shine it backto you for and be grateful for

(01:23:03):
you to offer me this, and toshout out to Gail Kraft for
introducing us.
And so I want to end with thisnote and then hand the back.
Show for closure for you isthat if we can shine brightly a
little bit each day forourselves, for others in our
communities, I guarantee you theworld will be a better place.

Greg Kuhn (01:23:22):
Yeah, I, I, you know what I operate on a simple
maximum, that if you can lovesomeone, you should make so
lives better.
And I have to say that you know, howard, your light is bright

(01:23:46):
and it is shining brightly.
I so appreciate you laying downthis very definitive wellspring
of not just information butinspiration, hope and
enlightenment, and I don't knowany other way to say it.

(01:24:07):
So, yeah, hats off to you,howard, and look forward to
seeing what you do as your pathcontinues to unfold now in this
third life.

Thanks for sharing it with us.

Greg Kuhn (01:24:20):
Grateful and thank you.
All right, take care, everybody.
Until we get a chance to meetup again, I expect to see you in
my Facebook group.
That would be wonderful, butuntil we join up again on
YouTube or your favorite podcastlistening network, I hope you

(01:24:44):
make the most of your time and Iwill do likewise.
Keep manifesting, my friends.

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From Hardship to Hope: Navigating Through Stage 4 Cancer - Twice!

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}From Hardship to Hope: Navigating Through Stage 4 Cancer - Twice!