October 10, 2025 • 53 mins
What would you do if everything you’d worked for changed overnight, and the only way forward meant letting go of the life you thad before?
Today I’m talking to John Register—Paralympic Silver Medalist, U.S. Army veteran, worldrenowned speaker, and author—to share how he transformed pain and adversity into a global mission. John’s story blows me away: he was training for the Olympics when a devastating accident changed everything, forcing him to amputate his left leg and start over. But instead of giving up, John forged a new path—competing as a Paralympian, winning silver, and creating a movement that has inspired leaders and audiences worldwide.
John breaks down what it means to create a new normal, talks real about overcoming grief and identity loss, and reveals why every challenge is a chance to level up. His perspective on leadership, mindset, and resilience will shift the way you see yourself and your obstacles. If you need a blueprint for facing the unknown, building courage, or making your comeback stronger than your setback, John’s story delivers.
Learn more about John Register, his story, and his work by visiting his website, following him on Instagram, and connecting with him on LinkedIn:
https://johnregister.com
https://www.instagram.com/johnfregister
https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnregister
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And so when someone says that's just tired, I just want, I don't
want to stand up. I said, yeah, because we stand
up like how many times a day? So are you tired every single
time you stand up? Why'd you resist me ask you to
stand up? You stand up when you go to the
lunch. You stand up when you go to the
bathroom. Why are you resisting my
invitation to stand up? We resist it because we have the
fear of the unknown. We have a fear of I don't know
what's going to be asked of me. Judgement are going to be seen.
(00:21):
All of it is, is, is valid points.
But are they? We all have our fears, our
doubts and our sincerity that through life or business we go
(00:42):
through it every day, including myself, fears and so many other
things that we face on daily basis.
I'm here with John Registered, one of my dear friends, national
speaker, published author, coach, leadership coach, and
he's here to teach us how you can amputate your fear.
(01:05):
Young Welcome to the show. I am so excited to see you my
friend. I am so happy that you are here.
You came all the way down to Austin and be here and thank you
so much. I really appreciate.
That absolutely and happy to have a great conversation with
you today. Take me back to 1996 because you
have an amazing story as a former military and veteran.
(01:27):
Just take me back to 1996. What happened?
How your life changed? I was, I was training for the 96
Olympic Games and the 400 meter hurdles and I had a really good
shot of making that Team USA track and field news has picked
me as the one to watch for the the 96 games in the, in the in
that race. And the reason I had a great
shot at it because I was a worldclass athlete and had gone and
(01:51):
competed in the 1992 and and 88 Olympic trials and was on my way
to what I thought was glory and winning medals at the Olympic
Olympic Games. I was also an Olympic.
I was also military officer candidate.
So I was about to go to Officer Candidate school, but on May
17th, 1994, I misstepped a hurdle during a training session
(02:16):
while I was serving in the United States Army.
That fall dislocated my left knee.
It severed the artery behind my kneecap.
And seven days later I had the choice, used a Walker or a
wheelchair for the rest of my life or use a prosthetic for the
rest of my life. So I chose door #2 and became an
amputee. So that was a big shift that
(02:37):
happened in 94 that disrupted mytraining to the 1996 Olympic
Games and disrupted the what what I would do to become a
military officer as well. Why did you use empathy?
Why you didn't use I want to be in Wheelchair?
Well, it was for #1 mobility forgetting around.
As I was thinking about it, I said, do I would I want to use a
(03:00):
wheelchair? My leg was going to be fused, My
knee would be fused, so it have to would stick out.
I wouldn't be able to bend it. So getting access like sitting
on aircraft, the way the leg would have to be out, I thought
if I just amputate the leg, it'dbe a little bit easier for me to
get around. The second reason and probably
more primary reason is because the pain was so great at that
(03:25):
time, I was in tremendous pain and I thought that my male
deductive reasoning, if I just get rid of my leg, I can get rid
of my pain. And so that became one of the
cornerstones of why I chose the amputation.
You know, I see you here sittingin front of me and that's what I
asked you, why you chose that. And as a normal person or a lot
(03:48):
of people out there, we go through a hard, hard times right
now. What we are afraid of, what
drives you, we as a normal people, we miss in it because
the mind is everything. It is everything.
And so I'll, I'll get into that answer in a second, but I want
to make sure that people understand that it wasn't easy.
(04:12):
It was not an easy journey to move through that process.
I, I went through some significant doubt, my identity
issues. And I think we have to 1st
understand that yes, this is happening and it's OK to grieve
the loss of what was what was lost.
(04:32):
And so for me, it was my leg andI was had to go through that
process. And I call it the reckoning
moment. That's the reckoning that all of
us will face at some point in our life, whether it's a small
reckoning. You're at the 8th grade dance
and you're on the up, up side ofthe wall of the young lady you
want to go dance with. And you, you, you, you're like,
I don't know if I want to go over there.
(04:52):
What, what if she rejects me? And so all these what ifs come
in and that fear begins to driveour behaviors of what we'll
actually do. But if I don't take that risk to
see if that young lady would, you know, my, my case would say
yes or no to the dance, then I would never know.
And that fear begins to perpetuate itself and drive and
fear is only the story I'm telling myself in that moment.
(05:16):
I'm not talking about fight or flight fear where you, you see a
snake. Even in that case, you see a
snake and you, you jump, why thesnake's still still there.
It's not, it's not moving, you know, but we, we see it, even
see the picture of maybe of a snake.
And this says give me the heebiejeebies and but it's not doing
anything to us at that point. So I was going through identity.
Who am I now? What's my identity?
(05:38):
Am I still a husband to my, my, my, my wife?
Am I still a son to my father and mother And my, my how's my
son going to see me with this one leg now?
Do I still have a job in the military?
Can I support my family, be my Olympic dreams are over?
And in that moment when I was kind of going down the downward
(05:59):
spiral, my wife Alice comes overand she says, you know what,
John, we're going to get throughthis together.
That's our new normal. And that was I, for me, I
thought was the first time that I understood who I had as a
spouse, that this is what it means.
(06:24):
We take the marriage vows of forbetter or for worse.
And we're so quick to discount. We want the for better.
And then when it gets for worse,I'm not sure if I want to stick
around for this, but that's whenthings really get tight.
And my son that we were on the playground when that happened
(06:45):
and she had knelt down beside mywheelchair.
I was in a wheelchair with one leg and I'm just bawling.
I'm crying and my son, he's on the swings playing, he's five
years old. He jumps off the swings and he
hits the ground, comes running over.
Hey mom, dad, you see my big jump?
You see my big jump, mom dad. And he jumps in between myself
and Alice. And in that moment, I realized
(07:06):
he is just validated, validated me as his father and create a
new normal for himself. And so that was the the push I
needed for my family to see me as just husband is just dad, my
mom and dad's just me. I'm just, I'm just son because
(07:27):
who was telling me that I was different?
What had I allowed in society totell me that just because I have
an artificial leg now or not even a leg, I don't have to use
a prosthetic, that I'm now different?
And I think we have a lot of things to decide that do that
for us. We have maybe the antagonist in
the movie Peter Pan, Captain Hook.
He's in a bugger wrist amputee. He's scaring the kids, the Lost
(07:50):
Boys in the movie Peter Pan, he's the villain.
But wait a minute, I'm an amputee.
Am am I not the villain in people's movies?
You know, every Halloween we seepeople with disfigurements or we
see people with mental health challenges.
Freddy Krueger, Jason and and they all come to our doorstep
(08:10):
and we give him candy. Now we were trying to scare
people, but we have school shooting so easy.
It's all those mental health folks.
It's very difficult to break outof that mindset because society
has dictated and and normalized us in a way that we don't see
(08:31):
each other. I was speaking to company before
I came here, had a great chat with their executive director,
CEO for massive, massive companyand we're out of Vegas.
And one of the things I said wasI, I was, I was challenging
myself to give them something new that's out of the ordinary.
(08:55):
I'm always trying to do that. And one of the things we always
have is everyone's a champion, right?
And I, and I've kind of kicked back against that, that no, you
have to earn that, that championship, right?
You have to earn how to be or have you really won.
And I, as I thought about, I said, you know what, everybody
(09:16):
is a champion because everyone won a swim race.
Everyone was first to the egg and that created life.
So everyone that we see around us is an individual champion
because they made it to life andlife to hear us talking.
(09:39):
You're first to the egg. I was first to the egg.
So that means that we can look at people as adna fingerprint
and celebrate every life that wecome in contact with.
There is no difference between it because we all step start up
that that that champion. So that's how I create that
champion's mindset to continue us, you know, down that path,
(10:01):
down that road. And that's what I was trying to
get back. I was trying to move myself into
the space where I saw myself as well I saw myself prior to the
injury. You say it in a way that it was
an easy transition, but I'm sureit was very hard for you to come
with a new life, with a new norm, the new way of living,
(10:25):
including with the with the wife, with the kids, with the
society, How they going to see you, how they going to perceive
you, how you going to interact with them.
A lot of us, we go out there, wereally don't know.
Something happens, we go bankrupt, we're dead.
That is the end of the world. And then you ask them, I'm going
to cut your leg. No.
(10:45):
And they they don't understand it because you serve in army,
you serve in the Gulf War. I serve in military, not the US.
Nothing is worse than the losinga friend or the a soldier next
to you. You can't take that pain away.
It's going to stay with you forever.
Forever. And when they are veteran coming
(11:09):
back with a different disability, most of us, we're
really trying to understand them, but we actually don't
understand it. It's very different perspective
that sometimes I'm asking, do I have the right mind?
Am I thinking right? Or the whole population, they
(11:30):
see me wrong, they don't understand.
Especially for you, you, you sayI'm going to Olympics and that
happens. Career changes, life change.
That's so much. What do you see?
Keep going. You adapt and actually grow,
right? What other people can do?
Yeah, the that process when I started sharing is around the
(11:54):
the reckoning, right? The first piece that we have is
we have to know that something has changed, something has
happened. Once we stop saying I wish life
would go back to the way it usedto be or getting this back.
Now we're free to have a new vision and create opportunities
for us. So I don't become an Olympic
class athlete. I actually, you know, Fast
(12:16):
forward, become a Paralympic athlete and swim, swim in the
Paralympic Games in 96 and then win a silver medal in a long
jump in Sydney, Australia. So I'd be, I find this parallel
path and they're all around us, but we can't see them until we
actually grieve the loss of whatour reckoning moment is.
So that's our revision moment. And for me, the revision moment
(12:36):
happened exactly one month afterI had the amputation where I was
in the most pain because I thought, you know, my male
deductive reasons to get rid of my leg, get rid of my pain.
But after the leg was taken off,there was phantom pain.
And I didn't realize about this phantom pain was worse than the
actual pain that I had. And now you can't do anything
(12:57):
about the phantom pain. So as you're saying about the,
the pain that we all feel from the loss, that's the phantom
pain that we feel because we cannot get that back.
We can't go back. I was just doing this, you know,
great story. Now is I'm, I'm in, I'm in the,
I'm in a reckoning moment right now with my daughter.
(13:20):
My daughter's about to give birth.
So my baby girl is about to havea baby girl and we've done so
much together in life. We've I've taken out on her
first date. I have, I've, I've took her to
Paris on her request at 11 yearsold when she wanted to go for
her birthday, when her mom, flight attendant mom gives us
tickets to go to Paris and then we go to the women's final four
(13:42):
every year. We're going for like 4 or five
years when she was in in, in high school and we just did when
the last one down in Tampa whereshe's a woman grown.
And when now we are there and I'm realizing that when this
baby comes, we will never have that exchange of father daughter
in the same way that we had it prior to it.
(14:04):
So I've been really struggling with that.
I've been really, you know, thisis my baby girl and I was on
with two women on a, on a, a mastermind and they were really
saying, oh man, that's such a special time.
And they gave me a different framing for it.
They got me past the reckoning by saying everybody will be with
(14:28):
your daughter, but in a different way.
They'll be doting over the baby and not her.
And this is your time to say, I still got you.
Wow. And what a refrain.
New vision comes up. I'm no longer thinking about the
grief as much of our special time because I can still say to
(14:53):
her, Hey, let's go to the women's final four.
I know you may want to take your, you know, the baby, but
let's just let's just make it you and me.
Can I still see you and it and Ihave this on another special
relationship. Now I get to do with my
grandbaby, my new granddaughter,right.
So I think that's the the piece of how we move through it.
We just have to do it. The other thing I think that
(15:15):
people don't do is they don't get a chance to shift from the
revision into what the renewal is, where that phantom pain
actually comes that we can't getback.
And what happens is we have other people who are believing
for us what we can or cannot do,which is based on what they
believe they could or could not do if they were in our
situation. So they're the closest ones
(15:37):
around us might be the doctor, they might be the, the husband,
the wife, the spouses. I don't know if that business
plan really is just something that you should, you should do
right now. I don't know if this amputation
is, is, is the, the right, the right thing for you?
And maybe it is, maybe it's not,but it's your vision.
You are the one that has to execute against that vision, no
(15:58):
matter what anybody else is saying.
And that's a that's takes that takes some grit to do when other
somebody else might be saying it's not the best thing.
Did you have any people in your life that after the amputation,
you know, they said, oh, John can't do that.
Yeah, many, many people. Really.
Many folks and it still happens,right?
It still happens, not maybe justbecause the amputation, but
(16:19):
because they see that. Different you.
Yeah, exactly. Or they're trying to live
vicariously through you of the dreams that they have yet to
accomplish. That's why I say you and I were
were were uniquely designed for a specific purpose.
And the closer we get to that purpose, and I think that
(16:42):
purpose, as Jade Simmons says, is what other people do because
of what you do. So they're released to do
whatever they are, and I want tocelebrate that.
It's a very difficult thing to mindset to have that I don't
(17:02):
have to apologize for who I am in any situation, how I'm
showing up, as long as I'm breathing life into others.
My Creator, my God, has breathedlife into me.
So it's my duty, obligation, responsibility to breathe that
life into other individuals. That's inspiration.
So it's the it's the Latin word inspiro, which means to breathe
(17:22):
into. I think one of the reasons that
we don't get to where we want tobe and be happy and to reach the
success is because we think we know body because the other
people's perception that they got into us.
I'm an immigrant. My English is not good.
(17:44):
I'm not smart enough, I'm not pretty enough.
But the moment you believe you as you and then think that I
have room for improvement. Things are changing and we have
all those people around us. I had it.
I came here. I couldn't even speak English 31
years ago. I'm sitting in the dishwasher
(18:05):
and doing a podcast. Hopefully, you know, you got to
believe that you can give more than you can receive and then
you shall receive absolutely. It's it's a law, right, Because
anytime you plant a seed, it grows.
And that doesn't mean if it's a,if the good seed's going to grow
good, good fruit, if the bad seed's going to grow bad fruit.
(18:26):
So you can't whatever you're planning is going to grow.
You can tell a person by what's following after them in life.
I've always lived my life like that.
I look at a person's what's going after their life and I see
if if nothing but debauchery or destruction is happening after
them, I know they're taking fromothers and they're not giving
(18:48):
life to other individuals. So I have to now a choice to do
I want to stay around that or doI want to stay around somebody
that always is breathing into other individuals.
It's not that they're, you know,good, bad and different.
I'm just saying that they're giving life.
They're breathing into some somebody else.
They're not there to just to take, take and take.
And why are you? You are a giver.
(19:10):
I was studying you, I read aboutyou.
You're a servant. You're a giver with all your
speaking event, with your coaching, with your, you know,
talking to different leaders, 16countries travel, you done so
much, you have so much under your belt.
Why you are a pure heart servant?
Because it's my faith, right? It's my, my faith in God.
(19:31):
It's, it's because I believe that has come to me, right?
I was given the greatest gift oflife.
And so is it not my responsibility to to serve in
that capacity is? The God took something from you.
No, I would not never say that. I would say that the I would say
that the enemy took something from me.
You know that will take something from me because he
came to kill, steal and destroy.But some people, they have that
(19:54):
perception. Oh, for sure.
But I don't, I don't have to subscribe to that perception.
You know, I could say that I don't believe God has ever taken
anything from me. It's only adding to me.
And we can look at this is loss or we can look at is leverage
for the life that we want to. Live made you stronger.
I wouldn't say it's in the moment that we see it, but if
(20:14):
something's going on with us, isit happening to us or happening
for us? And if it's, if we think it's
happening to us, then maybe I see it as a loss.
But if it's happening for me, then I can see that how I can,
can push that into somebody elseand, and, and help them through
their, their life's journey. And maybe I'm just the vessel
that's being used to do that. I never think it's about me
(20:37):
doing it. It's about how what needs to
come out and through me help somebody else.
And if I block that, if I stop it, let's give an analogy.
We often hear of the, the, the cup half empty or cup half full,
right? We always hear that.
So number one, my perception is I'm just grateful that there's
(20:57):
something in the glass, right? Can I be just be thankful that
there's something there? And if my cup is always being
poured and it gets to, to be filled and it can't be filled
anymore, that means I'm not releasing anything out and
pouring it into to somebody else's life.
I can't water the plants that are here.
(21:17):
I'm just making a mess because my lid is full.
Somebody's trying to pour into me and I'm creating a mess.
So I want to make sure that it'sa sieve.
It's a, it's a, it's a flow through.
So as my God's pouring into me, I'm pouring out into others and
it's a pass through. I just become the vessel for the
pass through. For it.
But John, this is a reality, brother, not all of us thinking
(21:38):
like that. Yeah.
This is goes back to the leadership.
Why are leaders don't think likethat?
As a leader, one of the things you telling me right now is
being a servant is that. Absolutely.
You have to help your organization.
You got to give. There's a giving that is so if
you come from a spirit of of just the give, right.
If I just give you've just planted a seed.
(22:01):
That seed will didn't take take root.
It's it's going to grow. And I was just telling this,
this group the other day, I was yesterday, I think it was
yesterday. So I was telling them that we
have the Olympic model. You know, the Olympic model is
Citius Altius, Fortius, the Latin words for swifter, higher
and stronger. And I said, notice that those
words are not written in the superlative of the word.
(22:22):
It's not the highest form of theword.
It's not written as swiftest, highest and strongest.
It's written with an ER suffix. So I can be the swiftest today,
but I can be swifter tomorrow. I can jump the highest today, I
can jump higher tomorrow. So if I take that mindset right
in our analogy that we're we're saying here, if I am a servant,
(22:44):
I want to be the greatest servant so that I can create
greater servants. Why you think our leaders are
missing that? I think they're, they're missing
it because we are in a space of I want to gain, I want to get
and the more money becomes the, the, the, the what and what
(23:04):
Simonson had said, it becomes the, the finite game, right,
Because not an infinite game. It's a finite.
So I'm, I'm only trying to get amass more.
And if that's just the case, then you'll never equate you'll
you'll never make the more you only make it through
multiplication of how you're doing it with with other
individuals. And that's that's my opinion for
(23:25):
it, right. You want to tennex it, right?
You have talked to so many leaders, you coach him, you're
speaking. What are the common thing?
What is the one common thing yousee between all of them?
One is identity. Identity becomes the is the
thing when I do my, my podcast, right, identity comes up and ego
comes up. Those are the number, the number
one, number two things every almost every leader says I had
(23:48):
to deal with my I had to check my I had to amputate my ego.
You said amputate. Your fear empty your ego and you
know, go high level. Absolutely.
So that's, that's what comes up most of the time.
I had to, I had to let go. And what they, what they say
afterward is when they're talking about the ego is I can't
do it all. So I have to release it to other
(24:08):
people that I I trust. And so now they begin to say,
who do I want on my team that I can trust?
So they're really looking very hard.
And when they go another level beyond that is I don't want
anybody that looks like me. I don't want my same skill set.
I want other people that can complement my skill set so that
we can become a fighting team instead of everyone that looks
(24:31):
like me. Everybody has to line up and do
what I say do because that never, it never works because
you become the bottleneck to every decision that happens.
So we must find individuals who are complimenting us.
I don't want to do my, my assistant, my executive
director, I call her Jasmine. I don't want to do that work,
but she loves that work that drives her.
(24:53):
She loves putting things together.
Spreadsheets make my head hurt, right?
She loves getting the weeds and,and finding the, the, the
things. And, and now we come to team
meetings. We all get a chance to, to share
our gifts around the table. We have another one who's
building out some systems for usright now.
She loves that work. I mean, I didn't even know if
she did this stuff and she's doing amazing.
(25:14):
But that happens when somebody asks for help.
But some of us, we don't ask forhelp.
We we think we know it all. And that's a bottleneck.
That's why I say you're a bottleneck.
You are a bottleneck. You are a bottleneck.
If you are looking, if you are doing the whole work yourself,
you're never going to, you're never going to scale.
You always. We call it aces in places.
Aces in places, right? As you see the whole this CEO
(25:36):
and leadership position are changing, younger generation
coming up with less experience of leading and that's happens,
you know it in technology, youngCEO that has got a like a $15
million investment, he's 27 years old.
How these people they going to lead?
I'm not saying they're stupid ifyou're watching, I'm not saying
(25:57):
you're stupid, but how they going to lead the future that we
going toward right now. Yeah, I don't, I don't look at
it as that. I look at like when I talk to
like the young kids, like if I ever get a chance to go to speak
to high schoolers or you know, junior, junior high schoolers, I
always call them leaders in the moment because somebody is the
(26:17):
being the leader in that classroom.
Someone's always being looked upto.
So I don't know what the shift is happening.
Even though we're going more tech, we're going to AI, We have
a lot of things. And I don't know what leadership
now looks like I know to look like for my generation.
I'm not sure what it's looking like from their generation right
now, because here's a generationwhen I spoke for the United
(26:37):
States Air Force Academy of new cadets who have come through
that lived through the pandemic and never had a high school
graduation. I just went to my 30 or my 35th
or 5th, 40th high school reunion.
They don't have that. They're not going to have that.
They had a drive by and during the, during the, during their
(27:00):
graduation, they got their diploma with mask on and, and,
and in a car window. They didn't have the social
skills that we came up with. So there is a, a, a movement
that's, that's coming that I can't identify with because I
haven't had that experience, butthey've had that experience.
So how does leadership, the empathy look in their world that
(27:21):
I can't really see right now? So I, it'll morph.
It will change. It will, it will shift.
I've still believe that the softskills are going to be needed,
very much so, because if we don't have it, it becomes more
transactional. Even though we have artificial
intelligence or advisory intelligence, as Sonia Dumas
always says, yes, we have that. But on that stage, in the
(27:45):
moment, I can have AI help me write a speech.
It's not going to deliver that speech and shift to the moment
the way I shift. Right When I asked the first
question, my conversation yesterday was championed.
It was innovation and the Champions mindset to this
massive company. I started by saying, what's the
(28:08):
one word that comes to your mindwhen you hear innovation and the
champion's mindset? And I threw it up, use the AI
threw it up on a slide that we built the word cloud around it
and that drove where the conversation went.
How many speakers do that? Can AI actually jump in and,
and, and, and ask the question? You can ask the question, but it
can't read that room that fast with my experiences to
(28:31):
understand where I can shift it.Maybe we say it can, but with
the emotion, with the content, with I can look at you, I can
look at you in the eye and see what you're thinking right in
the moment and then shift right to the CEO and then go over to
the other person. It's it's that is what we want
to bring into the conversation and makes us more human and
going back to leaders, that's where we have to be.
We have to be the ones to coach the younger generation to say
(28:55):
these are the skill sets you have the technology you have
this you're building these thesemulti faceted companies, but the
skill set is still needed that one-on-one communication with
individuals. And so let me help you
understand how to do that so that that's what I would offer.
I talked to some of the younger generation people and I told
them, hey, would you just call that person?
(29:18):
No, I, I send them a text. They don't want to get engaged.
They don't they, I don't know. Is it the fear of engagement?
Is the fear? Is it social anxiety?
I don't know what it is, but that conversation that you and
I, we have or that simple phone call that changes everything, AI
cannot replace that. Yes, texting is good, but when
(29:39):
you pick up a phone and you callyour mother and say, mom, I was
just thinking about you, I love you, rather than just sending a
text, that's a whole different approach.
Absolutely. Like I was talking one of the,
you know, high possession leaders.
They, they got 200 fifties, 50 or 55 employees.
And we were debating and I said,when was the last time that
(30:02):
actually you pick up a phone andcall each of them?
And he said, no, I sent it like a mass e-mail or I said 365
days. One phone call, add your day is
going to take probably 30 seconds.
Hey, John, I'm, I'm just up herein, you know, third floor.
You don't, you know, see me? I haven't seen you or maybe I
(30:25):
saw you once. I'm going to thank you so much
for your hard work. I'm here if you need anything.
30 seconds done, 1A day. Why we can't do that?
Yeah, it's, I think it's the theway we are wired now.
We, we have this, the Zoom callsand we have the text messaging
and we use that and we think it's 2O4 connection.
(30:46):
It hits the same part of the brain of, of us coming together,
but it doesn't have the same type of effect.
So, so, so let me, let me share why I would go out and use this
now as a strategy, not the texting.
I, I mean that's, that is one way to do it.
Another way is to have the zoom calls.
But I came here. You don't want to be in front of
(31:06):
you in a, in a conversation. And so now this becomes a
strategy that you can use. So I would teach the younger
generation, get on the flight, get on the plane, go see
somebody face to face, right. So that's what I'm doing with my
executive. Now I go and I will fly to San
Francisco, I'll fly out to Portland, OR and I'll meet down
(31:27):
and guess what I get, I get a lunch, I get an hour and a half
of that CE OS time instead of a 15 minute little phone call if I
get the 15 minutes. But now we're talking about
family, we're talking about lifeand we're planting seeds to do
business together. And I might not even ask for
business, but we're we're, we're, we're getting in
(31:47):
relationship. And I think that's what you're
saying, right? Building relations.
Building relationships. I talked to somebody, said I
didn't get what I want. I said OK, you plan what kind of
seed? You plan.
You planned Apple. You want orange?
I'm not going to happen. It's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen. You plant seeds for apple, you
get apple. Do you do the orange?
(32:08):
You get orange. What you plan what you're going
to get, That's nurturing the relationship.
That's so important right now through the leadership between
your upper level leaders and themedium level and the low body
owner. It's so important in family,
friendship, everything else. I think we are missing that part
(32:29):
and we are responsible our generation to kind of push it
and help these kids and say, hey, don't miss out on this
software scale. I think think the the other
thing we can do, and I've I'm a big proponent of this, is just
there is a power in saying no. It was hard for me.
(32:51):
Very much power, right? It's very hard.
It's hard to do. It took me so long, John, to
learn how to say no. This the no is a is is it's it's
a. It's a great answer.
And so if I say to a person, no,I I need to see you in person
before I close this deal. And but you got to be willing to
(33:14):
walk away from the deal. If the person say, well, we'll
just go find somebody else. Good.
Because I want to do, I want to build a relationship.
That's one way to force people to understand the value of the
handshake, the value of a relationship.
Looking somebody across the table, eye to eye.
It's a it's a great, not only this is great skill.
(33:36):
You wouldn't go, I mean, with mywife, you know, I wouldn't have
come up to her after the first day and said, Oh my gosh, you're
the woman of my dreams. Let's get married tomorrow.
It ain't. Going to happen it.
Ain't going to happen, you know?Now she's in the right mind, but
I want to do things for I want to show her how much I care
about her. So maybe it's flowers one day,
(33:58):
maybe some candy the next time. I'm trying to figure out what
she likes, what's her likes, what's her dislikes in the
relationship. I'm trying to get to know
somebody, but I'm not asking forher hand in marriage until we
have had some courtship for a lot.
Maybe it's a year, maybe it's two years.
And then we find out, yes, this is the person I want to be with.
(34:19):
And we've explored, you know, with each other through, you
know, relationship building. So why are we doing that in
business? I'd send an e-mail.
I said my product, we do this all the time on LinkedIn.
I, I see your LinkedIn profile. I said, here's my business.
This is what I want to do. Let's, let's, let's make some,
let's make it happen. And like, wait a minute, we're,
(34:41):
we're married now. Is this, is that what that's
going? On you get all those LinkedIn
weed messages. All those messages and we do it
in e-mail and all those things. And so people, what did we do?
We delete them. We, we could, we see them come
in, we delete it out or we don'topen them.
We know this is going to be the spam.
And so we don't engage in the relationship because we feel
like they're not, they're only trying to do a transaction with
(35:02):
us. Who do we respond to someone
that puts in maybe the LinkedIn profile, a video?
Hey, I was looking at your, yourprofile and I see that we have
these people in common. Oh, you're, you're a Razorback
too, You know, so we're trying to get to know somebody through
the commonalities of what we have together instead of just
saying, I want to do, I just want your business.
(35:22):
Yeah, that doesn't work. I get those people and then I
simply respond, how can I serve you?
Yeah. And then of course, they don't.
I'm back. I said, whoa, this guy is weird.
I said no, It's just you got to build a connection.
You know, you have to connect with people and learn and
educate yourself. Then you can, you know, give
(35:43):
them your offer, right? It's not like right off the bed
I said, hey, let's get married. Exactly.
It's not going to happen. But right now, what is the one
thing that you focus a lot rightnow?
Is it the speaking or leadershipcoaching?
The speaking drives everything. So when I say speaking, I'm a
business person who just happensto have a story that people
(36:04):
engage with because I don't do it one directional.
It's not me pontificating what I'm thinking onto and projecting
onto somebody else. We're going to have a dialogue
and a discussion about it even in a groom of 800 people.
I want to make sure that you arediscovering.
(36:25):
There's this whole model back then, it's built in 1955 Joe
Harry window model. And so it's I won't go through
the whole thing, but one of the windows is in the blocks of four
quadrant Model 1 of the windows is the unknown unknown.
So things I've yet to discover about you and things that you
have yet to discover about me. So I have failed if I have not
(36:46):
understood or gained anything from my audience that I've been
front of for that 45 minutes to 90 minutes that we are sharing
this time together. What I want to do is make sure
I'm learning two or three thingsfrom the audience that I can
actually put into the presentation in real time
because they're discovering based upon some story I may have
shared. So I'll give you an example.
(37:07):
I do an active, sometimes I'll do an activity, it's it's called
the the change experiment. Or have people stand up and then
they find a partner, they face their partner, they take a step
closer to their partner, they look their partner up and down
with significant intent. And then now that's freaking
people out. And then they go backwards side.
They make a, they make one change about their appearance
without their partner knowing. They turn back around, they
(37:28):
guess the one thing that was changed and they sit back down.
So now, so why would I do this? So the first thing I'll say is
what was the first, what was thefirst activity action I invited
you to do? And people get, a lot of people
get it wrong and somebody will say, stand up.
I said absolutely stand up. How many said, Oh my gosh,
another freaking speaker's aboutto ask me to get up and move out
(37:48):
of my comfort zone. And they're all like, all right.
So now I say, what's the productthat you're trying to promote
and get out? You think people are standing up
for your product right now? You got this great idea.
Are they standing up for you or are they doing like you just did
me? Why we got to change, why we got
to move this? And I just want to sit here.
(38:09):
Just talk to me, dude. I don't want to, I don't want, I
haven't even had my coffee settled yet, right?
So they're resisting what you'reputting before them.
So then we say, OK, what's, what's the next sequence?
And they get the next sequence wrong.
The standing up, the looking at you and all that stuff.
I say, now you got a product andyou don't even know what you're,
how you're going to market it because you can't even get the
(38:30):
sequence right. Right.
Like a oh man. And so now they're down, they're
scrambled, they're taking notes,They're they're they're taking
pictures of all the slides because they know that it's this
is exactly the behavior that they're going through.
And we go all the way through this whole process of them self
discovering and reflecting it back to me.
And then when I invite them to sit back down, I say, how many
of you put yourselves right backtogether?
(38:55):
They had 90% of the room. They all went back the same way
they were before we even startedthe activity.
I said because we change is never sustainable.
So you haven't learned one thingin here.
You've gone through this conference for three days and
you're going to go back and do the same thing that you just
came here with you. You have to shift, you have to
change something if you're goingto want to make a change.
(39:16):
You can't just be the same person.
So it's a very easy exercise, but they're discovering their
own resistance to change. They're discovering how much
they revert back to the same wayit's going to be, and now we
give them an action step that they can actually implement.
Shifting and changing. I talked to somebody said, yeah,
you say it's easy. It's not easy to shift and
(39:37):
change for something you have done for so many years and step
out of your comfort zone. I said no, the first step is
important but why you think people they are?
Is it like a really fear of stayout of the comfort zone or or
unexpected changes, unknown territory?
What is it? It's all the above and I and
(39:58):
when I so I'll ask them, I'll ask them that question and so
and will popcorn answers around the room and and people, many
people will say it's I don't know what's going to happen
next. What are you going to ask me to
do? So every year and.
You get them thinking you. Get them thinking right.
Then they're they're saying what?
I don't know what's, I don't know what they're going to do.
And so when someone says I just,I just tired.
(40:21):
I just want, I want to stand up.I said, yeah, because we stand
up like how many times a day? And they go, oh, yeah, right.
So are you tired every single time you stand up?
So why'd you resist me asking tostand up?
You stand up when you go to the lunch.
You stand up when you go to the bathroom.
You stand up when you go to the bed.
You stand up when you came down here and walked down to this
conference room. Why you resisting my invitation
(40:42):
to stand up? So that gets us into that
conversation. We resist it because we we have
a fear of the unknown. What's going to happen next?
We have a fear of I don't know what's going to be asked of me.
Maybe I'm going to be I'm going to judgement.
I'm going to be seen. You know, right.
So all all of it is, is is validpoints.
But are they? Because we said earlier in the
(41:05):
show that fear is a story we're telling ourselves that has not
yet happened. Do you think it's illusion?
It's illusion, right? Because you believe what I
believe. I think fear is illusion.
And a lot of because we haven't tested it, we haven't tried it,
but neither have we tried faith.And that's faith is something
(41:26):
else. That's that's right.
Like I want this bottle, bottle of water that we have here,
right? And I believed that the person
who I asked to bring the water was going to bring it to me.
I didn't know if it was going toshow up or not.
I just asked for it and it showed up.
It was physically in my presencecoming to me when I believed
that was on the way. I have a question for because
(41:47):
you were in the Gulf War, you'rein the military.
I want to go back to that. I was in there when the bullets
is coming is coming toward you. I don't know what it is, John.
You get to the point that you'renot afraid of anything.
And then when you come back to civilian life, you said these
people are crazy, why they're afraid of this?
You get to the point I always tell everybody during my time I
(42:09):
was in Iran, Iraq war. And then I said, you know, I
lost so many of my soldiers and I was in a squad leader anyway.
But you get used, you condition yourself.
I might die in next hour, 5 minutes, but you OK with it?
I don't know what it is. You accept it.
And then when you come out of that and you go to the civilian
(42:29):
life or to the real world here and say, what's wrong with these
people? Why they're afraid of?
Because we condition ourself. There is a phenomenon that
happens. They they started this,
scientists were looking at it with World War 2 and the drops
that were happening, bomb bombing runs, drops that
happened in England. And so the sirens would go off
(42:51):
and then part of the city would be hit and you know, from the
bombs that were coming down. And eventually people wouldn't
even go into the shelter. They were just walking around
the street because it didn't impact didn't hit them.
The, when the, when the bombs fell, it wasn't in their part of
the city or whatever, right? So they just, they just went out
and did whatever they were goingto do and they didn't go down
there. So there's a found, I don't know
(43:11):
what the, I don't know what thatphenomenon is called.
So I apologize, but that's, that's the conditioning that
happens. So we become invincible because
we survived the firefight. We become invincible.
And when we get back home, that does not go down.
It creates a gap. And so now we're at this level
(43:32):
and we have, we've elevated fromdown here in our mental state of
what is possible because we survived it.
But we didn't, you know, we justgot, we didn't have our name
that day, right? Yeah.
I always told everybody your name wasn't up.
Your name wasn't up right? And so now you go back again and
the gap gets even wider and you go back again and the gap gets
(43:52):
wider. So there is this.
We, we need to find ways to get ourselves back down to what we,
I want, I don't want to call it normality, but get back to this.
This the state that we were in prior to us leaving for that
conflict because we're seeing things that is not natural.
(44:15):
It's funny. Not that, but it's funny.
The difference between my wife and myself.
We are totally different creatures.
We are totally different. I don't even want to own a gun.
My wife, she's got all kinds. He's got Glocks, he's got
everything. That's.
Good. What happened to me in that
(44:36):
moment when we talked about the war is I realized that a bullet
that kills somebody destroys an ecosystem, an entire ecosystem.
So maybe that person that signedup, that served was the only
person that pumped gas in the community that they were living
(44:58):
in. They they were the only one that
had the grocery store that couldget this thing done for the
community. And when that life goes that the
whole ecosystem is gone, it doesn't come back.
It's it's just destroyed. And I said, how do I have a
right to take that ecosystem, right?
I mean, I get it in war and where, you know, I understand
(45:19):
that piece of it. But what I don't understand is
how we could be so callous with something that we have never
created. And I think feel I have a right
to take that from somebody that is that's that that mess with my
head for a little while that I destroy.
(45:40):
I'm destroying ecosystems of a life.
And I don't know what their family was doing back wherever
and how that's that's now messedup because of me or or what,
what, what if somebody's got my life or what, what all what's
the ecosystem that would have destroyed for the same thing?
(46:01):
Same thing, right? So now son doesn't have dad
can't go and ask the question that he need to ask to make
something else happen that was going to save another life.
The cure to cancer, the cure to whatever we we've destroyed it,
right? And we don't think that far
ahead. We can't see the value of going
back to our earlier conversationof you were the winner.
(46:22):
You were the one person that onelife, that one life to be here
that earned the right to be here.
And I just taken that from from you.
That's a. Did you start thinking about
that? Yeah, it's, it's very deep.
Is. It really different ideas,
different analogies, but it's a very deep conversation.
(46:45):
I've been there. You know, I always say when you
take somebody's life, it's always going to be with you.
It's always there. It's always there, but going
deep in there is just really is hard like.
That's why, you know, that's whyVietnam Veterans, they went back
to Vietnam to make reparation with the families because of
(47:09):
what war cost on the inside of aperson, right.
I don't care what your politics are.
I'm what I'm saying is to that individual, that psyche, that is
a very difficult thing. I mean, well, I won't, I won't,
I won't go there. I won't, I won't go there out
this far because I won't. I don't to down the down the
road, but it's it's very difficult to pull a trigger.
(47:30):
It's very, very difficult. It's a very difficult.
And then when you do it, there'sno way back.
There's no way back. Everybody's saying that there is
no way back. It would inside.
It wouldn't stay with you until ages.
I don't think we understand. It's very hard.
It's very explain to ordinary people that they haven't done
it. You're right.
If somebody out there right now is struggling with the fear of
(47:53):
doing, fear of judgement, fear of achieving, fear of whatever,
what advice do you have for them?
My advice is to look at other times in your life where you
have adapted around the fear. So what were some smaller steps
that you took that you know thatyou were successful in and
(48:14):
compile those. Maybe write those down and say
when was I champion in this moment?
When did I not let the fear holdme back?
But I pushed through that fear. It was the first time that maybe
your guy, we were playing football and the, the person
about to come tackle you, you don't know what that's going to
feel like. You push through that and you,
you run the ball anyway and you get tackled.
(48:36):
Oh, that wasn't so, so bad. So now you, you're able to, to
do more of it. So you're always going to get
more when you push through that wall of fear that's there.
What is coming in 2026 for you? What is the special plan?
Because I know you're cooking something.
Yeah, I'm always cooking something #1 the, the, what I
(48:58):
want is more time with not more time, with more opportunities
and experiences with my daughter, with my son, with my
grandchildren. Right, you're honing on that
I'm. I'm, I'm on that like nobody's
business right now. And I'm, I'm understanding it
from a different perspective. I think what I also want on the
(49:19):
business side is being able to take the ecosystem that's being
built right now and multiply it.So here's what I mean.
The keynote speech is just one aspect, but I'm finding that
executive CE OS are now asking for the fireside chat they want.
(49:42):
Can I come in and talk to their,their leadership team and let's
put everybody through that. RE3, the register way action
model where we have the reckoning, the revision, the
renewal. Because when you think about it,
it works in six different ways. It works for the individual, for
those 3 and it works for the team that you're coaching.
You're for those because you cansee where people are.
(50:05):
And the reckoning, the language is different than the revision,
which is different than the renewal.
The language in the reckoning is, man, why are we going to do
this? What what's going on here?
Why are we going to change? And the revision?
Oh, I think I see a pathway. We can, we can align this in
this. So we're seeing vision and in
the renewal, man, this is hard. This is really hard.
But I see the, we have, well, wehave a pathway forward.
(50:27):
We can't go back to the way it used to be.
Those are three very different distinct pieces of language that
people will use. And you can be at A reckoning
moment in one area of your life and a revision in a total other
area of your life and a revisionand a renewal in another area of
life, right? So right now I'm in a reckoning
moment with my daughter, right, which just moved into a revision
moment, right? And so now, but with my son, I'm
(50:49):
in a renewal moment with him because we are moving in a place
where he has just taken over a, a basketball team in Canyon
City. He's building and there's no
going back. So he's, he's, he's amputated
the, the, the, he's made the decision to become the coach.
So he's amputated the fear of whatever that might have been to
be the head coach. And now he's building the
program and he's running into all the obstacles and hurdles
(51:11):
and, and the phantom pain of doing it differently.
All this stuff that he's moving forward right right now and I
can help him through that, that piece as he's building.
It What would you tell a person right now?
Laying down the hospital bed andtomorrow they're going to
amputate his leg or arm, whatever.
He or she is going to face a newlife, a new challenge, which is
(51:34):
they don't know. They haven't seen it, they
haven't felt it. They can't even imagine.
They were scared. What would you tell that person
right now? Yeah, it's, it's, it's hard
because every, everyone is so different.
I would offer to understand who your network is of friends or
(52:01):
family that will not allow you to fail because there there
going to be some dark days, there going to be some tough
days because you're going to have to relearn everything.
You are going into a renewal phase and a renewal phase only
happens when a commitment has been made.
When the doctor amputates my left leg, I cannot get it back.
(52:22):
So now I have to learn everything fresh again.
I have to relearn how to I have to learn how to move a
wheelchair to a prosthetic appointment.
I've learned how to put on artificial leg.
I've to learn how to walk on theon the Walker walk between the
four bar on a Walker, crutches to cane, cane to free walking,
free walking made a running. All these things are going to be
new and fresh. So make sure that you understand
(52:45):
you are in a new spot right now.There's no going back to the way
it used to be and you have this incredible, incredible life
that's going to be ahead of you.But you have to have the vision
to see it. John, thank you so much man.
It's always a pleasure talking to you, Chad, and when you're
learning from you, I listen to all your, you know, podcasts and
(53:06):
listen to your speeches. It's amazing, man, It's amazing.
Thank you. Thank you for being here.
I look forward for many, many years of friends.
Absolutely.
And so when someone says that's just tired, I just want, I don't
want to stand up. I said, yeah, because we stand
up like how many times a day? So are you tired every single
time you stand up? Why'd you resist me ask you to
stand up? You stand up when you go to the
lunch. You stand up when you go to the
bathroom. Why are you resisting my
invitation to stand up? We resist it because we have the
fear of the unknown. We have a fear of I don't know
what's going to be asked of me. Judgement are going to be seen.
(00:21):
All of it is, is, is valid points.
But are they? We all have our fears, our
doubts and our sincerity that through life or business we go
(00:42):
through it every day, including myself, fears and so many other
things that we face on daily basis.
I'm here with John Registered, one of my dear friends, national
speaker, published author, coach, leadership coach, and
he's here to teach us how you can amputate your fear.
(01:05):
Young Welcome to the show. I am so excited to see you my
friend. I am so happy that you are here.
You came all the way down to Austin and be here and thank you
so much. I really appreciate.
That absolutely and happy to have a great conversation with
you today. Take me back to 1996 because you
have an amazing story as a former military and veteran.
(01:27):
Just take me back to 1996. What happened?
How your life changed? I was, I was training for the 96
Olympic Games and the 400 meter hurdles and I had a really good
shot of making that Team USA track and field news has picked
me as the one to watch for the the 96 games in the, in the in
that race. And the reason I had a great
shot at it because I was a worldclass athlete and had gone and
(01:51):
competed in the 1992 and and 88 Olympic trials and was on my way
to what I thought was glory and winning medals at the Olympic
Olympic Games. I was also an Olympic.
I was also military officer candidate.
So I was about to go to Officer Candidate school, but on May
17th, 1994, I misstepped a hurdle during a training session
(02:16):
while I was serving in the United States Army.
That fall dislocated my left knee.
It severed the artery behind my kneecap.
And seven days later I had the choice, used a Walker or a
wheelchair for the rest of my life or use a prosthetic for the
rest of my life. So I chose door #2 and became an
amputee. So that was a big shift that
(02:37):
happened in 94 that disrupted mytraining to the 1996 Olympic
Games and disrupted the what what I would do to become a
military officer as well. Why did you use empathy?
Why you didn't use I want to be in Wheelchair?
Well, it was for #1 mobility forgetting around.
As I was thinking about it, I said, do I would I want to use a
(03:00):
wheelchair? My leg was going to be fused, My
knee would be fused, so it have to would stick out.
I wouldn't be able to bend it. So getting access like sitting
on aircraft, the way the leg would have to be out, I thought
if I just amputate the leg, it'dbe a little bit easier for me to
get around. The second reason and probably
more primary reason is because the pain was so great at that
(03:25):
time, I was in tremendous pain and I thought that my male
deductive reasoning, if I just get rid of my leg, I can get rid
of my pain. And so that became one of the
cornerstones of why I chose the amputation.
You know, I see you here sittingin front of me and that's what I
asked you, why you chose that. And as a normal person or a lot
(03:48):
of people out there, we go through a hard, hard times right
now. What we are afraid of, what
drives you, we as a normal people, we miss in it because
the mind is everything. It is everything.
And so I'll, I'll get into that answer in a second, but I want
to make sure that people understand that it wasn't easy.
(04:12):
It was not an easy journey to move through that process.
I, I went through some significant doubt, my identity
issues. And I think we have to 1st
understand that yes, this is happening and it's OK to grieve
the loss of what was what was lost.
(04:32):
And so for me, it was my leg andI was had to go through that
process. And I call it the reckoning
moment. That's the reckoning that all of
us will face at some point in our life, whether it's a small
reckoning. You're at the 8th grade dance
and you're on the up, up side ofthe wall of the young lady you
want to go dance with. And you, you, you, you're like,
I don't know if I want to go over there.
(04:52):
What, what if she rejects me? And so all these what ifs come
in and that fear begins to driveour behaviors of what we'll
actually do. But if I don't take that risk to
see if that young lady would, you know, my, my case would say
yes or no to the dance, then I would never know.
And that fear begins to perpetuate itself and drive and
fear is only the story I'm telling myself in that moment.
(05:16):
I'm not talking about fight or flight fear where you, you see a
snake. Even in that case, you see a
snake and you, you jump, why thesnake's still still there.
It's not, it's not moving, you know, but we, we see it, even
see the picture of maybe of a snake.
And this says give me the heebiejeebies and but it's not doing
anything to us at that point. So I was going through identity.
Who am I now? What's my identity?
(05:38):
Am I still a husband to my, my, my, my wife?
Am I still a son to my father and mother And my, my how's my
son going to see me with this one leg now?
Do I still have a job in the military?
Can I support my family, be my Olympic dreams are over?
And in that moment when I was kind of going down the downward
(05:59):
spiral, my wife Alice comes overand she says, you know what,
John, we're going to get throughthis together.
That's our new normal. And that was I, for me, I
thought was the first time that I understood who I had as a
spouse, that this is what it means.
(06:24):
We take the marriage vows of forbetter or for worse.
And we're so quick to discount. We want the for better.
And then when it gets for worse,I'm not sure if I want to stick
around for this, but that's whenthings really get tight.
And my son that we were on the playground when that happened
(06:45):
and she had knelt down beside mywheelchair.
I was in a wheelchair with one leg and I'm just bawling.
I'm crying and my son, he's on the swings playing, he's five
years old. He jumps off the swings and he
hits the ground, comes running over.
Hey mom, dad, you see my big jump?
You see my big jump, mom dad. And he jumps in between myself
and Alice. And in that moment, I realized
(07:06):
he is just validated, validated me as his father and create a
new normal for himself. And so that was the the push I
needed for my family to see me as just husband is just dad, my
mom and dad's just me. I'm just, I'm just son because
(07:27):
who was telling me that I was different?
What had I allowed in society totell me that just because I have
an artificial leg now or not even a leg, I don't have to use
a prosthetic, that I'm now different?
And I think we have a lot of things to decide that do that
for us. We have maybe the antagonist in
the movie Peter Pan, Captain Hook.
He's in a bugger wrist amputee. He's scaring the kids, the Lost
(07:50):
Boys in the movie Peter Pan, he's the villain.
But wait a minute, I'm an amputee.
Am am I not the villain in people's movies?
You know, every Halloween we seepeople with disfigurements or we
see people with mental health challenges.
Freddy Krueger, Jason and and they all come to our doorstep
(08:10):
and we give him candy. Now we were trying to scare
people, but we have school shooting so easy.
It's all those mental health folks.
It's very difficult to break outof that mindset because society
has dictated and and normalized us in a way that we don't see
(08:31):
each other. I was speaking to company before
I came here, had a great chat with their executive director,
CEO for massive, massive companyand we're out of Vegas.
And one of the things I said wasI, I was, I was challenging
myself to give them something new that's out of the ordinary.
(08:55):
I'm always trying to do that. And one of the things we always
have is everyone's a champion, right?
And I, and I've kind of kicked back against that, that no, you
have to earn that, that championship, right?
You have to earn how to be or have you really won.
And I, as I thought about, I said, you know what, everybody
(09:16):
is a champion because everyone won a swim race.
Everyone was first to the egg and that created life.
So everyone that we see around us is an individual champion
because they made it to life andlife to hear us talking.
(09:39):
You're first to the egg. I was first to the egg.
So that means that we can look at people as adna fingerprint
and celebrate every life that wecome in contact with.
There is no difference between it because we all step start up
that that that champion. So that's how I create that
champion's mindset to continue us, you know, down that path,
(10:01):
down that road. And that's what I was trying to
get back. I was trying to move myself into
the space where I saw myself as well I saw myself prior to the
injury. You say it in a way that it was
an easy transition, but I'm sureit was very hard for you to come
with a new life, with a new norm, the new way of living,
(10:25):
including with the with the wife, with the kids, with the
society, How they going to see you, how they going to perceive
you, how you going to interact with them.
A lot of us, we go out there, wereally don't know.
Something happens, we go bankrupt, we're dead.
That is the end of the world. And then you ask them, I'm going
to cut your leg. No.
(10:45):
And they they don't understand it because you serve in army,
you serve in the Gulf War. I serve in military, not the US.
Nothing is worse than the losinga friend or the a soldier next
to you. You can't take that pain away.
It's going to stay with you forever.
Forever. And when they are veteran coming
(11:09):
back with a different disability, most of us, we're
really trying to understand them, but we actually don't
understand it. It's very different perspective
that sometimes I'm asking, do I have the right mind?
Am I thinking right? Or the whole population, they
(11:30):
see me wrong, they don't understand.
Especially for you, you, you sayI'm going to Olympics and that
happens. Career changes, life change.
That's so much. What do you see?
Keep going. You adapt and actually grow,
right? What other people can do?
Yeah, the that process when I started sharing is around the
(11:54):
the reckoning, right? The first piece that we have is
we have to know that something has changed, something has
happened. Once we stop saying I wish life
would go back to the way it usedto be or getting this back.
Now we're free to have a new vision and create opportunities
for us. So I don't become an Olympic
class athlete. I actually, you know, Fast
(12:16):
forward, become a Paralympic athlete and swim, swim in the
Paralympic Games in 96 and then win a silver medal in a long
jump in Sydney, Australia. So I'd be, I find this parallel
path and they're all around us, but we can't see them until we
actually grieve the loss of whatour reckoning moment is.
So that's our revision moment. And for me, the revision moment
(12:36):
happened exactly one month afterI had the amputation where I was
in the most pain because I thought, you know, my male
deductive reasons to get rid of my leg, get rid of my pain.
But after the leg was taken off,there was phantom pain.
And I didn't realize about this phantom pain was worse than the
actual pain that I had. And now you can't do anything
(12:57):
about the phantom pain. So as you're saying about the,
the pain that we all feel from the loss, that's the phantom
pain that we feel because we cannot get that back.
We can't go back. I was just doing this, you know,
great story. Now is I'm, I'm in, I'm in the,
I'm in a reckoning moment right now with my daughter.
(13:20):
My daughter's about to give birth.
So my baby girl is about to havea baby girl and we've done so
much together in life. We've I've taken out on her
first date. I have, I've, I've took her to
Paris on her request at 11 yearsold when she wanted to go for
her birthday, when her mom, flight attendant mom gives us
tickets to go to Paris and then we go to the women's final four
(13:42):
every year. We're going for like 4 or five
years when she was in in, in high school and we just did when
the last one down in Tampa whereshe's a woman grown.
And when now we are there and I'm realizing that when this
baby comes, we will never have that exchange of father daughter
in the same way that we had it prior to it.
(14:04):
So I've been really struggling with that.
I've been really, you know, thisis my baby girl and I was on
with two women on a, on a, a mastermind and they were really
saying, oh man, that's such a special time.
And they gave me a different framing for it.
They got me past the reckoning by saying everybody will be with
(14:28):
your daughter, but in a different way.
They'll be doting over the baby and not her.
And this is your time to say, I still got you.
Wow. And what a refrain.
New vision comes up. I'm no longer thinking about the
grief as much of our special time because I can still say to
(14:53):
her, Hey, let's go to the women's final four.
I know you may want to take your, you know, the baby, but
let's just let's just make it you and me.
Can I still see you and it and Ihave this on another special
relationship. Now I get to do with my
grandbaby, my new granddaughter,right.
So I think that's the the piece of how we move through it.
We just have to do it. The other thing I think that
(15:15):
people don't do is they don't get a chance to shift from the
revision into what the renewal is, where that phantom pain
actually comes that we can't getback.
And what happens is we have other people who are believing
for us what we can or cannot do,which is based on what they
believe they could or could not do if they were in our
situation. So they're the closest ones
(15:37):
around us might be the doctor, they might be the, the husband,
the wife, the spouses. I don't know if that business
plan really is just something that you should, you should do
right now. I don't know if this amputation
is, is, is the, the right, the right thing for you?
And maybe it is, maybe it's not,but it's your vision.
You are the one that has to execute against that vision, no
(15:58):
matter what anybody else is saying.
And that's a that's takes that takes some grit to do when other
somebody else might be saying it's not the best thing.
Did you have any people in your life that after the amputation,
you know, they said, oh, John can't do that.
Yeah, many, many people. Really.
Many folks and it still happens,right?
It still happens, not maybe justbecause the amputation, but
(16:19):
because they see that. Different you.
Yeah, exactly. Or they're trying to live
vicariously through you of the dreams that they have yet to
accomplish. That's why I say you and I were
were were uniquely designed for a specific purpose.
And the closer we get to that purpose, and I think that
(16:42):
purpose, as Jade Simmons says, is what other people do because
of what you do. So they're released to do
whatever they are, and I want tocelebrate that.
It's a very difficult thing to mindset to have that I don't
(17:02):
have to apologize for who I am in any situation, how I'm
showing up, as long as I'm breathing life into others.
My Creator, my God, has breathedlife into me.
So it's my duty, obligation, responsibility to breathe that
life into other individuals. That's inspiration.
So it's the it's the Latin word inspiro, which means to breathe
(17:22):
into. I think one of the reasons that
we don't get to where we want tobe and be happy and to reach the
success is because we think we know body because the other
people's perception that they got into us.
I'm an immigrant. My English is not good.
(17:44):
I'm not smart enough, I'm not pretty enough.
But the moment you believe you as you and then think that I
have room for improvement. Things are changing and we have
all those people around us. I had it.
I came here. I couldn't even speak English 31
years ago. I'm sitting in the dishwasher
(18:05):
and doing a podcast. Hopefully, you know, you got to
believe that you can give more than you can receive and then
you shall receive absolutely. It's it's a law, right, Because
anytime you plant a seed, it grows.
And that doesn't mean if it's a,if the good seed's going to grow
good, good fruit, if the bad seed's going to grow bad fruit.
(18:26):
So you can't whatever you're planning is going to grow.
You can tell a person by what's following after them in life.
I've always lived my life like that.
I look at a person's what's going after their life and I see
if if nothing but debauchery or destruction is happening after
them, I know they're taking fromothers and they're not giving
(18:48):
life to other individuals. So I have to now a choice to do
I want to stay around that or doI want to stay around somebody
that always is breathing into other individuals.
It's not that they're, you know,good, bad and different.
I'm just saying that they're giving life.
They're breathing into some somebody else.
They're not there to just to take, take and take.
And why are you? You are a giver.
(19:10):
I was studying you, I read aboutyou.
You're a servant. You're a giver with all your
speaking event, with your coaching, with your, you know,
talking to different leaders, 16countries travel, you done so
much, you have so much under your belt.
Why you are a pure heart servant?
Because it's my faith, right? It's my, my faith in God.
(19:31):
It's, it's because I believe that has come to me, right?
I was given the greatest gift oflife.
And so is it not my responsibility to to serve in
that capacity is? The God took something from you.
No, I would not never say that. I would say that the I would say
that the enemy took something from me.
You know that will take something from me because he
came to kill, steal and destroy.But some people, they have that
(19:54):
perception. Oh, for sure.
But I don't, I don't have to subscribe to that perception.
You know, I could say that I don't believe God has ever taken
anything from me. It's only adding to me.
And we can look at this is loss or we can look at is leverage
for the life that we want to. Live made you stronger.
I wouldn't say it's in the moment that we see it, but if
(20:14):
something's going on with us, isit happening to us or happening
for us? And if it's, if we think it's
happening to us, then maybe I see it as a loss.
But if it's happening for me, then I can see that how I can,
can push that into somebody elseand, and, and help them through
their, their life's journey. And maybe I'm just the vessel
that's being used to do that. I never think it's about me
(20:37):
doing it. It's about how what needs to
come out and through me help somebody else.
And if I block that, if I stop it, let's give an analogy.
We often hear of the, the, the cup half empty or cup half full,
right? We always hear that.
So number one, my perception is I'm just grateful that there's
(20:57):
something in the glass, right? Can I be just be thankful that
there's something there? And if my cup is always being
poured and it gets to, to be filled and it can't be filled
anymore, that means I'm not releasing anything out and
pouring it into to somebody else's life.
I can't water the plants that are here.
(21:17):
I'm just making a mess because my lid is full.
Somebody's trying to pour into me and I'm creating a mess.
So I want to make sure that it'sa sieve.
It's a, it's a, it's a flow through.
So as my God's pouring into me, I'm pouring out into others and
it's a pass through. I just become the vessel for the
pass through. For it.
But John, this is a reality, brother, not all of us thinking
(21:38):
like that. Yeah.
This is goes back to the leadership.
Why are leaders don't think likethat?
As a leader, one of the things you telling me right now is
being a servant is that. Absolutely.
You have to help your organization.
You got to give. There's a giving that is so if
you come from a spirit of of just the give, right.
If I just give you've just planted a seed.
(22:01):
That seed will didn't take take root.
It's it's going to grow. And I was just telling this,
this group the other day, I was yesterday, I think it was
yesterday. So I was telling them that we
have the Olympic model. You know, the Olympic model is
Citius Altius, Fortius, the Latin words for swifter, higher
and stronger. And I said, notice that those
words are not written in the superlative of the word.
(22:22):
It's not the highest form of theword.
It's not written as swiftest, highest and strongest.
It's written with an ER suffix. So I can be the swiftest today,
but I can be swifter tomorrow. I can jump the highest today, I
can jump higher tomorrow. So if I take that mindset right
in our analogy that we're we're saying here, if I am a servant,
(22:44):
I want to be the greatest servant so that I can create
greater servants. Why you think our leaders are
missing that? I think they're, they're missing
it because we are in a space of I want to gain, I want to get
and the more money becomes the, the, the, the what and what
(23:04):
Simonson had said, it becomes the, the finite game, right,
Because not an infinite game. It's a finite.
So I'm, I'm only trying to get amass more.
And if that's just the case, then you'll never equate you'll
you'll never make the more you only make it through
multiplication of how you're doing it with with other
individuals. And that's that's my opinion for
(23:25):
it, right. You want to tennex it, right?
You have talked to so many leaders, you coach him, you're
speaking. What are the common thing?
What is the one common thing yousee between all of them?
One is identity. Identity becomes the is the
thing when I do my, my podcast, right, identity comes up and ego
comes up. Those are the number, the number
one, number two things every almost every leader says I had
(23:48):
to deal with my I had to check my I had to amputate my ego.
You said amputate. Your fear empty your ego and you
know, go high level. Absolutely.
So that's, that's what comes up most of the time.
I had to, I had to let go. And what they, what they say
afterward is when they're talking about the ego is I can't
do it all. So I have to release it to other
(24:08):
people that I I trust. And so now they begin to say,
who do I want on my team that I can trust?
So they're really looking very hard.
And when they go another level beyond that is I don't want
anybody that looks like me. I don't want my same skill set.
I want other people that can complement my skill set so that
we can become a fighting team instead of everyone that looks
(24:31):
like me. Everybody has to line up and do
what I say do because that never, it never works because
you become the bottleneck to every decision that happens.
So we must find individuals who are complimenting us.
I don't want to do my, my assistant, my executive
director, I call her Jasmine. I don't want to do that work,
but she loves that work that drives her.
(24:53):
She loves putting things together.
Spreadsheets make my head hurt, right?
She loves getting the weeds and,and finding the, the, the
things. And, and now we come to team
meetings. We all get a chance to, to share
our gifts around the table. We have another one who's
building out some systems for usright now.
She loves that work. I mean, I didn't even know if
she did this stuff and she's doing amazing.
(25:14):
But that happens when somebody asks for help.
But some of us, we don't ask forhelp.
We we think we know it all. And that's a bottleneck.
That's why I say you're a bottleneck.
You are a bottleneck. You are a bottleneck.
If you are looking, if you are doing the whole work yourself,
you're never going to, you're never going to scale.
You always. We call it aces in places.
Aces in places, right? As you see the whole this CEO
(25:36):
and leadership position are changing, younger generation
coming up with less experience of leading and that's happens,
you know it in technology, youngCEO that has got a like a $15
million investment, he's 27 years old.
How these people they going to lead?
I'm not saying they're stupid ifyou're watching, I'm not saying
(25:57):
you're stupid, but how they going to lead the future that we
going toward right now. Yeah, I don't, I don't look at
it as that. I look at like when I talk to
like the young kids, like if I ever get a chance to go to speak
to high schoolers or you know, junior, junior high schoolers, I
always call them leaders in the moment because somebody is the
(26:17):
being the leader in that classroom.
Someone's always being looked upto.
So I don't know what the shift is happening.
Even though we're going more tech, we're going to AI, We have
a lot of things. And I don't know what leadership
now looks like I know to look like for my generation.
I'm not sure what it's looking like from their generation right
now, because here's a generationwhen I spoke for the United
(26:37):
States Air Force Academy of new cadets who have come through
that lived through the pandemic and never had a high school
graduation. I just went to my 30 or my 35th
or 5th, 40th high school reunion.
They don't have that. They're not going to have that.
They had a drive by and during the, during the, during their
(27:00):
graduation, they got their diploma with mask on and, and,
and in a car window. They didn't have the social
skills that we came up with. So there is a, a, a movement
that's, that's coming that I can't identify with because I
haven't had that experience, butthey've had that experience.
So how does leadership, the empathy look in their world that
(27:21):
I can't really see right now? So I, it'll morph.
It will change. It will, it will shift.
I've still believe that the softskills are going to be needed,
very much so, because if we don't have it, it becomes more
transactional. Even though we have artificial
intelligence or advisory intelligence, as Sonia Dumas
always says, yes, we have that. But on that stage, in the
(27:45):
moment, I can have AI help me write a speech.
It's not going to deliver that speech and shift to the moment
the way I shift. Right When I asked the first
question, my conversation yesterday was championed.
It was innovation and the Champions mindset to this
massive company. I started by saying, what's the
(28:08):
one word that comes to your mindwhen you hear innovation and the
champion's mindset? And I threw it up, use the AI
threw it up on a slide that we built the word cloud around it
and that drove where the conversation went.
How many speakers do that? Can AI actually jump in and,
and, and, and ask the question? You can ask the question, but it
can't read that room that fast with my experiences to
(28:31):
understand where I can shift it.Maybe we say it can, but with
the emotion, with the content, with I can look at you, I can
look at you in the eye and see what you're thinking right in
the moment and then shift right to the CEO and then go over to
the other person. It's it's that is what we want
to bring into the conversation and makes us more human and
going back to leaders, that's where we have to be.
We have to be the ones to coach the younger generation to say
(28:55):
these are the skill sets you have the technology you have
this you're building these thesemulti faceted companies, but the
skill set is still needed that one-on-one communication with
individuals. And so let me help you
understand how to do that so that that's what I would offer.
I talked to some of the younger generation people and I told
them, hey, would you just call that person?
(29:18):
No, I, I send them a text. They don't want to get engaged.
They don't they, I don't know. Is it the fear of engagement?
Is the fear? Is it social anxiety?
I don't know what it is, but that conversation that you and
I, we have or that simple phone call that changes everything, AI
cannot replace that. Yes, texting is good, but when
(29:39):
you pick up a phone and you callyour mother and say, mom, I was
just thinking about you, I love you, rather than just sending a
text, that's a whole different approach.
Absolutely. Like I was talking one of the,
you know, high possession leaders.
They, they got 200 fifties, 50 or 55 employees.
And we were debating and I said,when was the last time that
(30:02):
actually you pick up a phone andcall each of them?
And he said, no, I sent it like a mass e-mail or I said 365
days. One phone call, add your day is
going to take probably 30 seconds.
Hey, John, I'm, I'm just up herein, you know, third floor.
You don't, you know, see me? I haven't seen you or maybe I
(30:25):
saw you once. I'm going to thank you so much
for your hard work. I'm here if you need anything.
30 seconds done, 1A day. Why we can't do that?
Yeah, it's, I think it's the theway we are wired now.
We, we have this, the Zoom callsand we have the text messaging
and we use that and we think it's 2O4 connection.
(30:46):
It hits the same part of the brain of, of us coming together,
but it doesn't have the same type of effect.
So, so, so let me, let me share why I would go out and use this
now as a strategy, not the texting.
I, I mean that's, that is one way to do it.
Another way is to have the zoom calls.
But I came here. You don't want to be in front of
(31:06):
you in a, in a conversation. And so now this becomes a
strategy that you can use. So I would teach the younger
generation, get on the flight, get on the plane, go see
somebody face to face, right. So that's what I'm doing with my
executive. Now I go and I will fly to San
Francisco, I'll fly out to Portland, OR and I'll meet down
(31:27):
and guess what I get, I get a lunch, I get an hour and a half
of that CE OS time instead of a 15 minute little phone call if I
get the 15 minutes. But now we're talking about
family, we're talking about lifeand we're planting seeds to do
business together. And I might not even ask for
business, but we're we're, we're, we're getting in
(31:47):
relationship. And I think that's what you're
saying, right? Building relations.
Building relationships. I talked to somebody, said I
didn't get what I want. I said OK, you plan what kind of
seed? You plan.
You planned Apple. You want orange?
I'm not going to happen. It's not going to happen.
It's not going to happen. You plant seeds for apple, you
get apple. Do you do the orange?
(32:08):
You get orange. What you plan what you're going
to get, That's nurturing the relationship.
That's so important right now through the leadership between
your upper level leaders and themedium level and the low body
owner. It's so important in family,
friendship, everything else. I think we are missing that part
(32:29):
and we are responsible our generation to kind of push it
and help these kids and say, hey, don't miss out on this
software scale. I think think the the other
thing we can do, and I've I'm a big proponent of this, is just
there is a power in saying no. It was hard for me.
(32:51):
Very much power, right? It's very hard.
It's hard to do. It took me so long, John, to
learn how to say no. This the no is a is is it's it's
a. It's a great answer.
And so if I say to a person, no,I I need to see you in person
before I close this deal. And but you got to be willing to
(33:14):
walk away from the deal. If the person say, well, we'll
just go find somebody else. Good.
Because I want to do, I want to build a relationship.
That's one way to force people to understand the value of the
handshake, the value of a relationship.
Looking somebody across the table, eye to eye.
It's a it's a great, not only this is great skill.
(33:36):
You wouldn't go, I mean, with mywife, you know, I wouldn't have
come up to her after the first day and said, Oh my gosh, you're
the woman of my dreams. Let's get married tomorrow.
It ain't. Going to happen it.
Ain't going to happen, you know?Now she's in the right mind, but
I want to do things for I want to show her how much I care
about her. So maybe it's flowers one day,
(33:58):
maybe some candy the next time. I'm trying to figure out what
she likes, what's her likes, what's her dislikes in the
relationship. I'm trying to get to know
somebody, but I'm not asking forher hand in marriage until we
have had some courtship for a lot.
Maybe it's a year, maybe it's two years.
And then we find out, yes, this is the person I want to be with.
(34:19):
And we've explored, you know, with each other through, you
know, relationship building. So why are we doing that in
business? I'd send an e-mail.
I said my product, we do this all the time on LinkedIn.
I, I see your LinkedIn profile. I said, here's my business.
This is what I want to do. Let's, let's, let's make some,
let's make it happen. And like, wait a minute, we're,
(34:41):
we're married now. Is this, is that what that's
going? On you get all those LinkedIn
weed messages. All those messages and we do it
in e-mail and all those things. And so people, what did we do?
We delete them. We, we could, we see them come
in, we delete it out or we don'topen them.
We know this is going to be the spam.
And so we don't engage in the relationship because we feel
like they're not, they're only trying to do a transaction with
(35:02):
us. Who do we respond to someone
that puts in maybe the LinkedIn profile, a video?
Hey, I was looking at your, yourprofile and I see that we have
these people in common. Oh, you're, you're a Razorback
too, You know, so we're trying to get to know somebody through
the commonalities of what we have together instead of just
saying, I want to do, I just want your business.
(35:22):
Yeah, that doesn't work. I get those people and then I
simply respond, how can I serve you?
Yeah. And then of course, they don't.
I'm back. I said, whoa, this guy is weird.
I said no, It's just you got to build a connection.
You know, you have to connect with people and learn and
educate yourself. Then you can, you know, give
(35:43):
them your offer, right? It's not like right off the bed
I said, hey, let's get married. Exactly.
It's not going to happen. But right now, what is the one
thing that you focus a lot rightnow?
Is it the speaking or leadershipcoaching?
The speaking drives everything. So when I say speaking, I'm a
business person who just happensto have a story that people
(36:04):
engage with because I don't do it one directional.
It's not me pontificating what I'm thinking onto and projecting
onto somebody else. We're going to have a dialogue
and a discussion about it even in a groom of 800 people.
I want to make sure that you arediscovering.
(36:25):
There's this whole model back then, it's built in 1955 Joe
Harry window model. And so it's I won't go through
the whole thing, but one of the windows is in the blocks of four
quadrant Model 1 of the windows is the unknown unknown.
So things I've yet to discover about you and things that you
have yet to discover about me. So I have failed if I have not
(36:46):
understood or gained anything from my audience that I've been
front of for that 45 minutes to 90 minutes that we are sharing
this time together. What I want to do is make sure
I'm learning two or three thingsfrom the audience that I can
actually put into the presentation in real time
because they're discovering based upon some story I may have
shared. So I'll give you an example.
(37:07):
I do an active, sometimes I'll do an activity, it's it's called
the the change experiment. Or have people stand up and then
they find a partner, they face their partner, they take a step
closer to their partner, they look their partner up and down
with significant intent. And then now that's freaking
people out. And then they go backwards side.
They make a, they make one change about their appearance
without their partner knowing. They turn back around, they
(37:28):
guess the one thing that was changed and they sit back down.
So now, so why would I do this? So the first thing I'll say is
what was the first, what was thefirst activity action I invited
you to do? And people get, a lot of people
get it wrong and somebody will say, stand up.
I said absolutely stand up. How many said, Oh my gosh,
another freaking speaker's aboutto ask me to get up and move out
(37:48):
of my comfort zone. And they're all like, all right.
So now I say, what's the productthat you're trying to promote
and get out? You think people are standing up
for your product right now? You got this great idea.
Are they standing up for you or are they doing like you just did
me? Why we got to change, why we got
to move this? And I just want to sit here.
(38:09):
Just talk to me, dude. I don't want to, I don't want, I
haven't even had my coffee settled yet, right?
So they're resisting what you'reputting before them.
So then we say, OK, what's, what's the next sequence?
And they get the next sequence wrong.
The standing up, the looking at you and all that stuff.
I say, now you got a product andyou don't even know what you're,
how you're going to market it because you can't even get the
(38:30):
sequence right. Right.
Like a oh man. And so now they're down, they're
scrambled, they're taking notes,They're they're they're taking
pictures of all the slides because they know that it's this
is exactly the behavior that they're going through.
And we go all the way through this whole process of them self
discovering and reflecting it back to me.
And then when I invite them to sit back down, I say, how many
of you put yourselves right backtogether?
(38:55):
They had 90% of the room. They all went back the same way
they were before we even startedthe activity.
I said because we change is never sustainable.
So you haven't learned one thingin here.
You've gone through this conference for three days and
you're going to go back and do the same thing that you just
came here with you. You have to shift, you have to
change something if you're goingto want to make a change.
(39:16):
You can't just be the same person.
So it's a very easy exercise, but they're discovering their
own resistance to change. They're discovering how much
they revert back to the same wayit's going to be, and now we
give them an action step that they can actually implement.
Shifting and changing. I talked to somebody said, yeah,
you say it's easy. It's not easy to shift and
(39:37):
change for something you have done for so many years and step
out of your comfort zone. I said no, the first step is
important but why you think people they are?
Is it like a really fear of stayout of the comfort zone or or
unexpected changes, unknown territory?
What is it? It's all the above and I and
(39:58):
when I so I'll ask them, I'll ask them that question and so
and will popcorn answers around the room and and people, many
people will say it's I don't know what's going to happen
next. What are you going to ask me to
do? So every year and.
You get them thinking you. Get them thinking right.
Then they're they're saying what?
I don't know what's, I don't know what they're going to do.
And so when someone says I just,I just tired.
(40:21):
I just want, I want to stand up.I said, yeah, because we stand
up like how many times a day? And they go, oh, yeah, right.
So are you tired every single time you stand up?
So why'd you resist me asking tostand up?
You stand up when you go to the lunch.
You stand up when you go to the bathroom.
You stand up when you go to the bed.
You stand up when you came down here and walked down to this
conference room. Why you resisting my invitation
(40:42):
to stand up? So that gets us into that
conversation. We resist it because we we have
a fear of the unknown. What's going to happen next?
We have a fear of I don't know what's going to be asked of me.
Maybe I'm going to be I'm going to judgement.
I'm going to be seen. You know, right.
So all all of it is, is is validpoints.
But are they? Because we said earlier in the
(41:05):
show that fear is a story we're telling ourselves that has not
yet happened. Do you think it's illusion?
It's illusion, right? Because you believe what I
believe. I think fear is illusion.
And a lot of because we haven't tested it, we haven't tried it,
but neither have we tried faith.And that's faith is something
(41:26):
else. That's that's right.
Like I want this bottle, bottle of water that we have here,
right? And I believed that the person
who I asked to bring the water was going to bring it to me.
I didn't know if it was going toshow up or not.
I just asked for it and it showed up.
It was physically in my presencecoming to me when I believed
that was on the way. I have a question for because
(41:47):
you were in the Gulf War, you'rein the military.
I want to go back to that. I was in there when the bullets
is coming is coming toward you. I don't know what it is, John.
You get to the point that you'renot afraid of anything.
And then when you come back to civilian life, you said these
people are crazy, why they're afraid of this?
You get to the point I always tell everybody during my time I
(42:09):
was in Iran, Iraq war. And then I said, you know, I
lost so many of my soldiers and I was in a squad leader anyway.
But you get used, you condition yourself.
I might die in next hour, 5 minutes, but you OK with it?
I don't know what it is. You accept it.
And then when you come out of that and you go to the civilian
(42:29):
life or to the real world here and say, what's wrong with these
people? Why they're afraid of?
Because we condition ourself. There is a phenomenon that
happens. They they started this,
scientists were looking at it with World War 2 and the drops
that were happening, bomb bombing runs, drops that
happened in England. And so the sirens would go off
(42:51):
and then part of the city would be hit and you know, from the
bombs that were coming down. And eventually people wouldn't
even go into the shelter. They were just walking around
the street because it didn't impact didn't hit them.
The, when the, when the bombs fell, it wasn't in their part of
the city or whatever, right? So they just, they just went out
and did whatever they were goingto do and they didn't go down
there. So there's a found, I don't know
(43:11):
what the, I don't know what thatphenomenon is called.
So I apologize, but that's, that's the conditioning that
happens. So we become invincible because
we survived the firefight. We become invincible.
And when we get back home, that does not go down.
It creates a gap. And so now we're at this level
(43:32):
and we have, we've elevated fromdown here in our mental state of
what is possible because we survived it.
But we didn't, you know, we justgot, we didn't have our name
that day, right? Yeah.
I always told everybody your name wasn't up.
Your name wasn't up right? And so now you go back again and
the gap gets even wider and you go back again and the gap gets
(43:52):
wider. So there is this.
We, we need to find ways to get ourselves back down to what we,
I want, I don't want to call it normality, but get back to this.
This the state that we were in prior to us leaving for that
conflict because we're seeing things that is not natural.
(44:15):
It's funny. Not that, but it's funny.
The difference between my wife and myself.
We are totally different creatures.
We are totally different. I don't even want to own a gun.
My wife, she's got all kinds. He's got Glocks, he's got
everything. That's.
Good. What happened to me in that
(44:36):
moment when we talked about the war is I realized that a bullet
that kills somebody destroys an ecosystem, an entire ecosystem.
So maybe that person that signedup, that served was the only
person that pumped gas in the community that they were living
(44:58):
in. They they were the only one that
had the grocery store that couldget this thing done for the
community. And when that life goes that the
whole ecosystem is gone, it doesn't come back.
It's it's just destroyed. And I said, how do I have a
right to take that ecosystem, right?
I mean, I get it in war and where, you know, I understand
(45:19):
that piece of it. But what I don't understand is
how we could be so callous with something that we have never
created. And I think feel I have a right
to take that from somebody that is that's that that mess with my
head for a little while that I destroy.
(45:40):
I'm destroying ecosystems of a life.
And I don't know what their family was doing back wherever
and how that's that's now messedup because of me or or what,
what, what if somebody's got my life or what, what all what's
the ecosystem that would have destroyed for the same thing?
(46:01):
Same thing, right? So now son doesn't have dad
can't go and ask the question that he need to ask to make
something else happen that was going to save another life.
The cure to cancer, the cure to whatever we we've destroyed it,
right? And we don't think that far
ahead. We can't see the value of going
back to our earlier conversationof you were the winner.
(46:22):
You were the one person that onelife, that one life to be here
that earned the right to be here.
And I just taken that from from you.
That's a. Did you start thinking about
that? Yeah, it's, it's very deep.
Is. It really different ideas,
different analogies, but it's a very deep conversation.
(46:45):
I've been there. You know, I always say when you
take somebody's life, it's always going to be with you.
It's always there. It's always there, but going
deep in there is just really is hard like.
That's why, you know, that's whyVietnam Veterans, they went back
to Vietnam to make reparation with the families because of
(47:09):
what war cost on the inside of aperson, right.
I don't care what your politics are.
I'm what I'm saying is to that individual, that psyche, that is
a very difficult thing. I mean, well, I won't, I won't,
I won't go there. I won't, I won't go there out
this far because I won't. I don't to down the down the
road, but it's it's very difficult to pull a trigger.
(47:30):
It's very, very difficult. It's a very difficult.
And then when you do it, there'sno way back.
There's no way back. Everybody's saying that there is
no way back. It would inside.
It wouldn't stay with you until ages.
I don't think we understand. It's very hard.
It's very explain to ordinary people that they haven't done
it. You're right.
If somebody out there right now is struggling with the fear of
(47:53):
doing, fear of judgement, fear of achieving, fear of whatever,
what advice do you have for them?
My advice is to look at other times in your life where you
have adapted around the fear. So what were some smaller steps
that you took that you know thatyou were successful in and
(48:14):
compile those. Maybe write those down and say
when was I champion in this moment?
When did I not let the fear holdme back?
But I pushed through that fear. It was the first time that maybe
your guy, we were playing football and the, the person
about to come tackle you, you don't know what that's going to
feel like. You push through that and you,
you run the ball anyway and you get tackled.
(48:36):
Oh, that wasn't so, so bad. So now you, you're able to, to
do more of it. So you're always going to get
more when you push through that wall of fear that's there.
What is coming in 2026 for you? What is the special plan?
Because I know you're cooking something.
Yeah, I'm always cooking something #1 the, the, what I
(48:58):
want is more time with not more time, with more opportunities
and experiences with my daughter, with my son, with my
grandchildren. Right, you're honing on that
I'm. I'm, I'm on that like nobody's
business right now. And I'm, I'm understanding it
from a different perspective. I think what I also want on the
(49:19):
business side is being able to take the ecosystem that's being
built right now and multiply it.So here's what I mean.
The keynote speech is just one aspect, but I'm finding that
executive CE OS are now asking for the fireside chat they want.
(49:42):
Can I come in and talk to their,their leadership team and let's
put everybody through that. RE3, the register way action
model where we have the reckoning, the revision, the
renewal. Because when you think about it,
it works in six different ways. It works for the individual, for
those 3 and it works for the team that you're coaching.
You're for those because you cansee where people are.
(50:05):
And the reckoning, the language is different than the revision,
which is different than the renewal.
The language in the reckoning is, man, why are we going to do
this? What what's going on here?
Why are we going to change? And the revision?
Oh, I think I see a pathway. We can, we can align this in
this. So we're seeing vision and in
the renewal, man, this is hard. This is really hard.
But I see the, we have, well, wehave a pathway forward.
(50:27):
We can't go back to the way it used to be.
Those are three very different distinct pieces of language that
people will use. And you can be at A reckoning
moment in one area of your life and a revision in a total other
area of your life and a revisionand a renewal in another area of
life, right? So right now I'm in a reckoning
moment with my daughter, right, which just moved into a revision
moment, right? And so now, but with my son, I'm
(50:49):
in a renewal moment with him because we are moving in a place
where he has just taken over a, a basketball team in Canyon
City. He's building and there's no
going back. So he's, he's, he's amputated
the, the, the, he's made the decision to become the coach.
So he's amputated the fear of whatever that might have been to
be the head coach. And now he's building the
program and he's running into all the obstacles and hurdles
(51:11):
and, and the phantom pain of doing it differently.
All this stuff that he's moving forward right right now and I
can help him through that, that piece as he's building.
It What would you tell a person right now?
Laying down the hospital bed andtomorrow they're going to
amputate his leg or arm, whatever.
He or she is going to face a newlife, a new challenge, which is
(51:34):
they don't know. They haven't seen it, they
haven't felt it. They can't even imagine.
They were scared. What would you tell that person
right now? Yeah, it's, it's, it's hard
because every, everyone is so different.
I would offer to understand who your network is of friends or
(52:01):
family that will not allow you to fail because there there
going to be some dark days, there going to be some tough
days because you're going to have to relearn everything.
You are going into a renewal phase and a renewal phase only
happens when a commitment has been made.
When the doctor amputates my left leg, I cannot get it back.
(52:22):
So now I have to learn everything fresh again.
I have to relearn how to I have to learn how to move a
wheelchair to a prosthetic appointment.
I've learned how to put on artificial leg.
I've to learn how to walk on theon the Walker walk between the
four bar on a Walker, crutches to cane, cane to free walking,
free walking made a running. All these things are going to be
new and fresh. So make sure that you understand
(52:45):
you are in a new spot right now.There's no going back to the way
it used to be and you have this incredible, incredible life
that's going to be ahead of you.But you have to have the vision
to see it. John, thank you so much man.
It's always a pleasure talking to you, Chad, and when you're
learning from you, I listen to all your, you know, podcasts and
(53:06):
listen to your speeches. It's amazing, man, It's amazing.
Thank you. Thank you for being here.
I look forward for many, many years of friends.
Absolutely.
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