Nathan Andres: Authentic resilience — a tool to overcome adversity

Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now, today's guest is Nate Andres. We talk about making a positive impact. His mission is to make the world a better place, one human at a time, by building authenticity and resilience in others. And that's what caught my attention about Nate when we connected, is he talks about authentic resilience and we dove into that. Now, he's got 25 years experience in HR. He's been all over the world, Japan, Singapore, lived in all sorts of different countries, experienced all sorts of adversity as well that has built this resilience in him.

I mean, he's been through earthquakes, tsunamis, 9-11, discrimination, and everything else. We talked through all that and what it takes to be resilient and what the definition of it really is and also what the definition of authentic resilience is. Y'all know me, you know, I think authenticity is a superpower and it's not enough out there. There's not enough people really truly being their authentic selves. So we dove into that and we talked about core values. We talked about the definition again of resilience and what it is and what it isn't. And his real model, you know, R-E-A-L, there's a very specific acronym that walks you through how to become authentically resilient. Which, like I said, I think is more important now than ever because look, things aren't getting any easier out there.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. I really, really think more people need to hear this message. So let's make it happen. Nathan, Andres, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing? I'm good, John. How's it going for you? It's going well. It's been an interesting year and a half, if nothing else. So I'm really interested in this conversation we're going to have about authentic resilience because I've had to be quite resilient over the past few years with all the chaos that's happening right now. And authenticity, I always talk about as a superpower. So I'm excited for this conversation and to dive into it. Before we do, you have a rather unique background, my friend.

I looked in the show notes and I looked through some of your stuff and you have, I mean, talk about resilience, 9-11, earthquakes, tsunamis, discrimination, like you name it, you've been through it. So could you back us up? I want to talk about those things, those impact and how they impacted your life. But I also would love to understand your true origin story, like growing up, you know what I mean? Because I always am curious about where people get their DNA to do what they're doing right now, you know, and then from their parents, from their environment, whatever it is. So if you could kind of start us like as a kid growing up, I'd love to just learn a little bit more of that. And then we can dive into authentic resilience because I think this topic is more important than ever right now.

Love it. Well, thanks for that huge, wide wingspan of a question to open up like a long, long time ago. You know, actually, I'm actually back in my home state here in Ohio, where I was born and raised. I'm actually just sitting at my brother's house and doing real normal things like house sitting, dog sitting. Nice. I grew up in Columbus, Ohio. You know, lived here until I was in like high school. And then I, my family moved to Chicagoland. We moved, grew up in, in that suburbs of Chicago. And then I went onward to Wisconsin, to Marquette University. So I'm kind of a Great Lakes state guy. I've lived in a variety of the kind of upper Great Lakes states. But, you know, I think I had this interesting background with my grandparents.

My dad's side lived in Japan back in the 70s. He was affiliated with the U.S. Marine Corps and he was a double doctor. I was a veterinarian and he was a PhD. And so he was helping the Japanese government in the 70s do large farm animal health and things that we know now as Wagyu beef and Kobe beef and things like this were part of this kind of way to create a Japanese brand of cattle that could be for the Japanese eating public, but also became kind of world-renowned. But ultimately, when they came back from Japan, I had this kind of inkling that maybe there's some interesting things over there. And when it was time to go to Marquette, I ended up studying Japanese. I was in the first class of Japanese at Marquette that was offered.

And funny enough, people always ask me, well, how did you choose that? I grew up speaking a couple other languages and romance languages is kind of boring for me. And, you know, Japan, maybe there's something with my grandparents. I got to explore that. When I looked at the catalog, it was, to be honest with you, I was not a morning person after all those years of high school. It was Chinese, Mandarin at 8 a.m. or Japanese at 10. And I was like, I'll take Japanese at 10. Yeah. Long story short, you know, I ultimately went to Japan after I graduated from Marquette with a degree in political science. I thought I was going to go save the world as a diplomat. And it didn't really happen that way.

Although I would tell you that in many ways, I kind of became a diplomat in my international business career. I kind of became an accidental business person, definitely an accidental HR person. But after five years working in Japan, moved back to the United States. I worked in fashion, which was really great. It was before there was an apprentice or Project Runway. That was my job. I was sending runway models down, you know, at New York Fashion Week. The first week I was, you know, started. But doing Japan-related business to expand the brand. And that kind of fell flat after 9-11, which I'll tell you later, you know, disaster and I are kind of friends. We're friendly. But, I mean, again, 9-11 earthquakes and tsunamis.

Those sound like three pretty big disaster scenarios that I have not partaked in. I mean, obviously 9-11, but I wasn't there. You know, I experienced. But earthquakes and tsunamis, I've thankfully avoided. Blackouts, hurricanes, typhoons. I've kind of had them all in my rep. Well, but fast forward to being an HR leader and a business person, you know, I got involved and worked in Major League Baseball for six years. Oh, cool. And then ultimately joined and did HR, practiced HR for luxury retail. And that's what took me back to Asia. I kind of also became an Asia-specific business person. And living through, you know, the great earthquake, 3-11, after 9-11, the blackouts, and then certainly the tsunami, nuclear disasters, a couple of typhoons.

I moved to Hong Kong. I lived there for eight years and ultimately lived in Singapore for the last four years, where I've just come back to the United States not long ago. So, I've kind of been an international Asia-packed HR business person by accident. But, you know, when I look at my original dream to be that diplomat, I thought, yep, I kind of was able to be a diplomat just in a really different way. And often that was about helping people be amazing at their jobs and also, you know, helping businesses expand and drive top-line growth and really create momentum for big brands and big businesses. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB Sales membership.

It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are Filling the Funnel and Driving a Close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like ChatGVT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to JBarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code PODCAST at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now, let's get back to the conversation. Love it. Let me ask, we're going to get into that, but let me ask about the culture because I've been to Japan and I found Japan.

My uncle lived there for years and he also lived in Singapore and I've visited Singapore quite a bit as well. So, what's your favorite part of the Japanese culture? Because I was only exposed to a bit of it, but I was fascinated with it when I was there for, I was only there for a couple of weeks. But I guess what, if you were to say like your favorite part about that culture compared to other cultures that you've been around, would you be able to pinpoint there something specific about them that you really stands out for you? Yeah. That's a great question, John. I mean, awesome. I mean, there's a lot about Japanese culture that's really special. And many people who live in the region, Asia Pacific, say that, you know, Japan's culture is kind of culture on steroids compared to the rest.

And that's true. I would tell you the thing that sticks out for me is this spirit of what they call gambare. Gambare is this do your best, give it your all, put more gas in there. Even if you can't, you know, get through everything, you kind of have this gambare spirit. And there's a gambare, these language words that kind of rally cry for give it your all, do your best, keep going, don't give up. And, you know, this is part and parcel, I think, why resilience also lives in my blood, because it was kind of part and parcel of the living experience there. You know, when you live in a country and you're the only Caucasian person for miles around, you know, jeez, I got a lot of stories about that.

You kind of learn to be scrutinized and looked at in all the ways and kind of keeping that gambare spirit of keep going and don't give up and take that control back to do your best is something that's quite unique. There's no other word in English that translates back to that gambare or gambare kudasai. Yeah, it's a very unique flavor of Japanese culture. And if you live in Japan, and anyone who has lived in Japan will tell you that you hear gambare, you hear gambare. It always means good luck. It means do your best, try hard, fight. It means a lot of things, but it really is a special part of why Japanese culture is as resilient as it is. Because it's collective, and it's bringing people together, and it's communal, and those really help drive, I think, what makes Japan really unique.

Yeah, I love that, because, you know, for me, it was, I only experienced it a little bit, right, two weeks, but it was almost like organized chaos. Like, everything, I couldn't believe, like, how many people and how many things were happening, but that it all just worked. And I don't know how to explain it otherwise. It's like, when you're crossing the street, it seemed, you know, that ridiculous where, like, the five streets come together, and then whatever that place. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that, like, my uncle's like, okay, are you ready? And I'm like, for what? He's like, when that light turns, like, just walk straight. And I'm like, well, of course. I'm just, he's like, no, no, no, just follow me.

I'm like, all right. And then it went, and I was like, oh, my God. And I thought everybody was going to smash into each other and everything else. And it just happened that everybody just went in the exact spots they weren't supposed to go to. I'm like, that was fascinating. Yeah, there would have been people who got killed in America if that happened. You know, people would just be in the middle just fighting with each other. So I'm excited to get back. Actually, my nephew, he's a sophomore at San Jose State, and he got the same bug. I don't know why, because our uncle is not living there anymore. But he's going to Japan for a semester abroad next year, which I'm really excited. He's learning Japanese.

It's a great experience. And if you want to have him connect with me afterwards, I'm happy to, you know, give the tips. Because it's a great place to kind of find yourself. You know, that old phrase that we used to hear growing up, you got to go far away to find yourself. I think that living in Japan is probably about as far as you can go from Columbus, Ohio. Yeah, probably. And certainly, I found a lot of myself while I was there. Love it. Awesome. Well, let's talk about that resilience, because I think this topic is more important now than it ever has been in a lot of ways, because a lot has happened, obviously, in the past two to three years here. As far as, and it doesn't seem to be getting any easier, if you know what I mean.

I mean, things just keep getting more and more complex. People are, you know, especially in my industry, sales and tech sales specifically has been beat the crap out of for the past two years. And, you know, there's a lot of reps, quite frankly. Something that drove, you know, an interesting thing for me to think about and I'd love to unpack here with you is I've been in sales for 28 years, right? And I've seen the ups and downs and whatever. And for whatever reason, for me, for some reason, I like the chaos. You know what I mean? And I've never tried to be somebody else. You know, if somebody were to ask you what my superpower is, it is authenticity, because I just think that lying is too hard.

And I'm not that creative. But I've had reps come up to me after being in the industry for, like, two, three years or whatever and being like, dude, like, I am burnt out right now. Like, I am straight up burnt out. How have you stayed in this field, in this industry for 28 years? And I get, you know, and I talk about my why and my values. But I can't really put a finger on why, like, I enjoy the chaos. I've been doing this for, you know, for so long. And I'm like, yeah, bring it on. Like, my whole company fell apart last year and I'm rebuilding it again. Yeah, it sucks, but fuck it. Let's go. But so many people, and I want to talk generationally, too, of what you're seeing out there. But could you, first of all, let's define what you mean by authentic resilience.

Let's start with that. I think it's great. And thanks for sharing part of your story there, John. That's incredible, 28 years, 29 years in sales, because that is resilience, if I ever heard it. You know, and sales is hard. I love salespeople. They respect them so much because they're getting beat down. You know, and I often have said, and recently kind of started to phrase it this way, is, you know, rejection is redirection. And I think that, you know, when you learn how to drive in that way, it's pretty amazing. But authentic resilience is a superpower. And I think the first part of that, authenticity, is really about understanding who you are. It is your core values. It is your core strengths.

It is all of the things that you believe about yourself. And then the things that you limit yourself in believing about yourself. And often that's where we get trapped up. But I think if we spend time to really get to know ourselves and then release all the crap that isn't serving ourselves and really understand who we are from the inside out. When we go out in the world, the environment helps, you know, bring the things outside in. So, it's an outside in, inside out understanding of self. And when we know who we are, exactly who we are, what we bring to the table, that is how I look at what authenticity is, is knowing yourself. And people say, well, that's so, you know, isn't that being selfish?

And I say, absolutely not. Because selfish is very different than being self-ish. Really? You know, it's a spelling issue. Okay, but, you know, if you look at the word selfish, like brownish or greenish, selfish is understanding, you know, and being knowledgeable about self. Who else better than you knows that? Right? And I think, you know, I remember hearing this early as a child and thinking that, oh my God, you know, I was selfish of that. But, you know, when I was introduced to you have to love yourself first before you can love anybody else, it's the same thing, right? And you think that's egotistical. It's like, no, no, no, no. You better love yourself. Because if you don't love yourself, the one that you have the most intimate relationship with, how in the world could you possibly love somebody else?

How are you going to show up or other people, you know? Right. Yeah. How do you find that, though? Because I think people are searching so hard for that. And there's so many questions about, you know, who am I? Who should I be? And all that other stuff. And I'll go back to like Simon Sinek's why, right? Yeah. So Simon Sinek talks about his why, and I think that's brilliant, right? Understanding your why. But I also think it's a little bit of a, it's a selective thing for people because I don't think you really can understand your why until you have some experience behind you to understand what drives you. So I think why I park for maybe a little bit later in your career, right? Not in your 20s and stuff like that.

I mean, you could try it, but I don't think it's as relevant. Values, though, I've gone through the value. Like when my dad passed away back in 2021, it really threw me for a weird, I was in a weird spot for about a year. I was stuck in neutral. And I remember going to Sedona, Arizona, and doing a soul event, like basically taking three to four days to myself without my wife, without my daughter, and going on this soul adventure where, you know, I talked to shamans and I talked, you know what I mean? And I did palm readings and all this stuff. And some was better than others. But really, it came down to like re-centering on my values, right? And saying, okay, because I always thought I had, I always thought I had good values, but I never really put them pen to paper and thought about every single one of them and force ranked what's most important, what's least important.

So, but I've always been a rather self-aware person. I absolutely know my strengths. I absolutely know my weaknesses. What about people who aren't as self-aware? Like, how do they, how do they find that authentic self? How do they find without, with all the noise that is of what you should be and what people look like and all these Instagram and that shit? Like, how do you really center on that for, I think, a lot of kids who are struggling right now? Yeah, it does start for me and the work I do with my clients and with teams and the organizations I've worked in, it always starts with values. And it's about really understanding where those come from. And I do, I do a series of, of, of exercises with clients around, you know, envisioning people that you admire, looking at, at, at people who are out there, either in history or celebrity or in your intimate knowledge of, you know, people that are in your life.

And it's about looking for the things that, that you admire in others. And also looking at the end of your life, doing some visualization about the things that bring you abundance, or at least what you believe will have brought you abundance and doing some work in that space to uncover those core values. And then, you know, when we start to identify the small short list of what those might be, I often, you know, say, all right, to my clients, now I want you to go out and experience those. Because if generosity is your core value, then the next time you're standing in the grocery line and the person who is short $2, you know, or their credit card isn't working, you might be that person that then just automatically says, here, you tap my card and you move along because generosity shows up that way for you, right?

But if efficiency is, is more of your, your core value and you start to experience the same grocery store line and the cashier is, you get in yakking and having a, a chit chat with the person in front of you. And you're like, come on, chop, chop, chop. You're like, I gotta go use the self-checkout. Well, that's a realization of how your value shows up. And it's about going out and then experiencing yourself with your values. Does that, I see you light up there, John. Does that make sense? Well, so I, yes, because it's very, it's very relevant to me, but, but so here's my question on that one. Like, let's, let's dive into that. I'm, I'm both, right. I like, I feel like I'm super generous, but I'm also efficient.

I guess you could say that as a word, but impatient is another one. I don't know if impatience is a value. Like that exact scenario. I'll be sitting there and I'll be, you know, look, you know, behind somebody who's trying to pay. And if I can tell they're like struggling, you know what I mean? If I can tell they're, they're, they're all like they're counting their change and those types of things. And then I'm going to be short. I will literally be the first one to say, Hey, you know what? Here's bye. Bye. Sometimes where I'm sitting behind somebody who's fumbling around and everything like that. And I'm like, just get the fuck out of my way. You know, like, please, I need to get somewhere.

So how do you like, let's use that as a good example. Cause I could experience both of those very genuinely in my life that I want to help somebody who I can see is in need. But I also am very impatient when I want to just get somebody the hell out of my way. So how would you unpack that for somebody like me? If I'm sitting in front of you as one of your clients and I'm like, yeah, okay, that's a great example. I want to be generous, but, and I'll do that, but I'm also wicked impatient. And so I get people out of the way. Is it situational? Cause value shouldn't be situational, right? They should be core. Generally are not situational, but what I'd shift to next for, for the conversation is, okay, so John, what, what do you, what do you believe your core strengths are?

You know, cause if your strength is, you know, patience or in your case, you said your shadow strength is maybe impatience. It's then how do you hijack that moment for yourself to get into a place of patience, right? You know that about yourself. And then the second and maybe the last part of that is really about purpose. You know, what are you living your life to do? What is your mission? You're North star. If your North star says to you, get out of my way, cause I'm here to make money and I'm just only going to do that. Then, you know, then you can pay the guys fair, you know, or pay, pay money at the register and say, all right, we're out of here, dude. Let, and let's keep moving. But you know, these three buckets go together to really form authenticity.

And that's really what we mean by that first part of being authentic is understanding how you show up with those core values, how you use your strength, and then you align those to making impact through the purpose that you want to, you know, have it on this life, on this plan. The other part of the definition really is, is about resilience. I was going to, I was going to dive into that next. Cause there's you, you break down a bunch of different types of resilience, right? Or, or, or adversity, if you will. Yeah. Adversity. Listen, I couldn't write a book about resilience and not talk about adversity. Uh, cause guess what? It's here to stay. Uh, but you know, resilience, I think is an equally interesting definition.

And I'll tell you, I kind of got pissed off during the pandemic because everybody was talking about resilience. Oh, we're so resilient. We're learning resilience. And we just have to keep going and we have to just do these things. And then there's a big difference between what I define as resilience and other words like endurance or perseverance or even hardiness. And when you look into the scientific literature, also, these are very distinctive things that researchers and psychologists look at differently. But resilience in my definition is really about taking control back from an adversity. That's part one. Shit hits the fan. You take control back of that, right? You can allow that fan to blow that shit all over you if you, if you want.

And that's, uh, but, or, you know, you can figure out how you're going to take the control back. That's step one. The second part of the definition of resilience is really that how you use the learning of turning that fan off or cleaning up after the mess or whatever, that you learn something and you use it so that you're the next time that you step in shit or shit hits the fan or whatever that analogy is, you're more prepared to do that. And when you put authenticity together with that, which is your unique imprint of how you show up, all of the life experiences that you have, the learnings that you've had, the troubles, the other resilience moments, the learning that sits in your brain in combination with then moving through that adversity, that's the power pack of authentic resilience.

That's the supercharger. Cause when you use your purpose, your core strengths and values to get through the hard crap, you're unstoppable. And I would guess, John, this is my question back to you is what has made you unstoppable for 28 years in sales? Is it a combination of, of some of those things? What is it? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think the, the values piece for me, you know, I fundamentally believe this profession when done right is the greatest profession in the world. When done wrong, it's one of the worst. And, and I, and because when I say done great, I have a true passion for allowing myself, I look at my core values, right? Um, authenticity, make it happen, give a shit family first, you know, and give 1%.

And it, and it's one of those things where it's hard to explain, right? Cause I, I think freedom also is, I took freedom off a little while ago, but freedom is one of my values too, to be able to do what I want to do. Right. I, you know, and you've heard the same thing. It was like money, money doesn't buy happiness, it buys freedom. And that for me, I've always wanted to do my own thing. And I've always wanted to empower others to do their own thing. And so sales to me is an avenue for that, because instead of going, for instance, to college, which I think is a bit of a joke these days, um, especially, you know, the four year college when you don't know what you want to be, when you grow up and spending, you know, $300,000 in debt to get a $40,000 a year job.

I think that's just ridiculous. And I'd rather have a kid come out of high school and be introduced to maybe sales first and say, Hey, before you go, what everybody's telling you, you have to do, and you don't know what you want to do. Why don't you maybe try this profession out, make a few bucks and then come back and then decide what you want to do. Right? Like I wrote a book with my daughter of, I want to be in sales when I grow up. And the goal there is to get kids into sales and understand that it's a profession. So there's been a drive for me to realize what sales has done for me and the flexibility and freedom that it's given to me and the desire to see other people who are stuck in positions and who don't, you know, who want to see the fruits of their labor be rewarded.

Right? Cause I've always been the type of like, Hey, if I work harder than you, I should get paid more than you. You know what I mean? I'm not the merit guy, the 2.5% merit raise because you lived here for three years or, you know, let's talk to universities. Like I think tenure is bullshit. I honestly think tenure is absolute bullshit because it just breeds laziness. I don't understand. Okay. Good for you. You worked your ass off for 10 years and now you get to coast for the rest of your life. Like that doesn't make any sense for me. So I think that's what's driven me to stay in this. And also, I guess it's probably a little bit of a chip on my shoulder in the sense that I've never taken money from anybody else.

I've never taken VC funding. I've always said, I'm going to figure this out on my own and I'm going to chart my own path. And so I think that's what's driven me to stay here is because I don't fit in a box. You know, like I've tried the corporate thing and it just didn't feel right for me. And I didn't know, I didn't know why back then. But now I do. My parents were entrepreneurs, even though they never said it, right? They both worked out of the house. And so I had that DNA in me and my dad was a total fuck you. Like my dad was a mechanical engineer, electrical engineer who was smarter than anybody I've ever met in my life. But his problem was he felt like the work would should speak for itself and he never self-promoted.

So he was always the fuck off anti-establishment because I'm so good at what I do, but I shouldn't have to promote it. So he fought hard, but he fought in a different way than I fought. And so I have that DNA, which drives me every day to stand up and say, all right, I'm going to figure this out again. And one more piece to this, I'm not a historian. I have a terrible memory and I hate history and I don't read books. I just go forward. Yeah. So that's probably my thing. It's like, and I've made a lot of mistakes because I kind of probably learned from somebody else who's been there, done that. But for some reason, I just, I like making my own mistakes. I like fucking up myself. I like learning from that and moving forward.

And I get bored with reading somebody's book who's done it and tells me how to do it, quite frankly. Freedom is a value of yours for sure. And I think it's super clear just hearing, hearing that narrative come through. Um, and I'm glad you touched on something that that's also due to my heart, which is rumination. You know, we often as humans, we're actually the only species on the planet that has this unique capability to both ruminate on the past and forecast future and see, see these things. And actually, if you divided up, you know, a hundred percent of our, our daily thoughts, you know, of being either in the now versus being in the past or being in the future, what you would find is in the now is about 5% and everything else is, is to the sides of that.

So, you know, not thinking about history is actually a good thing in terms of being fully present with yourself. And that's a big part of understanding who you are as an authentic person. But also, you know, as you're going through hardship, uh, you know, and going through what I call the reality curve, you know, being fully present for that is actually a massive strength. So, you know, I, I think it's one of the superpower gifts of what I call on my real model, um, you know, facing reality is if you can be fully present. So I kudos to you, John, for, for that, because it's not easy for people to really stay fully present. Um, cause we're often thinking about passing. We're always trying to, you know, forecast our future.

Well, that's the, you know, one thing that I came up with my daughter, you know, she was probably seven or eight at the time. And I remember getting really, really pissed off of, you know, the election, you know, my wife and I were kind of screaming at the TV and all this other stuff. And, and I noticed that impact on my daughter and, and she started getting angry for no reason other than mommy and daddy were angry. And I, and I remember I looked at the, I was like, oh, damn it. And I shut off the TV and I said, look, sweetheart, like, we can't worry about that. Cause we can't control that. So let's brainstorm of what we can control. And, and we came up with this little acronym, which is EAT, eat.

So effort, attitude, and how you treat people, right? You control your effort, whether, you know, how hard you work, you control your attitude and whether it's positive or not. And you can control how you treat other people. You can't control how they treat you, but you can control other people. So we do this little handshake every morning where it's like, all right, well, can we control today? Right. And I think that's always been my thing is like, there's, I constantly have to remind myself of past. I can't control that. It's already happened. Future. I can't control that. That hasn't happened yet. I can control what's happening right now. I can control, I'm not controlling in that way, but this conversation, you know what I mean?

Like how, how this experience is, but I can't control what's going to happen tomorrow. So I like the stress that I have and actually with everything that's happened to me personally over the past year and a half, I've realized that strategy at this point, like looking at a year out, looking six months out, like I have no fucking idea what's going to happen in six months right now based on what's going on in this world. So I wake up every day just trying to win today. I'm just like, how can I win today? Cause if I can win today, then maybe I can win tomorrow. And if I can win tomorrow, maybe I can win the next day and I'm not going to win every day, but I'm going to stack those wins up and, but I'm going to control what I can control.

So that's really where I've always been because, you know, past doesn't interest me and the future is too unpredictable in a lot of ways. I love that. This is exactly why I wrote your real life, which is the book that I, I really proud of. And your real life is really about keeping real conversations, exactly what you're defining. You know, I look at then this power pack of authentic resilience and I was trying to figure out what's the key ingredients. Cause people always ask me, they're like, Nate, how did you like do fashion runway stuff and then work in major league baseball? And then you went to like tsunami land and earthquakes and, you know, and I'm like, I don't know there's something to it.

And what it came out to be was what I talk about in the book, um, which is the real model, you know, resilient people, which is kind of what you're, you're echoing here is, you know, they do four key things really, really well. Resilient people understand reality. That's that first anger. They know how to move through the, the reality curve, as I call it, you know, and a lot of times people just get stuck from the acknowledgement to the acceptance and they just slide down that slope of suffering and they can't ever break out of that. They often can't see what I call. Advertunity, you know, when adversity and opportunity collide, if you see that, and if you see that as a, as a salesperson or as a business person, or as a, a strategic thinker, you see the dark part of the shit that's happening, but you also can look inside of that and say, Hey, actually there's something else here.

What is that? I'm going to breathe life into that and then build my action plan. In order to build the action plan, you have to move to the second part of the model, which is all about energy. You know, time is finite. And I learned this the hard way through some of my experiences was you just ran out of time. There's, you can't do anything about it, but what you can do is put your energy in the right places. You know, we have four wellbeing batteries and I, I constantly tell teams of people and people who've worked for me and around the world in global wellbeing is if you're conscious and aware of your four wellbeing batteries, you can supercharge them. And if you know what your purpose is, particularly as you move to the A, which is all about, you know, authenticity and you know what your purpose is, that can be a supercharger that helps you stay focused.

It's also, you know, the last part of this model that is probably the most important one. And you talked about it, which is community. Uh, and that comes with leading your life with love, you know, love, we all talk about it. Um, and I think we should be talking about love in business a lot more because the love of money, you know, and we love top line growth and we love bonus payouts and we love sales commissions. There's a lot of love that we're talking about in business, but what we're not talking about in business is the love that I defined as how you forgive yourself in those moments that are really hard, how you forgive other team members, how you forgive and look at forgiveness generally so that you can continue to move on to the next business deal, you know, but it's also about community and building the collective.

It is about the words that we use. And it's also about having a sense of humor. You know, we love laughing at work and sometimes we're laughing about the crap outside of work, but if we're really trying to build a resilient team and a group of folks, and sometimes we've got to laugh at ourselves that, you know, we cannot take ourselves too seriously. Uh, you know, and so, you know, those are the ingredients and that spells out real. It's a real model. You can kind of go backwards forward so you can start anywhere in that thing. But the idea is when you get real, you're going to be able to get through anything. And if you power pack that with a loaded purpose and authentic self, look out, you'd be able to do anything in your life.

And then you unlock things like you're talking about, John, which is freedom. Then, you know, making it happen, get shit done. You know, that's absolutely, you know, comes together when you, when you take a real approach. I love it. So let's talk about energy a little bit on the, on the real factor, right? Cause I think there's so much time and energy people put into things that are, are energy sucks, right? People, right? Processes, things you do. And I, I have this little kind of grid that I help people go through. I just, I mean, I'll help people go through. I posted about this and this is kind of how I think about it, which is I did this kind of X, Y axis of stuff that helps me achieve my goals is on the higher end of the X axis and does not help me achieve my goals is on the lower end.

And then on the Y axis to the right is, um, gives me energy into the left is takes energy away from me. And what I do is I go through a process of putting everything that I'm doing into one of those buckets, right? So for instance, if it gives me energy and helps me achieve my goals, I go all in. If I, if it doesn't give me energy, but, but helps me achieve my goals, that's where I eat the frog or I outsource it or whatever it is, right? I compartmentalize that. If it gives me energy, but doesn't help me achieve my goals, those are like hobbies and things that are, I think are important. But if it doesn't give me energy and doesn't help me achieve my goals, I cut out as much of that as I possibly can.

So how do you, cause there's so many different energy sucks with what I mean, social media, email clients, prospects, employees, how do you help somebody center on and, and manage their energy? Cause I've gotten over the years, I've gotten better at not reacting when I get hyper pissed off about somebody who's coming at me. But that took a while for me to develop that skill to not react. Cause I'm a very high D on the disc scale. So when you hit me, I'm going to hit you back hard. And that's my gut reaction, right? I don't lose, right? So if you hit me, I'm coming after you and we're going to escalate this through the roof. So I've learned to calm down a little bit through various mechanisms of asking questions, taking a breath, counting to 10, those types of things.

But how do you help people identify what their energy sucks are and where they should be focusing their energy? I love this model. I'm totally, I'm totally taking it, Johnny. Please do. Yeah. It works. Um, this is a lot of what I talk about in my book as well is, is, you know, when you're looking at energy, it's about recognizing energy, positive activity and energy negative, you know, energy negative activity. These kind of two are the fundamental buckets. I love the way you've, you know, even subdivided it, uh, and connected that to goal achievement. Um, you know, when I look at it from a general point of view of wellbeing, you know, the energy piece is what also drives our overall wellbeing and helps us, you know, perform, perform in life.

I like what you've done here. The way I do it with my clients is really, we systematically look at all of the things that are happening in someone's day. We do what I call an energy audit and we, we systematically categorize, you know, similar to what you're, you're talking about on your X and Y. And we look at, does this thing that you're doing in your daytime, whether we're talking and sometimes I, this is business clients. Sometimes these are life coaching clients. It just depends. But the activity is the same. You know, if your day and, you know, I think it was Dale Carnegie that said this long time ago with that matrix is like, you know, you, you control your day, your day doesn't control you, you know?

And I think so many people, when we talk about time management, they allow that kind of thought to, to be there. It's like, I'm in control of my, of my time, but, but in, in reality, they're not, they're, they're just mismanaging energy. So if by looking at the list of activities and then identifying, you know, if that activity is, is energy positive or energy negative, it brings awareness to, to people so they can understand, you know, why their time gets sucked away and why they have batteries, you know, their physical batteries being drained or why their mental battery. And a lot of people at work, particularly sales folks, they're, they're constantly spinning. Like, how do I look for that opportunity?

How do I look for the next deal? How do I make sure we, you know, we move on and, you know, rejection is redirection. Like I got to keep thinking, thinking, thinking, well, that's a mental exhaustion at the end of the day. If you don't recognize that some of, you know, the activity that you're doing is actually not charging you up, as you said, you know, giving you energy, then calling attention to that enables you to kind of reshuffle that portfolio of energy spend. And that's what it really comes down to. Yeah. It's almost labeling it and recognize it. Cause I don't, a lot of this stuff that I've realized over the years is until I, you know, I might've done some of it here or there or kind of, but without recognizing it and labeling it and, and being like, look, this is what that is.

Like until you, until you go through that process, it's, it's, I think it's an aid, like there's some understanding of it, but there's not like a concrete, oh, okay. Right. Because when I started doing this energy audit to a certain degree, I started realizing like these people that are in my life are, I mean, there are people who every time I talk to them, I light up and I feel like, you know, conquering the world after I have that conversation with them regardless. And there are other people where I just walk away from those conversations, just feeling exhausted. Cause they're always negative. They're always, you know, whatever. And I, and I just dealt with it because they were friends, they were, but when I really sat down and said like, this is impacting me every little, going back to actually where we were talking before this, like the decision fatigue of, of wearing the same shirt every single time.

I thought it was a joke when Steve jobs and, oh yeah, decision fatigue. But then when I started wearing the make it happen shirt every single day, I was like, oh my God, that matters. Right. Like that, that does help. And then when I, when I started labeling energy suckers, if you will, and recognizing who they were in my life and slowly, not immediately, people say, oh, you know, cut off. No, not immediately. I mean, these are friends. These are people that I've had from, you know, high school and stuff like that. So I started slowly removing them, not removing, but limiting them and almost bucketing them in an area of like, okay, I know what to expect from this person. So I need to be mentally prepared to have this conversation, but I'm only going to have it in these scenarios.

I'm not going to let them intrude on my day anytime they want. Do you think there comes a certain level of maturity of experience with a lot of this stuff where you've had to have experienced some of the adversity that you like, for instance, that you've been through and some of the energy sucks that you know have wasted your time? Or is this something you can nip in the bud early in your career or in your life? I think a little bit of both, you know, I think I wish that I would have, you know, entertained some of these tools early in my life. And so I always advocate kind of getting started, you know, with building a portfolio of investments for your well-being. No different than the portfolio for your finances, but, you know, do those investments in coaches and therapists and counselors early on.

Because when you do that, you're actually investing in yourself and getting to use these tools so that you benefit from that and get to a life of well-being and joy faster, sooner, and you experience those moments of well-being and joy earlier in your life. That said, I think to your point, you know, there's a story in the book about a lady I used to work with and she did this energy audit and she did a very similar tactical approach that we kind of drew some columns and said, here's the things that are draining my energy at the moment. And then we did an associated list of, you know, those people who were kind of associated with that. And what she found was that in her youth, when she was younger, she loved going out drinking and, you know, carousing with the girls and doing all the things that they would do.

And over time, she re-evaluated, looked at the only thing that they really had in common was getting blasted, you know, every once in a while. And that wasn't something that she wanted to do as she had moved on in her life. And so, that kind of movement from toxic positivity, like, yeah, this is so great and it's all going to be fine and don't worry, you know, let's just keep going, is a realization, you know, that you can come to at any time in your life. But I think, I'll come back to what I said first. I think if you start applying some of the tools earlier in your life, you get to a place where you're clearer and you get to well-being and joy faster. Our lives, I mean, I just turned 50 last year and it's like, oh, wait a minute.

How did we get here? Shit, I'm 48 and I'm coming up on 50 pretty quick. I'm like, damn. And so, you know, I have the benefit of the doubt of having gone through some catastrophes and some heavy shit, but like everyone does and everyone has that story. So, it's about how do you move from the hard stuff to enjoy the good stuff. And I think it's about investing in some of these tools earlier. If we were to start to think about our well-being that way, in a different way, like we would our financial portfolios, I'd say I think there'd be a lot more happiness out in the world. I totally agree with that. Last question. I think there's, I don't know if there's a great answer for this one, but I'm curious from your, you mentioned toxic positivity, right?

Oh, no, it's great. It's great. It's great. You know, you're like, oh, no, everything's fantastic when you know it's not, right? Everything happens for a reason. That's my favorite. Yeah. Actually, I've come around on that one, quite frankly. I think that, I used to say that, unfortunately. And I think now I realize how insensitive that is to say, because you tell me my dad died for a reason. I'm going to punch you right in the fucking eye. Yeah. Right. But have you ever read Matthew McConaughey's Green Lights? No, it's on my list. It is on the list. Oh, Nate, please. Don't read it, by the way. Don't read it. Listen to it. Okay. It is. All right, all right, all right, all right. It is unbelievable.

And the whole concept of Green Lights is, no matter what, like, things happen in people's lives. And a lot of people look at him as red lights, oh, woe is me. But his perspective is, yeah, that was shitty. But Green Lights, I wouldn't be here if that didn't happen, right? So, not necessarily everything happens for a reason. So, I've shifted and everything happens for a reason, too. There's always a silver lining if you look hard enough. That I can buy into, right? Because I get to look at my dad, yeah, there are a couple of silver linings. It got me to wake up, you know, as much as horrible as I was, it got me to realize some things about myself and change some things about myself type of thing.

So, my question more is, with somebody who's maybe experienced, you know, has kind of gone through the values and is self-aware, when you have friends who are those toxic positivity ones where you know their life isn't in great shape, but yet they're constantly, oh, no, no, no, things are great. Yep, things are good. You know, and they're never really allowing that real deep, like, and they might do it through therapy and have other conversations with other people. But as a friend, have you ever had to approach somebody who is toxically toxic, has toxic positivity or practices that to hide a lot of the things that they are going through? Have you ever had to do that? And how would you? Yeah, that's a big question, too, John.

I know. You should change the name of your show to make it happen with big questions. Paul and Slark, you know, I fundamentally think as an executive, as a manager, as a human, that one of the gifts, the greatest gifts that we can give to another person in any other context is listening. And we've gotten really bad at that. You know, we're terrible at really listening to understand and being curious about what's really going on with the other people that we're sharing life with or that we're talking to or that we're leading or our clients. And so I think if we took a little bit more time to listen, and I love this quote by Mark Twain, you know, he said, if we were supposed to talk more than we were listening, we'd have two mouths and one ear.

You know, if we really spend the time and invest in that and developing our sense of empathy, because it's been interesting to come back to America after 15 years and watch the crazy show that is America Inc. happen from abroad and come back and be right in the middle of it, it's like people are horrible at listening to each other. They're horrible at, you know, really giving gratitude for their fellow, you know, humans, you know, down the street next door. And that, I think to answer the question, you look at toxic positivity, you've got to break through that. And I think the tool is really empathy and empathetic listening. And if we did more of that, then I think there would be less toxic positivity.

And we have to get away from all the catchphrases in English that just, you know, we greet each other on the street like, hi, how are you? I'm fine. Thanks. How are you? How's it going on? But you don't really, it's, oh, everything's going to be fine. You know, everything's going to work out for a reason. It'll be, I'll be okay. That is a throwaway, you know, thing. And I think if we really took stock and stopped, as it was the old stop, drop and roll, I think we should stop, drop and listen, you know, and really kind of take time with each other again, we'd get back to a place where community and love could really be a thing that, you know, does make the world go round. And I think that's part of where we need to be.

Yeah, I think we need to get back to that quite a bit because to your point, I think we've gotten away from it. You know, we're, we're, we're more divided now than we ever have been. And, and I feel it. And I think there's got to be a way to get us back to center here. And, and I, and actually let's circle all the way back. I think this does come into the form of values, right? Because I always say like, if you and I have the similar values, we can argue, but we'll come to a, you will come to an agreement at the end of the day and it'll be a respectful agreement. But if you and I have different values, we're just going to tear each other apart. And I think that's what's going on right now. It's like, and you know, we can go macro on this, but I think if, if 10 years ago, you would ask 20 years ago, you would ask what are American values?

You'd get pretty similar answers from both sides. Now you ask both sides, completely different answers. And I think that's what the problem is. We've gotten away from the core values of what made this country great in the first place. You know, despite all our warts and everything else that we have and how we got here. Don't, you know, I don't want to talk about the, you know, the horrible history of, of this country and how we got here, but some of the core values definitely kind of got us in a positive spot. Now I think we're losing that and I'm trying to figure out a way to get us back there. Cause, cause we need to, uh, as, as just humans in general. So I think your work in, in doing this with entrepreneurs and, and other people who listen to your, your broadcast and to your podcasts is, is, is a fantastic way to do that by bringing not just business people and business leaders, but also psychologists and other people who, you know, who are in this work because in the end we are in it together.

We're all in it together. So appreciate that. And they, well, look, there's a fascinating conversation. I think we could keep going here, but, uh, let's tie a knot on this. Uh, where can people find out more information about you, the book and everything else that you're working on right now? Yeah. So your real life is the title of the book. It is available on Amazon, uh, in Kindle format, working on audio book at the moment, but it's hardback and softback. You can also find me at Nathanandres.com and check out my blog and other work that I do. I'm very active on LinkedIn, talking about wellbeing and human resource management. Um, I also am on Instagram speaking of distractions that are positively interesting.

Uh, you can find me at Nathan Andres underscore coach, uh, where I do put some content over there too. And sometimes some videos and connect with people. I just love people. I love to be, excuse me. I love, uh, that, you know, people keep it real, uh, which is why I wrote you real life. And I'm hoping that it's, it's helpful for people to, to get to a life of wellbeing and joy. That's what I want for people. So thanks for having me on. Absolutely. Nate, I appreciate you coming on. And I think, uh, I'm going to highly recommend everybody take a look, you know, grab this book and, and, uh, try to digest this a little bit and see if you can, if you're one of those toxically positive people out there, maybe stop saying everything's great every once in a while and take a step back and have a real conversation.

Cause it's not great out there and it's okay. It's okay that things aren't great. So Nate, again, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it, man. Amazing. Thanks, John. All right, everybody. Um, like I always say, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts here, go out there and make somebody smile today. Cause no matter how bad your day's going or you think it went, you make somebody smile today and you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests.

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