Nina Sossamon-Pogue: TIPS for Turning Setbacks Into Success

There are people that life happens and they choose a path forward and keep going and there's people that life happens and they get stuck in the thing that's happening and they can't figure out a path forward. So that is life happening to them because they lose control of their own life. 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. And today's guest is Nina Sassamon-Pogue and Nina has an incredible background. She's a former USA gymnast, an Emmy-winning news anchor, successful tech exec and now a best-selling author of the book called This Is Not The End, Strategies to Get You Through the Worst Chapters of Your Life.

And I think a lot of people need to hear this conversation right now because through her background, she has had some incredible hardship that she has had to get through. I mean, she was on her way to the Olympics, she bombed the meet, so basically at 16 years old, she didn't get there and it really crushed her, she had to get through that. Then she went to Louisiana State, she became a news anchor, got fired for just because of layoffs, the peak of her career and a whole bunch of other things. And she talks about those moments as this, like this happened to me and how not to stay in that moment and realize it is just a moment. And we talked a lot about right now what I'm seeing out there, which is a lot of people are going through some really hard stuff.

And for some weird reason, everybody thinks they're the only ones. I mean, a lot of you have heard me or seen my post and, you know, when I post a failure or something that went wrong for me, I get all these DMs from people being like, dude, thank you. For what? For sharing your failures because I thought I was the only one. And so we talked a lot about that. And she gave some very tactical things that we can do to start moving in the right direction. She has this TIPS acronym, which is about timeline, isolate people and story. And it's about looking at this moment in your life. And it couldn't, you know, it's not just an hour, a day. It could be a month, could be a year, could be multiple years.

But looking at it in perspective of your entire life's timeline and how to put things in perspective. So tell me what you think about this conversation. And if you like it, share it with somebody who is struggling. She's got to, I would highly recommend that book, too, for anybody who's struggling right now. So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Nina, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you? I am doing great. Thanks so much for having me, John. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's good to have you here. And thanks for your patience. I screwed up the first time around we were going to record this. And so we're back on track here. I appreciate your patience on this.

Second time's the charm. You know, I think a lot of people need to hear this conversation we're about to have right now. It's about resilience and getting through it because I think a lot of people are struggling right now. I don't think I know. I'm sure with you, just like me, you get a lot of people reach out to you, you know, just, hey, yeah, you know, could you give me some advice or whatever? So before getting into that, because you're more of an expert than I am here, talk to us a little bit about your, I'm going to go through, I mean, you've had some crazy shit, right? Like you went five years old, the Olympics, you bombed the meat, you went to LSU. I got to talk to you about the washing shacks, jockstrap.

That's really weird, but it's cool. And then newsroom and all this stuff. But before we get to those, like this moments in your life, growing up, where'd you grow up? I didn't actually notice where you grew up. Like where did you grow up? And could you give me a little bit of, or the team listeners, a little bit of context on the environment you grew up in as far as your parents? Like what did they do? And where did you come from outside of your resume, outside of LinkedIn? Yeah, I think that's really important. And I talk about a lot of things outside of your resume is what makes you who you are. So I'm a Navy brat. I grew up all over, the youngest of four kids. Dad went in enlisted, you know, got worked his way up to chief of the boat.

Smart guy, but didn't have the education or the finance to jump in as an officer. Then he went to officer candidate school. So I'm the youngest of four. I lived all over the East Coast of the U.S., everywhere from New Jersey to Georgia to down in Florida and Jacksonville. Dad worked as a mechanic on aircraft carriers, so like helicopter squadrons and things. So we were all up and down the East Coast. But, and I learned, I found gymnastics early. It was kind of my go-to to get out of my house and to, you know, put me into somewhere. And that became where I flourished. And so no matter where we lived, there was gymnastics. That was my home base. And then I moved away from home. I was living in Orange Park, Florida.

Dad was stationed at NAS Jacks when I was in elementary school and middle school, part of middle school. End of elementary school, part of middle school, and I was winning a lot of gymnastics down in Florida and had the opportunity to move to an Olympic training center in Maryland at the time, in Silver Spring, Maryland, only Maryland, for those of you who know that area. Oh, I know it. I know it well. I went to University of Maryland, so. Oh, nice, nice. I know that. Yeah, I know that campus. So I went and, you know, high school was up there. And in high school, I was kind of the weird kid that left every day at lunchtime and went to train, you know, with the other athletes. So I went to half-day public school and was kind of awkward and nerdy and all the things.

And then got a, you know, didn't make the Olympic team, which you mentioned. We can talk more about that. And then went to LSU. So my origin story is sort of youngest of four, Navy brat, found gymnastics because gymnastics was my happy place and really flourished in that. And I feel like I was raised by my parents, but also really raised by my coaches throughout my life. That's so, I mean, I find it, the Army brat or the Navy brat, the kids that just constantly move around. How hard was that for you when, like, you know, at the ages that you were to be ripped up and say, all right, sucks to be you. We're going here, whether you like it or not. Like, were there times where you resented that or did you just adapt to it because that was just how you grew up?

So I was fortunate, being the youngest, so this is where that helps. By the time I was, I came along, dad was higher up. We moved less often. So we did every three years when I was really little. But by the time he was an officer, we had longer stents. He was always away. You know, he was on a ship my whole child life, my old childhood. I don't remember much of him in my life when I was young. We became very close when he was older as adults. But it didn't hit me as much as did my brothers and sisters who had to move in high school. Like, they still resented to this day. They're in their 60s. So to this day, it's a very much, very much a part of what makes them who they are. They moved so many times during high school.

However, I, like I said, moved away from home by 13. So I was in one spot for all of those years, 13 to 18 when I went away to college. So very fortunate to have those friendships, more so in the gym than in school, but some high school friendships too. 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 ChatGPT 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. Well, you found your tribe too, right? I mean, that, that, the, the, like you said, the gymnastics part of it, I think gives you a solid base to at least have a commonality with somebody, you know, and there's something in common. So it's an easy way. That's why I'm, my daughter's moving into high school right now and I'm like really want her to get, you know, she, she comes from a much smaller school and so they didn't have a lot of sports and organized stuff.

And I'm like, please get into some type of sport organized. So it's the easiest way to make friends. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, like it's a niche that you can dive into. So she's volleyball is the one she's, she's pretty passionate about. So hopefully she find her tribe there too. Yeah. Or it could be band or it could be something else. So just find your people. I did the same thing with my kids, really encourage them. Middle school was the worst. So thank goodness she got out of middle school. Congrats on that. High school for mine. Yeah. Find your sport, find your people. And then once you went to college, you got to do it all over again. Find your people, find your tribe. Cause they all went out of state to, they found good places for them and finding their people was such a key to having success in college and just having a good college experience.

But we know that as adults, you still got to find your tribe. You still got to find it no matter where you go, how old you are. It doesn't matter. Right. So let's talk about all these. I mean, you've had the, the, the kind of this, if you will, you talk a lot about this with like, this happened to me. So could, could you define what this is first? And then I want to back into some pieces of where this happened to you and where you, like, sometimes I'm guessing, and I'm just curious about like, you just evolved through it because you had to, and other times there was a conscious component to like what was going on. So could you define this for us so that we can frame this conversation? Sure. I use the word this.

My first book is called This Is Not The End with capital T, capital H, capital I, capital S. I use that, this, as an example of whatever's happening in your life. And because my this is different from your this, whatever you're going through is this. Like you're going through a divorce, this sucks. If you're going through, you just got fired, this just happened. So it's your own this. And there are big this is capital T, capital H, capital I, capital S is like that, like divorce, getting fired, losing a loved one, going through a traumatic experience, big things that take your life in a whole different direction are big this is. And then I talk about there are the capital T H I S is with just the T capitalized.

And those are this is that happen that you just have to deal with. That's, you know, you get in a car accident, and maybe you have, you know, you're in a boot for a while. And if you get your car fixed, and like, you can't keep going along the same track you've been doing, but you can get back on track. Yeah. Sooner or later, you can get life back going with the direction it was like the big this is you can't, you got to come up with a new plan. And then the other ones, you're off track for, you know, a few months of your life's plan, and then you get back on. And then there's the little this is like little lowercase T H I S is that happened every day. And those are the, hey, I just walked out the door and spoke coffee on myself.

I got to go, you know, change clothes, or I'm on my way to work, and I hit traffic or get stuck behind a train. And now everything's late. You walk in and you have your to do list for the day and 50 people hit you before you can even get to what you want to do. They all hit you with their things they're dealing with. So there, this has become yours. So that's what I mean by the word this. And I really focus on one, the big this is how do we move forward and get past those? And then those little ones, how do we just manage them and keep moving forward without them taking our mental health and our stress level off the charts? Well, and I think that's the thing I'm noticing a lot is that a lot of people, you know, I talk about how life is about momentum, right?

One way or the other, right? If when things are going good, it just seems like they keep going good, right? Like you see at the green light, somebody opens the door for you, you know, that like all just all these little positive things build up and it's like, man, I had a great day, but then the negative things tend to spiral downwards and these little this is when they pile up, they become a big this, but for no other reason than we just, you know, we just kept looking for the negative. So do you feel like, do you feel like there are people in this world that, that life happens to versus life happens for? You know, I hear people use that phrase, that phraseology, that way of talking. Sometimes I don't think of it that way.

I think there are people that life happens and they choose a path forward and keep going and there's people that life happens and they get stuck in the thing that's happening and they can't figure out a path forward. So they, that is life happening to them because they're, they lose control of their own life because they're not taking control and moving forward. But life happens to all of us. I talk a lot about the highs and the lows and I do this lifetime timeline and it's reverse resume stuff that's really fun. And life happens to all of us. There's highs and there's lows and all of those this is add up. When I talk about this and some of the imagery that I use is a boxer, like taking body blows.

You just see him like from this chin to his, like his whole core and he's just taking body blows. Like that's the, this is all day long. We're handling like the stuff. But if you manage a team to air in sales to your people, so you're in sales, you have your own, this is you're dealing with, they're adding up. And then you have, you know, the, the deal you're trying to close, whoever your advocate is in that place, whoever you're, you know, your champion is in, in whatever group you're working with. And then all the people who are the decision makers, they all have their own, this is and then your own team who's helping you build your deck or travel or do this stuff. They all have their own, this is, so just trying to get anything done, there's a lot of body blows coming at you and it adds up a lot.

So how do we manage through those efficiently, effectively get to the other side? Yeah. Yeah. And that's because I'm, it's one of those, you know, there's more than a few people that I know, obviously like who, who allowed that, this to dictate their entire lives. And, and I, I don't know how to help those people because it's almost like they, you know, you always say you can't help somebody unless they want to help themselves and they might talk about it, but they're still doing all the actions that are reinforcing the, this that happened to them. And I'll, you know, be very direct. Like my wife, her dad left and literally when she was like, I don't know, probably six or seven or something like that, but her sister, I think she was eight or nine and her sister was like 13 or 14.

And so obviously different from a maturity and a pre-buddy standpoint and all that stuff, 13, 14 year old girls. Now I know how ridiculous that whole stage is, but, but my wife was one of the, like, and she literally would in her head, she, she ran down the street as her dad was driving away in the car. So she has that in her head. But my wife was the one where she just said, I'm not going to let this define me. Fuck it. I'm good. You know what I mean? And she is massively motivated. She's like, you know what? That happened. I don't give a shit. Like I'm going to pass forward where her sister has let it dictate her entire life. And, and it's, and I wonder, is there, is there a mentality, a makeup, nature, nurture that, that creates that one of those two paths?

So help me understand like that kind of breaking point for this and what, why somebody might go in the, in the negative versus the positive. And then what do you do to help someone out of that? Who has been in that, this in one way, shape or form for years? I'm not talking, you know, a couple of bad months and oh shit, I had a bad quarter here and I didn't hit my quota. I'm talking 30 years, 40 years of your life. You're in this and you just can't get out of it. Okay. Have them read my book because that's the easiest way to, it's a lot for me to explain right here, but that is a lot. This is my research. This is what I've been working on. I don't have all the answers. I'm not a psychologist.

I don't have, you know, all the answers, but my answer to that, my solution for that is a mix of stoicism and cognitive behavior therapy and neuroscience. You know, our brains and the way we react to things, our actions, how, where those actions and behaviors come from. And then this concept of what we have control of and what we don't, which I pull from stoicism a lot on how we look at that. And then the cognitive behavior therapy, the switching good thoughts with bad thoughts, replacing bad thoughts with good thoughts. There's a lot of ideas around that. But one of the things that's really key, what I found, the people who do manage to move forward, who don't get stuck in whatever this is that happened to them, don't get stuck in their this.

And there are a lot of people who do. They're the ones who, they have four commonalities, the people who get out of it. So I have put together here, I call it my this framework, because, you know, when you're in the middle of something, you don't want to think too hard. And I'm not trying to be tricky, this framework. And I, and people are always asking me for tips. I became this go-to person in my corporate life, even after all my years on television and all my years in corporate, towards the end of it, I became this go-to person that people would come to and ask for help getting out of tough spots. It's like, you know, they book a meeting room and, you know, put a sink on my calendar and I'd show up in some meeting room with somebody.

I had like 200 and something people that reported to me, this would not be one of them, whoever this was. And I'd sit there across from this person and go, they'd always have their back to the glass wall, you know, kind of a sad face and go, I hear you're really good at helping people through things. And my first thought was, I'm not HR, I should not be taking this meeting, right? But the other part of it was, you know, I knew I was helping and I was telling them things and helping in different ways. So when I went back, when I turned 50 and my kids were out and gone, I was like, what do I really like to do? Where am I adding the most value on the planet? And those meetings were really where I felt like I added the most value.

So I stepped away and did the research and really started writing and thinking about it. And I got to this word resilience. I didn't even know that's what I was looking at at first. But resilience is your ability to adapt in a positive way to whatever happens in your life. So that adapt in a positive way is really key. So some people talk about persistence. Yeah, I was going to say, what's your difference between persistence and resilience? Persistence is, you know, go hard, stay at it, go down this road. So the best way to explain this is January 1st, 2020, when you woke up with your goals and your New Year's resolutions and stuff, you probably had vacations planned. I was going to get in shape.

I was going to make my money, different money. You know, I had my financial target, had my physical target. I was going to take this vacation with my family. Yeah, January, 2020. We all had that, right? Right. None of us could just persist and go hard and make those happen. We all had to adapt in a positive way to the world when it changed about, changed around us because of the pandemic and COVID and the way the world changed. So persistence wasn't going to work. Resilience is your ability to adapt in a positive way to whatever happens. So if you can also think of it, you can think of it that way. Can't double down and go hard. It's not going to work. You got to come up with a new plan. That's resilience.

So you can also think of it this way. Surviving is one thing and resilience is another. So surviving something, and you have people who talk like, I climbed this mountain or I survived the car wreck or survived a divorce or survived a parent leaving. Surviving it is one thing. I got to the other side of it. I made it here. Resilience is taking everything that happened from them and finding a new path forward with new knowledge. Adapting and resilience is your whole life on the other side of what you survived. They're surviving. Great. You got there. Resilience is all your lifetime after it. What are you going to do with the knowledge that you gained or the thing that you figured out? Right? So that's the difference there.

I still haven't gotten to my framework, but that kind of sets the scene for it. Well, we'll absolutely dive into it. Have you actually, have you ever read the book Green Lights by Matthew McConaughey? No, but I've heard good things about it. I'll add it to my list. You should. And actually, don't read it. Listen to it. Oh, does he voice it? Oh, he voices the whole thing and it's magical. That's fun. But I actually listened when I was going through a pretty hard time. My dad had passed and, you know, I was really just trying to figure out what was going on. And I listened to him and the whole concept of Green Lights is he explains all of these different things that happens in his life. Like what happened to you, right?

Like all these different, what could have been perceived as very negative things. But he looks at it and says, you know, some people look at that as a red light. Oh my God, what happened to me? He looks at it as a green light because it might not have, you can't see it then in the moment, but next year, five years from now, the reason that you're there is because that thing happened. So as bad as it might have been in the moment, it was a green light because it allowed you to be here in whatever moment you're in now. And I thought it was just a beautiful way because I used to say this and I really wish I hadn't because I now know how insensitive it is, which is, you know, everything happens for a reason.

I think that's a very insensitive thing to say to some people. Me too, but I know the sentiment is correct, but yeah. But that's why my shift to it is it, everything doesn't happen for a reason, but if you look hard enough, there's a silver lining to almost any scenario, right? If you look hard enough and that's what green lights is really all about. And so that, that framework, how do you shift someone's mind to, to look for the positive, to, to, to accept where they are and realize this doesn't define them. And you talk a lot about people feeling like this thing, this divorce, this thing, whatever it is, is defining them, but it's just a chapter in the book. It's not their story. Right. Exactly.

And that's what I say. And it's one chapter in your big life, your big, messy, marvelous life. No, we all have these big, messy, marvelous lives. And this is just a chapter in it. It's not the whole thing. And I always preface it by saying, it's okay to not be okay. It's just not okay to stay that way. Okay to not be okay. Not okay to stay that way. So, uh, the way in which I start thinking down this road and Matthew McConaughey's book sounds very similar to mine. I use my own stories to tap into, um, a way in which to explain why this works. And what I did is I went back and I looked for commonalities. How did I get through the things in my life? And then how did elite athletes or entrepreneurs or large companies, uh, go through times where they almost failed and they came back.

I use Lego as an example, you know, so many times it almost went under and then it came back and do some fun stuff around that. But my big, this is, let me preface this with, I, so I, I was on the cover of all these magazines as a gymnast and we're rooming with Mary Lou Retton and stuff. And then I didn't make the Olympic team. Shame, blame. Not yet. I hadn't blown out my knee yet. I just bombed a meet. You just bombed a meet. That's right. You just bombed a meet. Yeah. Bombed a meet. Didn't make the Olympic team. I mean, six girls go. And Mary Lou Retton and I roomed together a few times, but that was because my maiden name is Rofi and hers was Retton. It's because we're both ours. It's not because we were one and two.

Right, right, right. Like the year she won her first national championship at that nationals, I won Miss Congeniality. Nice. You and Sandra Bullock. I love it. Yeah. So I, you know, I, I feel like it's worth mentioning. So I didn't make the Olympic team. Shame. Thought my life was over at 16. Pull myself together, figure out a way forward. And then I go to college, go to LSU for gymnastics. Great. D1 school, doing great. And my freshman year, I blow out my knee. Now I've lost my sport. I don't know who I am without that sport. I've identified as, as a gymnast for so long. So I'm lost and making poor choices. I'm not going to say I got it all right. I used to, you know, I like the joke that I graduated in booze and boys.

I mean, but after my knee injury, I'd wake up and take my Percocet with a shot of Jaeger and try to get through, you know, just got through. But then I found journalism and I loved the newsroom and I had great success as a journalist, became a news anchor, great success as a news anchor. And then I got let go and budget cuts across the nation. And here I was, you know, top of my game and, and Charleston's favorite news anchor at that time, seven years in a row. And they let me go. They called me in on a Thursday. I won it on a Thursday. They called me in on a Friday and I think I'm getting a raise, like our bonus. And they little girl from HR, the woman from HR sits down and the GM says, per your contract, we are releasing you without cause effective immediately.

And I could, it sounded like he'd practiced it. Like it, he'd been doing it all day long. I was just next. Anyway, so then I had to pick myself up from that again, very public, public when I don't make the Olympic team public, when I blow out my knee in college in the middle of a meet public, when I get let go from TV, like none of this was quietly done. And then I figure out a path forward. I get back in television, have some big success. Won best news anchor in the Southeast. Yay me. Sort of a poke for them letting me go too, just to be honest. It's a little F you to them. Sometimes it's a good motivator. Yeah, I'm telling you, it is, it is. Don't get me wrong. So yeah, so then I, you know, and then I was in a real traumatic accident and honestly didn't want to go on for a little while.

I had a very dark time in my life. At 37, I really went through a dark time. But then figure out a way, path forward out of that. I get into television, I go from TV to tech, had great success in tech, was jumped into a friend's startup. And it was a SaaS company startup. And we went from 250 employees. I was just right after the angel investors had been bought out. Goldman bought out the angel investors is when I came in. So I wasn't in early startup mode. But from 250 people to about 1,200 and big IPO, Goldman was lead left. We did the whole thing. It was just amazing success there. One of the top 10 tech IPOs of the year. And so again, high success. So you get it. I had real high highs and low lows.

And so one of the things I look back on was how do I, how come I was able to do that and other people aren't? What are the commonalities between me? Because I always just picked myself up and kept going. And other people who get stuck and can't. Like your sister-in-law, like the people who just can't get forward and make something out of their lives. So their big this has become their defining moment. It's the peaked in high school guys. It's the, it could be a high thing too. You just get stuck in the moment. It's like when young people, they win the Olympics and moments afterwards, like this is the best day of your life. And they haven't learned how to use the word yet. Yes, it's the best day yet.

Otherwise, they're just kind of stuck on that. Because you could perceive that as the pinnacle. Like at 15 years old, I literally reached the top of the profession of the world. So it's basically, if you don't think about it that way, it's basically all downhill from here at 15 years old, which is a very horribly depressing way to think of things. And that's why child actors do so poorly. And that's why some young athletes who spend their whole lives training for something do so poorly once they've reached that pinnacle. So my concept is around that lifetime timeline. And what do you do next? Your now what moments? And I don't remember exactly where this question was going. I think I answered it.

It was the, it was the, this is like getting the mindset. Right. So it's this, it's again, I could choose right now to, I mean, we didn't get into it, but what happened to you later on, that dark phase, like I read about it, like that is, that would ruin most people. I mean, I would, I would, I don't know how I would react to it, but I know I'd keep going, you know what I mean? Cause what's the options in my head, but, but, but there are people that stay in it. So how do you change that view? What's the framework you use to walk people through of saying, Hey, it, this, yes, this happened. And this is where you are now. It does not define you. So, and getting them to, to see through the, the forest through the trees thing.

Right. And, and say, you know what? I can move forward from this. It's not like it didn't happen. It happened. It's a piece of me now, but it doesn't define me. It doesn't, it doesn't, it's not going to dictate my life now. Right. I talk about where do you put it in your head, especially when it's something you don't want to be part of your story. So in my case, um, I don't, I don't share this whole story often unless I, someone really wants to hear it if I'm on a mental health podcast or something. Um, but a very traumatic accident. And I went from reporting the headlines to being in the headlines and it got to a few weeks out, uh, afterwards, everything was still really a mess. And I remember standing in, they wanted me to come back on the air.

And I remember standing in front of the mirror with a razor in my hand thinking, if I just slice up my face, I won't be pretty. And they won't want me back. Or I could just take. How old were you, by the way? 37. I had three young kids. That's important that like, I want that. I want that people to understand. Yeah. This isn't just like a teenage girl saying, oh, no, no. You know, this is a 37 year old woman who is standing in front of a fucking mirror and wanting to cut her face because she thinks that that's a way out of this nightmare situation. Like Jesus Christ. Right. And then I thought I could just use this razor and just be done. I'm like, I've done a lot of stuff. Maybe I'm just finished.

My, my kids can make it without me. Like the world does. I just went through a really, really dark time and I got myself out of that. I put the razor down and called my therapist. Part of what I talk about is, you know, do you, you, you can't go through these big things alone. You need people. So let me get, let me give you. So just so your listeners know, I've been, people will look at me and think I've just been, you know, attractive and successful forever because I'm, and if you look at a picture of me and read my resume, that's what you would see. But what I talk about, right. But what I talk about are all the really the ugly stuff underneath the non-sparkly things down below the line. So if you draw your lifetime timeline, and this is my first tip.

So I offer this frameworks in four parts and it's called tips because people would always ask me for tips, T-I-P-S. And we're going to put it in a timeline. We're going to isolate it, pull in the right people and craft our story. But my favorite one to talk about is this first part. It's chapter six in my book. My daughter's like, mom, my friends are a mess. I have to do chapter six on them all the time. So the most important thing, if you don't hear any of this, or if you're in a tough spot, just listen to this next part and then get my book and read just chapter six. It's my favorite thing to talk about. But it's this concept of your lifetime timeline. So if you take a piece of paper, I do it a couple different ways.

But if you take a piece of paper and you, you know, turn it horizontal and you draw a line from left to right and you put zero on one in, you put a hundred on the other and you break it up in tens. Like this is when you turn 10, 20, 30, 40, 50. You make a lifetime timeline with an assumption you're going to live to be a hundred just so you, you know, can see what that looks like. And then with this lifetime timeline, you should start before we get into this by putting your successes in your resume stuff above the line where they are. When I was 10, I want a spelling bee. I never want a spelling bee. When I was 12, this is like, you put your own stuff in there across the top, things that you had success.

You took a, you, you got a degree in something, you got a certification in something, you got married, you bought the house, you did the things. So all the stuff goes across the top. And then below you put the tough stuff you've gotten through. You, you know, were bullied when you were little, you had a parent die, you, whatever it is in your life that you have gotten through, maybe you're parenting a child with disabilities, like all the stuff down at the bottom. That's hard that you are surviving. Because if you're listening to me right now, you have survived everything life has thrown at you. You have done it. Congratulations. You did it. And then you got it. So then this is a perfect segue to, hey, you listening, you've gotten through everything.

Put a dot on where you are right now on that line. So at that point, I would have been 37. I would have put my dot right there. Now I'm 20 years later, 57, putting my dot up there. So put your dot on that timeline and see where you are. So the best way to do this, this is the timeline piece, whatever's happening to you, put that dot on the timeline where it's happening. And now with some perspective, I can look back. And this is why I know this works so well. When I blew out my knee in college, I was 19 and I thought my life was over. Like I had spent my whole life in the gym. And you've talked to any young person who's a dedicated, committed athlete and they will tell you they've given their life to this sport.

They spent their whole life in a gym or my son played baseball in a dugout. You know, when he had Tommy John surgery and lost his sport, he's like, I wasted my whole life in sweaty dugouts. So I was 19, I could put that dot on there. And now I can look at it and go, wow, when I was 19, that, do a little math with me, that sport, gymnastics was 75% of what I knew in life. It was my life experience to that point. My life experience at 19 was 75% in the gym, right? Now, if I play it out to when I'm 50 and I've done all these years of television, all these years in tech, and I've got, you know, my kids leaving for college when I'm, when I turn 50, if I look at it there, now gymnastics is 28% of my life.

It's not my whole life. And if I do live to be a hundred, which I need to drink less wine and take better care of myself or bourbon or whatever the thing is. Those last few years are boring anyways. Yeah. Yeah. And I got it. So if I, if I, if I live to a hundred, um, then it's going to be 15% of my life. So it very much felt like everything at the time, but if you play it forward, you can see it's a percentage of your life. So these bad couple of years, even your, your sister-in-law with this bad big chunk of time, it's part of her life. And what's magical for me in this is I can put all my timeline stuff on there. I can see them, do the math and say like my first marriage, how many years was that?

That wasn't a waste of time. It was a chunk of time. I got great kids out of it. It's right there. I could just look at it differently because it's a chapter in my life. It's not my whole life. And I can see what that looks like. But the magic for me is I put that point on that timeline to where I am right now, even right now, I put that point on that timeline on my days when I'm struggling a little bit and there's all this blank space ahead. And I get to decide more than anybody else because so do you, all the blank space, it's like an open book ahead. You're on a page right now in your story, had some crappy chapters, you had some good chapters, all the people and places have filled the pages, but you're on a page right now in the book of your life.

If you opened it, if you had a book that was your life sitting on a table in front of you, like how thick is it? You know, what color is the cover? It's got your name on it. What font's on it? Like if you open that book to today, you're on a page and all the pages ahead are blank and you have more control than what goes into them than your spouse or who's the president or your boss. Like you're going to decide tomorrow, John, you can decide you like, I am done with all of this. I'm done with being a parent. I'm going to get like a face tat and I'm going to go like off the rails and get a Harley. I don't even, maybe you drive a Harley already and like go across country. Like, I don't know. Totally do something different with your life and blow it up.

Like, don't do that. It's a bad idea, but it is your life and you get one and you have all that blank space ahead. So that's one piece that's really exciting to think about. And I share it from a place of, I can't imagine if I had done some drastic things when I was 37 that I wouldn't have been here for all my kids growing up and their high school graduations and college graduations and flying up to New York to visit my daughter. She works in AI in New York and she's kind of my like escape pod into that. That young world. It's so much fun. But that would all not be there. So the timeline piece is the first. Whatever this is, this big giant thing, take it up all the space in your head, shrink it down and put it as a dot on your timeline.

It's just one thing. It is not your whole world and your big, messy, marvelous line. And then the next thing is the I and that's the isolate. So now you have your dot on your piece of paper. You draw a line in front of it and you draw a line behind it. And this is really key because when you isolate it, you can't talk about what happened beforehand. Not the woulda, shoulda, couldas. People, any good therapist will tell you if you're living in the woulda, shoulda, couldas, I wish I had, I wish this hadn't happened to me. That's where depression lives. And then on the other side, if you're living in the, like on the other line, if you're living on the other side in the, you know, what ifs and the doomsday scenarios and that this isn't fair, my life is ruined kind of phase, then that's where anxiety lives.

Anxiety lives in the future and depression lives in the past. So isolating it is just drawing those lines and go, what am I dealing with right now? What do I actually have in front of me that I can take action on? A lot of times I'll show a glass of, you know, a glass with, that's half, that only has half the water in it, okay? Would you call it half full or half empty? Depends on if you drank it or filled it. No. That's my answer. I love it. You know, I think, yeah, I mean, a lot of people look at it different ways. I try to look at it as, you know, it's there. And so if I'm thirsty, I'm going to drink it. If I'm not, I'm going to leave it. And, you know, so I've gone through a lot of exercise for myself about optimism and pessimism and pragmatic and all these different pieces and not defying myself because in that moment, I might think that glass is half empty.

But in that, but in the next moment, I might think it's half full because I'm thirstier now and I want to drink it. So I've done a lot of work on myself over the years trying to figure those things out. Yeah. And exactly that. Your feelings are going to change 10 minutes down the road. So, or 10 days or 10 years down the road, it's going to feel very different than when you look at that glass. The reality is it's a six ounce glass with three ounces of water in it. It just is. And the isolate, we all want to project, like I want to be an, I want to be a half glass, I want to be a half full person. Like we all want to be the half full person. But that's projecting our opinions and our wishes on it.

So it's just is, it's a six ounce glass with three ounces of water. So as we do this exercise, we put it on our timeline and we isolate it, not before and not after. What are we actually looking at right now that's real? So in this scenario, like when I was in that space and thinking my life was ruined and I could never be happy again and thinking that I wish I made, you know, just not gone the day before to do the things I was doing and been at that location. Like I, I could see none of that. I had to just go, what am I actually dealing with? I'm all in one piece. Everybody's okay. The world's moving forward. The news will go on to something else. So what are you actually dealing with in that moment?

And that's hard to do. But when you can look at that and when I got fired, like what's the reality? I'm the same person I was yesterday. I had the same skills that I had yesterday. I didn't really love that job and that everything about it. Maybe I could find, and then you can start thinking, maybe I can find something that's different than that. Or maybe I can isolate what I didn't like and find that in the next one. So what am I, I'm dealing with, I still have my same skills in the fired scenario. I still have my same skills and my same contacts. And this, you know, I always say when you get fired, it's an opportunity to find something else that maybe suits you better. Or I say that now because had I not really thought hard and long about leaving television, I didn't leave when I got fired.

I got back in TV. But then when I did leave it, I can't imagine only having that one career in my life. I really liked going in a new direction, going into tech. But anyway, the isolate piece is what am I dealing with right now that's my reality? Not my emotions attached to it, not before or after. So that's the I piece. Okay, so now you've got this line on a piece of paper, you've isolated the thing that's happening. And next we draw a line around it. And this is the P part. This is the people. And we figure out who's in this with us. Because when something happens, and you know this, John, like something happens, it's all we can think about it. We feel very alone. Like you get in the moment something happens, don't you feel very alone?

Like this is happening to me. Yes, 100%. Yeah. I want to expand on that after you make this point, because that's, I think, a big piece right now is like, everybody thinks they're the only ones. Everybody thinks they're alone. And you're right in that, especially in that moment. I think that moment's pretty significant for a lot of people as far as length of time. But keep going with this moment, because I agree, it's like, this just happened to me. Let's go back to Olympics, like Nancy Kerrigan, right? Why me? It's like, if she, like that moment, that was a very genuine, but she got crushed for it, because like yourself or, you know, who cares if you, it could be somebody else. But that is the reaction to most of us.

Like, why did this happen to me? Right? And why am I the only one? So, sorry to interrupt, but I think that's a really important point. That's exactly the point. We do feel like it's happening to me, and I'm the only one. So, I'm glad you interjected there. And anyone who's going through something right now, I don't care if it happened to you yesterday, or if you've been in this funk for two years, or you've been trying to finally hit your target, or like nothing's going your way. Like, it's happening to you. You wake up thinking about it. You go to bed thinking about it. It takes up all the space in your brain. Like, that's why you got to put it on the timeline. But it is, you feel very alone in it.

It's not often that we share all of our struggles. So, the people piece, when you draw a circle around it, it's this moment you go, okay, who are my people? And you can. That's why we draw a circle around it. You can decide who you're going to pull in it with you, and who needs to stay out. Because the people in your life are helping or hurting. So, you can make a list of your people, who's helping you in this situation, and who's hurting you. And you edit them. You know, if they're not on the helping side, keep them outside of that circle as best you can. And you can also see, if there aren't the right people in that circle with you, who do you need to pull in for help? If it's a traumatic accident, if it's a death in the family, you probably need therapy.

You need some guidance, a therapist, or a close friend to share with. You got to get the, what I used to say, you got to get the crazy out of your head and say it out loud. That really takes the pressure off of it to overwhelming you. And I, and you don't think clearly when things are going on, or you're really struggling. Whether it's a divorce or whatever, you're not thinking clearly. You have to put those words out there into the universe, so. Get sidebar on that one. So, people, you know, people around you that you feel supported by, or whatever, can listen to you. However, a lot of people think they're being helpful when they're really not. And I realized this recently. My daughter, like, I try to relate to my daughter in a lot of ways so that, help her understand that she's not the only one that would go through this, that has gone through this.

And I might have gone through, so a lot of times when she's struggling with something, I'll relate to something back, well, when I was, like, this actually happened to me, whether it was, whether I'm a daughter or a kid. And it was, and I'm so proud of her for doing this, that there was a little bit of an argument between my wife and her and me. And we were pretty frustrated, so we just sat down and calmed down a little bit and had this talk, and we addressed why we were upset, whatever it was. And she actually gave us feedback. She goes, can I just ask one thing? And I'm like, what? Sure, yeah, of course. She's like, could you guys please stop telling me stories? Every time I tell you I have a problem or an issue or whatever, you guys always come with a story.

And what it does is it diminishes my, I know you're trying to relate to me and say it's not that big of a deal, but it really frustrates me because I don't want to hear about your fucking problem. I have my fucking problem. So it was like this light bulb that went off. I was like, holy shit, because I do a lot of that. Oh, yeah, I was, you know, when I was a kid, that happened to me. You know, I lost my job too, right? And it's not a me too thing. I'm not, I hate one-uppers. I absolutely hate one-uppers. They're my least favorite type of people because you can tell they're not listening to you and they're just waiting to chime in with their fucking story and they have no interest in what you're actually saying.

But what's the line of helping somebody and how should we relate or empathize or should we not and just be there for them? So I have a lot on this in my book, both how to protect yourself, how to protect, like, and creating a script to protect yourself because something, if you're in the middle of something, people keep asking about it and you're trying to move on. And you truly, every time someone asks you about a traumatic incident or your divorce or you're getting fired, you're like, I had just had a good three hours where I wasn't thinking about that. Thanks so much for bringing it up. Now it's back in my head. So people are well-meaning and, like, you're well-meaning with your daughter.

So we have to do a couple of things. For ourselves, we edit who's helping and who's hurting and you will know, like, your daughter might put you in the, he's not helping right now category and put you out there. And we all have our stories. I did the same thing with my kids. It drove them crazy. And we're just trying to empathize. We're trying to understand them. It's not a bad thing. It's never, when you're a parent, it's not maliciously done. But it just is how we're trying to relate. But with the people, you can look at who's helping and who's hurting just in your own emotion. It doesn't matter if they're trying to help or hurt. I'm talking about you going through it. People, even people who are well-meaning.

If I had one woman who's like, I'm praying for you, I'm praying for you, I'm praying for you. And she would call all the time. I was like, you know something? I'm pretty sure you just take me back to your little prayer group and talk about me. Like, I don't think you're actually, when your head hits the pillow at night, I don't think you're praying for me. I think you're looking for gossip. So, like, you know, you know you better than anybody who's helping and who's hurting. And then if you don't have the right people, pull them in. And as you said, there will be people who are really trying to help, very well-meaning. But they will have you either reliving something or they'll be doing the one-up thing even.

And it's not. I mean, the people who are doing the one-up thing, get rid of them. But the people who are well-meaning, not get rid of. Just put them out of your circle for a while so you can get to the other side of it. Because you need to move forward. And they're going to keep you stuck. They will keep you stuck. And so, for the people who are genuinely trying to help, there's a couple things that are really key. If you're really, truly trying to help someone, you have to just sit and let them be not okay. You can't try to fix everything. I'm a fixer. I want to fix everything for my kids. Like when my son blew out his elbow, I wanted so badly to talk to him and go, You're going to be fine.

You're going to be so happy someday. But you can't. You have to sit and let people be not okay. And just sitting and being not okay with someone and not trying to fix it is really hard for some of us. And that's probably one of the most important things. And the second thing is to actively listen and reaffirm their feelings. Whatever they're feeling, they're feeling. So, like if you have a kid who loses their sport, of course, they feel like crap. I'm like, yep, this super sucks. Super shitty. So sorry you're going through this. I wish it didn't happen. Super sucks. Go back to whatever it is. Just go back to the language that you have. You don't have to do anything but kind of reaffirm what they're feeling.

So that's a good thing, too. As far as helping people move forward, that's when you can, over time, let them, okay, it'll not be okay. But let them have their moment of not being okay. Because I do think we need to let our kids fail or people around us fail. Absolutely, failure is a lesson. And then you can step in and help in some way. But editing your people is really key. And because you brought up the parenting thing, I will say, back to you are the main character in your story and have so much control over it. You are not the main character in your daughter's story. All you parents listening, you are not the main character in their story. Now, with that said, you are a character. And how do you show up?

How are the people around you describing you in the books of their lives? Are you the good guy? Are you the bad guy? Are you the villain? Like, what are the words that people would use to describe you? Your co-workers, your spouse, your boss. What are the words they would use to describe you? And this is a good exercise in the people part to think about the peopling and who's, you know, both who's helping and who's hurting and how are you described in other people's stories and being mindful of that. And I don't have all the answers on what to do in a traumatic situation, but I can tell you, when I look at the commonalities, and it comes to the people part, commonalities of big companies who have had success, athletes, none of them go it alone.

Athletes have coaches, probably several, and trainers and, you know, mental health coaches even. And then CEOs, when the pandemic hit, they're all calling each other. How are you getting through this? What are you doing? The people who have success don't go it alone. You can think you have the best idea and try. But you won't have the biggest success. You may survive it, but not adapt in a positive way and thrive on the other side. If you want to have big success, you have to pull in some other people. If you've never had therapy and people are thinking about doing that because some people are uncomfortable with it. If you decide to, I call it therapies like dating. Like if you go to a therapist and you don't like them, don't go back for a second date.

Do not go back for a second date. So this is my problem with therapy. And why, thankfully, I think I was, I was, my DNA is such that I usually can take on a lot of stuff without needing much help. But obviously I have breaking points and it's nice to talk to people that don't have an agenda other than to listen. But my problem is, have you ever seen Good Will Hunting? Mm-hmm. Like the movie Good Will Hunting? Yeah, yeah. You know, Robin Williams. Yes. I want to skip to find my Robin Williams. I, I, my tolerance for like, is so fucking low. Like it, you know, I did the better, I did the better help, like better me thing or whatever it was or better help or the, the online thing. And I, and I'm, I'm not diminishing it.

I think it's great for people who need it. But for me, like when I got on this one, this one was like sitting on her couch. It's like, she's on her iPhone. And immediately I'm like, what the fuck is this? Like, what am I doing here? And then as I'm talking to her, she's like giving me, and I'm like, fuck this. Like, nope, want my money back. And I've done a couple of them. And I don't know, I just, I want to find my Robin Williams. So any advice on how to get to your Robin Williams faster and not have to date 15 fucking terrible train wrecks to get there? Nope, there is, there is, you got to kiss a lot of frogs. It's just like dating. That is the answer. But you have to, I sat down, oh, you do.

You have to kiss a lot of frogs. You have to know what you want. You know, each one, figure out what you don't like about them and keep a list. Because I had one woman, I sat down, my therapist got sick in the middle of my big, like really needing someone. And my therapist got sick and he left me a name of a few people. He's in the hospital. And he left me a name of a few people I could go talk to because I was in a critical moment. And I went and sat in this lady's chair and she sat down and she goes, all right, well, let's talk. Where is your happy, let's go to your happy place. And I was like, oh, you were fucking kidding me. I'm so out of here. I'm like, really? Hey, do you know what I've just gone through?

There's no happy place. There's no fucking happy place in this head of mine. None. So I was out. And I literally just, I looked at her and I said, and I just smiled and I said, you're not my person. Thank you. And left. I did not give it another second. By that point, I knew enough to know. Just, it's just like if you're on a really bad date, just leave. Just leave. You have to look at that. And someone once told me that and like, do it like dating. Like so good because you could just step away and go, wow, I'm not going on a second date with that one. Why would you go back? And then you will find someone. And I needed someone to give me actionable things like do this, do that, try this. If they say that, you say this.

Or if you don't, let's come up with a sentence to say when people say that. I needed hard, you know, actionable, tactical, tactical, tactical. And that's what my book is. So I wrote the book 20 years after all of this, or 15 years after, I wrote it five years ago. So I wrote the book that I was looking for. So it's my story, kind of like you said, it's probably similar to green lights, but it's my story. But it's all about you. It's not me. Because like you said, when you're in the middle of something, the last thing you want is somebody telling you their story. Like I have my own trauma, I really don't need to hear a story right now. I'm suffering or I'm just in a shitty mood. I mean, it doesn't have to be a big thing.

I'm just having a bad day. I don't need you to say, oh, I have bad days too. My day's worse. The last thing I need is someone else's story, right? Last question. Do you think you can build resilience without hardship, without going through hard times? No, you can't. And I can get to the fourth. The last part is story, which I need to get to. I just realized I got off on a tangent. But no, you can't. You become more resilient every time you get through something. It's an adapting in a positive way. Every time you adapt and adjust, you get stronger. So, and I think you have to. That's why I'm like, kids need to fail. If you have to pick yourself up and move forward, you become more resilient every time you overcome something.

And you can belittle things. You overcome traffic that you're more resilient. You overcome buying a house. Buying a house is one of the most five stressful things that a person goes through. You get married. That's on the list of the most stressful things to go through. So, you're becoming more resilient with the good stuff, too. But there are hardships. There are big changes in your life. But you don't change until something changes or until you make a change. So, becoming resilient means you have adapted in a positive way to something. And that could be a good thing or a bad thing. It's adapting in a positive way to a win, too. But that's the key to resilient. And that's from what I've learned and what I research and what I believe some people will argue.

There are people that argue that you're either born resilient or not. There's a gene for it. So, there's a lot of research out there. I think you might be resilient like your chemical makeup as a human, but that's different from your mind. Totally. So, and then the last, so I think it was tips, right? So, it's timeline, isolate people. What was the S? And the last thing is S. It's the story. What are the words in your head that are coming out of your mouth that become your story? And everyone that I talk with, again, this is the fourth commonality. Everyone that I talk with, the language was really key. So, that's the best day yet. And that's not using the self-sabotaging language that most of us do.

The overgeneralizing, this always happens to me. It's never going to, you know, or catastrophizing, this is never going to work. Everything's ruined, that catastrophizing. Jumping to conclusions. Well, they haven't gotten back to me, so they must think I'm an idiot or, you know, or exaggerating. I have 8 million things to do on my, you know, or I have 50 loads of laundry. I always say, does anyone have ever done 50 loads of laundry? So, the language, the words in your head come out of your mouth and become your story. This is really key to this moving forward part as you try to figure out what your story is going to be, you know, after this that you're dealing with. And I've really counseled a lot of people who have been let go, executives and friends of mine, about really watching their language because you want to be the person who, well, I didn't see that coming.

You know, you get fired. There's some people who are like, well, I'm so pissed. They should have fired so-and-so and I do all the work and they're never going to survive without me. Like, that language comes out of people's mouths. Like, I hit my numbers last time and I, like, all, I can hear those people in my head. And then there's the people who are like, wow, I didn't see this coming. Good luck to everybody else who's there. And if y'all know anybody who's looking, I'm obviously going to be looking for a job. Keep me in mind. Like, you want to be the second guy if you're going to have success. You don't want to be the first one. So, that language creates your success. And I found that for people who have, who are resilient and are successful as well.

Yeah, the self-talk. I mean, it's not the out loud. It's not even just the out loud self-talk. It's the in-your-head self-talk. You know, I've gotten, you know, where I do something dumb around the house and I used to be like, you fucking idiot, John. Like, you know, come on, man. And now, you know, after doing affirmation, like reading through the psychology of a lot of this stuff, as small as it might sound, you taking that moment to say, you fucking idiot, John, like whatever, versus John, come on, you can do a lot better next time. You know what I mean? You could like, or some shift in a positive, not like I'm going to dump on myself. Cause that little negative going back to momentum, right?

It kind of builds and builds and builds in the wrong direction. And you can actually, Tony Robbins here, change your state and, and start pushing it. And now sometimes you have to force, I feel like right now we almost have to force positivity because it's so easy to get consumed with the, with the negative, which is why grit, you know, gratitude journals and all these other things as, as, as cheesy as they might sound to some people, like my gratitude journal right here. And I will tell you right now that all the time I'm writing something, I don't care how small it is. I had a great conversation on my podcast today with Nina that gave me a different way of thinking about things. I woke up this morning, it was a gorgeous day out.

Like those types of things change your lens. And when you change your lens, you start looking for the positive instead of the negative. And so many people, you mentioned it, so many people are struggling right now. I'm finding it everywhere I go when I'm speaking at big conferences and I do everything from like, I mentioned the cybersecurity conference. I spoke at like Chick-fil-A female operators summit and, um, Annette, tomorrow I am traveling and speaking at a metal building contractors conference. Like it's a little bit of everything, but there's nobody there. I spoke at real estate conferences, retail conferences, um, SHRM, society of human resource management, like everyone is struggling.

There's no one got through the last five years unscathed. It's been very, last four years, it's been a very difficult time and we haven't gotten kind of back to settled. And, uh, if you think that you're the only one that's struggling, it's, we all in our heads, we all got in our own heads and started questioning things and we all got down on ourselves because we weren't as, even if we were super productive, you couldn't be as much. So we got, we got into this weird funk. Um, if you look at it, it's kind of, it's going to be a cool science experiment in the future, uh, or it's good research to look back on. And maybe you've heard someone talk about this, but I look at it as, um, we all went through the stages of grief together.

You know, when all that happened, like first there was the denial. It's not going to happen to me. Nope, no, no. And then there's, you know, the, the bargaining. Well, if I just wear a mask for a little bit, then it won't work. And then there's anger. Are you kidding me? I have to cancel my vacation. You know, and then you finally, you went through all these things and you got to acceptance and the people who got to acceptance fastest are the ones who were the most successful. Um, but nobody got out of it unscathed. We all went through all of that and none of us are the same on the other side of it. And the mental health is one of the top crises in the, in not just the U.S., but in the world right now.

Boom. Yeah. You're not alone, folks. You're not alone. You're allowed to be in the shitty spot. That was, that was my post, uh, my, my newsletter post this week or last week, which is you're not alone. Uh, it's, there's so many people and I don't know why it's obviously social media and all this other stuff. And, you know, when you turn it on, everybody's life looks great and you reflect that on yourself and you're like, wow, why am I not that great? But it's like when you really get to have a chance to talk to people and you peel back one or two layers of that onion, they're just struggling just as much as you. And so I wish more people would talk about their failures, their, you know, train wrecks and whatever than all of their successes, because I've, I've, I don't think I've ever really learned anything from my successes.

Like anytime I've achieved something, I don't really think I've learned much. I was happy about it. Don't get me wrong. I was psyched it, but I, but I learn from when I make a mistake. I learn from when it just all falls apart around me and I figure out a way to get back after it. And so more people need to hear that. I always say that we only learn from what we get wrong. That's why when you ask me, you know, can you be resilient without the downs? Like, no, you can't. We only learn from what we do get wrong. And you're right. So many people are in that space right now. It's, it's tough spot. Well, hopefully listening to this gave them a little bit of help and a little bit of guidance to get out of it and start moving in the right direction.

So Nina, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. This has been fun. Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me, John, and all the best to you in the future too. Likewise. And so tell people where they can find out more information in the book and your website and everything else. Where, where, where can people find out more? Sure. So, uh, you can find me on, on social media. I'm on Instagram on Nina Speaks and there's more than one Nina speaker. There she, there's a couple of them. They're great. Uh, but it's Nina underscore SP as in Sossaman Pogue dot E-A-K-S, which we thought was really clever when we did it. It's a horrible way to have to share it on a podcast though. Not that.

Yeah, I guess. So yeah, we thought we were clever. Really bad idea. But it's Nina Speaks on Instagram and you can find me on LinkedIn and other places as well. Uh, and I post on there with thoughts, things that make you think, make you laugh. I think I'm funny sometimes. So sometimes it's humor. Um, I think I'm funny all the time, but I think only sometimes it's actually funny. So you can find me there. I connect with me on LinkedIn. If you'd like me to speak at your conference and like you, I mean, I'm rebuilding my business. It would all went away during that time. So I'm in there. I'm in there with all the rest of you. I'm trying to figure out a path forward. Um, I'm in a good place right now, but you know, I'm struggled to get there.

Anyway, you follow me there, find me there. And I would, and you can, my book is, this is not the end, uh, strategies to get you through the worst chapters of your life. I'm really proud of that book. That was my first book I wrote in 2019. Really helpful. If you have someone going through a tough time, uh, my second book kind of sucks, uh, but it's out there, but it's, but I want both. And I wrote it during the pandemic and it's too long and I use too many words. It's hard to write a short book. It's too long. I use too many words, but it's out there too. It's about building your career at the same time you're building your family. All right. Cool. That's one of those where you can throw in a chat GPT and say, make this, make this smaller, you know, make this lighter for me.

Yeah. Well, I'm going to do a rewrite on it. I do think, um, I do think it's got some valuable content in it and I researched it. Well, it's just too many words. Too many words. Awesome. Well, again, Nina, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And everybody listening, I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or you think it went, you make somebody smile 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, we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and I can't thank you enough. Now to keep the momentum going, it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network. Also, I am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where I'll be sharing everything I know and everything I'm learning along the way while I'm out there selling every day just like you. Go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together.

Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together. Let's all level up and make this happen together.