And so this process of risk, resilience, and reinvention, do you feel this happened over the three life sentences, so to speak? Or did you coin this after? Was this forged in these events?

Well, I think the actual risk, resilience, and reinvention started when I was very, very young.

I grew up in a shack.

We actually called it the shack.

We had no hot water.

We had no refrigerator.

My brother and I shared a bedroom in the shack.

Yeah.

And so what was, uh, Mark like as a leader in those early days?

You know, Mark was, um, 19 when I got there, and, um, some of the other people were also very young.

There were a few people, um, Matt was a little, a little older.

Chris was about the same age, and, um, Dustin was the same age, and Owen Van Natta came later, a little bit older, from Amazon.

But these are all really, really young people, and it was moving fast.

And Mark's, Mark really, his energy was to, to, to keep moving, and how do we grow this and how do we keep developing and, and, and creating new things for the users.

And it was very much a build test environment.

Mm

What makes you think there are societal shifts coming, and what's kind of the theory or the idea behind that?

Yeah, well, I'll give you one.

You and I were talking a little earlier about service and answering phones.

Well, in my early days of leading customer service organizations, some powerhouses, we had huge customer service centers with call centers, we even called them.

So fast forward, you get into the days of .com, Facebook, and that era, and people are then doing it by email and text because it saves a lot of money.

And then today we're moving into the AI phase.

Well, those things are happening.

How do you have that mindset shift to actually say, okay, I'm coming through a storm?

Let's understand your childhood and And then let's go through the journey and eventually talk about these challenging moments that really, really challenged you?

Yes, yes.

Well, I grew up in a shack.

In fact, we fondly called it the shack.

That was what we named it.

My grandfather built this one-bedroom house in Florida, and my brother and I shared the bedroom.

My mother and father's bedroom was the living room, although we never saw it as their bedroom.

heck did you go from this to Facebook, to telecom, to the corporate world? Like, how did that happen?

really at

a time when everybody died of aids but so i did that and then i knew that if i were going to have a chance i needed to either get to new york or san francisco and my best friend was having a baby here another best friend that i grew up was dying of aids and so i chose san francisco and then when i got here I had to get into the clinical trial worlds because none of them, there were no medicines.

So you had to get in the clinical trials.

So I ended up running clinical trials in the doctor's office.

We had a great team of how we work those together.

And I was taking the drugs as these other people.

So I knew what to, how to work with them to make sure they didn't say something to the doctor that got them kicked off the medication.

and yeah i mean you achieved to a high level and bearing in mind that it's not like that you went and and you know had went to university i mean you did but you didn't complete university and we'll let people read why you didn't but but it's not like you had this you know um formal education you know with these degrees behind you and go into the corporate world and being a you know a fast track you just went in in a part-time job and excelled and yeah just took off so what do you think the secrets were you know as to why you were so good in your career

But yeah, how did you get that, that first client or even couple clients just That's

a great story.

And I've got a title for your book when you're ready to write it after hearing that.

You know, it's an interesting story.

I took coaching back in the late 90s.

In fact, I'm the CEO of the coaching academy that all of that work grew out of before there was ICF, before there was coaching academies, before any of this existed.

Wow.

And I'm like, that's not like... a training

How do you keep that right? How do you tell someone if they are down in the dumps or they're sad about their company failing? How to, or, or is that just a muscle you build over? As I've gotten older, maybe I've gotten more confident or who knows, but like, I don't think there's a lot that really, once again, there's a few big things that probably would generally stop me in my tracks, but not very much.

I don't know if I was that way when I was younger.

One of the first things to do is I delve into a little about where things like this may not be the exact same have happened before.

And it's about remembering that evidence you got through these things before.

You know, I spoke to someone recently, a client, and he sold his company, started a new one, and was giving me all these reasons why it was going to fail.

And I often have people bring me questions and they leave with a different answer.

In this case, as I listened and observed what was being said, this guy was trying to make it on his own.

How did you put yourself in those positions?

wow so you gotta you gotta tell us a little bit about that so was the cancer was it somewhat related to the grind that you were in and the titles that you were holding or is it completely unrelated just made you reconsider

everything you know it's an interesting thing the first illness i was at mci i was on a fast track i had just finished moving four times in three years buying and selling houses because i was being promoted that fast and i decided that i had to go and do some medical stuff that I'd put off and found out that not only was I sick, but that I had six months to live.

I remember the doctor telling me that and thinking to myself, well, that doesn't like fit well into the picture I've got going here.

And I remember walking to my car and I sat in the car and I looked in the rear view mirror and I spoke to the illness and I said, if you want to join my party, welcome.

If you think you're going to take me out, you're in for the fight of your life." And I went back to work.

A few weeks later, when I learned more about what was going on, I realized that I had to make one of the hardest decisions I've made, which was to go on disability and leave that job for a while.

And stepping away from something you've worked so hard to achieve that you're on a fast track for, can take you to some very strange places.

What is the main thing you're trying to communicate to those people?