Blaze Your Own Trail - From Grief to Storytelling Greatness with Bill Dolan

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

SummaryIn this episode of the Blaze Your Own Trail podcast, host Jordan Mendoza interviews Bill Dolan, a television director and entrepreneur. Bill shares his journey from a challenging childhood marked by grief and anger to discovering his passion for directing and eventually starting his own media company. He emphasizes the importance of mentorship, resilience, and living a life of purpose. Bill offers valuable insights and advice for aspiring creatives, highlighting the significance of relationships and the impact one can have on others.TakeawaysBill's early life was shaped by grief and anger due to his father's illness.Music played a crucial role in Bill's self-discovery during his rebellious teenage years.Mentorship was pivotal in Bill's journey, providing him with confidence and direction.Bill's unique approach to networking involved bringing cookies to the television studio.He became one of the youngest major market directors in the country after his internship.Transitioning to entrepreneurship was a necessity for Bill as he sought financial stability.Bill emphasizes the importance of purpose and impact in one's life and career.He believes that every goal should be tied to a mission that serves a greater purpose.Bill's near-death experience profoundly changed his perspective on life and purpose.He encourages others to recognize the value of their lives and the impact they can have on others.Chapters00:00 The Journey Begins: Bill Dolan's Early Life05:36 Finding Direction: The Role of Mentorship09:46 From College to Career: The First Steps in Media16:43 Building a Career: The Rise of Spirit Media23:14 Facing Challenges: The Death of a Career26:14 Lessons Learned: Purpose and LegacyWork with Bill: https://www.spiritmedia.com/Connect with Bill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billdolan/Get Bill's Book: https://www.7drm.com/Connect with Jordan:LinkedInInstagramTikTokJoin Jordan's weekly Group Coaching Community Risk FreePre order a signed copy of Jordan's new book The Life-Changing Power of AdversityThe Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast is now exclusively sponsored by CityGate StudiosWhat does that mean for our listeners?It means you'll be getter more consistent content with better visuals state of the art post production.What does that mean for our future guests?It means we now not only have virtual podcast options but have an option to record in studio and get Hollywood level content to help elevate your business faster!Here is more information about our amazing sponsor below:Welcome to the future of post-audio production. Our state-of-the-art facility, strategically located in the Atlanta-metro area, is setting a new standard in sound design, mixing, and immersive audio experiences.Designed by the world-renowned Wes Lachot, our studio features patented acoustic architecture that delivers unparalleled sonic precision. With two Dolby Atmos-enabled control rooms and a spacious live room accommodating up to 20 instruments in a single session, we provide the ultimate environment for music and film professionals.Situated in the heart of New Hollywood in Atlanta, we are just minutes from the country’s largest film production studios—offering seamless integration for filmmakers, content creators, and musicians. Our commitment to a drug- and alcohol-free environment fosters a professional, focused atmosphere, ensuring every project reaches its full potential.Beyond cutting-edge technology and expert craftsmanship, we offer highly competitive pricing and a business-friendly climate, making us the premier choice for audio post-production in the region.Experience a new era of sound. Welcome to Atlanta’s leading post-audio facility.Want to get involved in CityGates misson?Donate to the Go Fund me HERE Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the Blazor-Oen Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host, and I've got a very special guest today. His name is Bill Dolan, and I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today. Hey, Jordan. So good to see you again. Yeah, just a little brief thing about me. I really grew up in television.

Most people define me as a television director. Hopefully my kids define me as a father. My wife defines me as a husband. And the journey has been incredibly rich from a career standpoint, starting at a local ABC affiliate to working with some of the biggest names and entertainment and then getting to work with people like you. It's been a blast. It's been filled with adventure. And I think like everybody's life, there's been moments of absolute wonder and moments that otherwise people would consider tragedy. But all of them has been so, so good. And the lessons I've learned have changed my life. Love it. Love it. Appreciate you. Thank you for that intro. And yeah, we're going to get into some of these things that have changed your life. Some of the things that were hard, some of the things that maybe were unexpected. You know, that's what trailblazing is all about. So my favorite part of the show, Bill, is we take a rewind and really get context into our guest story and their journey. And so what I want to do is really jump back to the formative years, you know, elementary, middle, high school year. So where were you born and raised? And we'll, we'll kind of kid were you, were you more into the academics or were you into sports? Did you do both?

I'd love just some context on the early years. If you saw the reaction when you said, were you into academics? And I can like, well, I wasn't, I was not an academic genius. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, only child, raised in somewhat of a traditional, I was, say, Irish Catholic family, very, very traditional Irish, and went to private Catholic school, went through all that kind of stuff. And I would say that the things that shaped me to some degree, one is being an only child. My mom could only have one child. And the idea of being an only child changes you in that. The social dynamic that I think people get in families is lost just a little bit. And so instead of experiencing that, I was an observer of it and didn't quite understand what it meant to have

those types of family dynamics. To complicate that a little bit, right around second grade, my dad came down with a very rare illness. No one completely understood where it came from, what it was, but bottom line, he was supposed to die. So starting right around second, third grade, it was like, your dad's going to die any minute. Your dad's going to die any minute. And so a lot of us understand the idea of grief

from the sense of, I have lost someone or something. But there's something very real about pre-grief when we live a life anticipating the death of something. And that goes from anything, from a person to a career to a dream. And grief is real. And it can shape you in many unusual ways if you don't know how to deal with it or have not getting some support for it. And I went through those formative years living in constant grief, living, being that kid where people would come with casseroles. They go, oh, here, you know, it's kind of like when you don't know what to say,

you don't know what to do, you don't think you have a solution or whatever, give them a casserole. And I say that kind of jokingly because, I mean, death and pain and all those things are awkward. They really are. And learning how to talk about them or to be there for people, I've learned as critically important. And nothing against casseroles, but I honestly believe that canned tuna fish and noodles are alive today because of uncomfortable grieving people not knowing what to do. So they give you a casserole. So that was a lot of my growing up years. And then by the time I got into high school, oddly enough, this man that was supposed to die ended up starting to recover. And they thought it was a miracle, absolute miracle. And he started recover, but I didn't. In fact, what I did is I went through a period of just being so dang angry. I was really angry at him because not only did I have to live with this thing. hanging over the house and my mother mourning and going back to work and struggling with that.

But I also had to struggle with the fact that while he was in his pain, he became very physically and verbally abusive. And that also filled the atmosphere of the house and also created echoes in my head about who I was, what value I was, all those different things that sometimes people say in pain that can really scar you and shape you. So I started my high school years, far from being an academic. I started my high school years in rebellion. I was angry. I was lonely.

I was hurt. But I still had these crazy little dreams that were in me. Part of those were around music. So I began playing music and rock and roll and doing some things I shouldn't do with some folks I shouldn't do it with. It exposed me and reminded me that the deepest part of me

that might have gotten lost as a child was an artist. I love to play piano, who love to play guitar, who want to play rock and roll. And of course, with rock and roll, whether you're actually in a band or just singing with a hairbrush in your bathroom, there's that deep desire to be something special, to do something special. And I continued doing that pretty much through high school with mixed results. And I ended up obviously realizing that I wasn't going to be a rock and roll player. I could still play in bars and do things like that, but I got fascinated with media.

And that's when I decided to study television. So I went to the local regional college here, started in television thinking, okay, maybe I'm going to be a reporter, maybe I'm going to be this. And I fell in love with directing. And once I realized that, literally my whole trajectory not only changed, but it blossomed. It had meaning. And for the first time, as I can remember, there was something in my life I was really excited about. That's great. That's great.

So, you know, it started with, you know, watching somebody suffer, you know, a lot of pain, you know, hurdles, adversity, anger, and then to joy, you know, which is great. You know, it's crazy just to kind of see the journey that you explain in over a number of years, but ending up. being something that is very positive and pointed to a direction of something that you had a lot of passion for and then you end up you're still doing it to this day. Yeah. Which is incredible. So what I want to talk about is, you know, along your journey, because again, lots of ups and downs, lefts and rights, you know, things happening around you.

And you've already said it. It wasn't easy. This was not a hard, this was hard stuff to go through. Who were folks that were in your world that you could turn? to, were there people, mentors, you know, coaches, people in your circle that helped you get through some of these situations? It's interesting. I look at that kind of thing like mentorship and relationships.

It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz, really. You know, decide where you're going. Somewhere someone told you that you're supposed to go to the Emerald City. Whatever that Emerald City is for you. And you start following whatever path, someone said maybe this is where you should go. But the thing about having a dream and even having a soft path, whether it's a golden yellow brick road or just a figurative type of journey, there's always those intersections. And I think that's what either pauses you and some people are still living at that intersection. Just living at that intersection, waiting to figure out where they go left or right because their passion for reaching the Emerald City is compromised by their deeper fear of making the wrong decision.

And for me, I just maybe is not that smart. I just said, well, let's just keep going. Let's keep going. And so when I was being hurt by the situations at home, there was a 70-year-old woman who lived across the street that was widowed. And she became my best friend. And she became a mentor to me because she talked about arts and she talked about life. She talked about God.

She talked about spiritual things because even though I went, to a religious school, she talked about God, like, God was her friend, Jesus was her friend, type of thing. And of course, as a kid, I thought, well, I suppose you probably should have a relationship with God because you're going to see him pretty quick. But I didn't put it together that you could really have a relationship with the divine. And she was exposing me to that. And she exposed me to organic gardening and all these interesting things. I did have an uncle who, he was a dreamer. And I remember my dad, did. not like him because he thought he just always had his head in the clouds. But it was my uncle that

became a pilot. It was my uncle that was building a plane in his garage. It was my uncle that wrote poetry, things like that. And I remember watching his example and taking a little piece of that, the poet, the humorist, the dreamer from that. And then, of course, by the time I got into college, I met a former television director who'd worked in broadcasting for years. And I remember And I just say this is so important. It's such a pivotal time. Because when you go through most of your life kind of pursuing that yellow brick road,

so to speak, towards whatever your Emerald City is, you have a lot of doubt. You have a lot of fear. And I remember he was the first one that pulled me into his office once. And he said, I just want you to know Bill. Out of all the people that have gone through our program, because I've worked in this industry a long time,

He said, do you have a gift? You may be one of the best directors to go through this program. Stuck with me. Yeah, too. So stuck with me to have someone speak life into your dream, someone to speak confidence into your doubt, and someone that also brought definition, because he could have said, Bill, you're a nice guy.

He says, Bill, you make great cookies. he said, no, you're a great director. And he helped define me. And so have there been many past that? Absolutely. I am a product of probably 100 mentors. But that one gave me definition that I no longer had an intersection trauma. Sure.

I knew where I was going. Yeah. And then essentially you put full pedal to the metal and, you know, launched, finished school, you start. So talk about, let's talk about the start, you know, after you finish school, first company, you want to, did you know that you wanted to be a director and start working in that career path? Or did you want to do something on your own? I'd love just to see what direction you ended up going. Well, I actually did a little backwards because it wasn't like, now I finished school, now it's time to get to work. I was still in college when a friend of mine was working for the ABC affiliate,

actually he was an intern, didn't have a job there, but he was an intern. And back then, by the way, when I was growing up, ABC, this was before we had a thousand streaming services and internet and all that stuff. ABC was the cool network, by the way. I mean, they had all the cool shows. It was young. It was hip. It was stylish.

It was there. They went through a season of being cool. And for me growing up, I thought that was cool. Here was an intern there. And so he called me one night. And he said, hey, by the way, you know, Thursday night, they're going to be taping a show. And they said, I could bring some friends. I said, what?

Really? Because I had never actually walked in a television station ever. I'd been in, you know, studios and student projects and stuff like that. But this is the real deal. He said, can you come over Thursday nights? Yes, I'll be there. Of course I'll be there. Man, I'm thrilled.

And then, of course, I started to think about it. It was like, oh, God, what if I screw up? What if I'm, they think I'm an idiot? What if I make a bad impression? And you flash back to, you know, movies and things like that where someone says, you'll never work in this town again. I'm going to be that guy. And I haven't even gotten out of college yet.

And I started thinking, what am I going to do? And, of course, I went to a person that was filled with sage wisdom for me. And she gave me the best worst advice I could ever get in my life. And that was my mom. I said, mom, what do I do? What should I do? What should I say? She said, Billy, just be yourself.

No, not. Okay. Because I don't, honestly, I think it doesn't matter how old you get. There's that secret whisper inside you that says, are you sure you're good enough? Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure? And certainly as a young kid in college, I was filled with a lot of, are you sure?

And a lot of, no, you're not. But I remember the story of Famous Amos. I don't know if you remember Famous Amos, Chocolate Chip Cookie. Yeah, I've heard of them, yeah. Yeah, they've been around for a while either. A lot of people don't know, but Famous Amos used to be a casting director in Hollywood. And so he would show up to all the sets with a bag of his chocolate chip cookies. And he goes, oh, Famous Amos, oh, what are you like it?

And so that became his signature. Of course, someone then said you should sell him and he did and he became a cookie mogul. But I started to think, wait a minute, I make really good chocolate chip cookies. Maybe I could bring cookies. So, I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies. And it was about an hour before I was leave to the station, I pulled them out of the oven. And I put them in a brown bag, you know, and I had this thought, a famous. And I wrote on the bag, Bill's famous chocolate chip cookies.

And I put a stick figure and said, eat one. Okay? Okay, I'm going to go in. So I get to the TV station. with my cookies, ready to let the cookies do the talking for me. And it wasn't just me. It was two other guys with me. It was one of the guys that was there on the GI Bill.

He was about 10 years older. And he was like, mother confident, just irritatingly confident. And then I had the other guy, Jeff. And Jeff was like the class, forgive the term, if it's offensive to anybody. He was like the nerd. He knew everything about anything. So as soon as we walk up to meet the producer, my GI friend goes, oh, great to meet you.

He's like Mr. Confident and all grown up and everything like that. And then Jeff, the nerd goes, he goes, oh, I see you have the 3,300 switcher there and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. And what's haunting in my head, anything that haunts sometimes in a lot of people's heads is I was thinking, I can't be that person. I can't be that person. It's just me. And then the producer finally looked at me. and all I could get out of my mouth was,

hi, I'm Bill. Would you like a cookie? And, of course, the cookie had just been out of the oven, so they smelled really good. And he said, well, yeah, yeah. And he reached in. And of course, the chocolate chips were melting and everything like that. He goes, wow, this is great.

And so he calls over the technical director. He says, hey, Dale, this guy brought some chocolate chip cookies. Would you like one? He goes, yeah. So I walk over to the technical director. And I hand him the bag, and he pulls it out. And he looks at the bag, goes, well, thank you, Bill. And then goes to the audio person.

Well, thank you, Bill. And then he calls down to the studio. He says, hey, I know we're going to start here in just a couple of minutes, but there's a kid here from college and he brought some chocolate chip cookies. He's talking to this microphone, the voice of God in there. And he said, yeah, send him down. So I go down. And I got to tell you, Jordan, that moment was like magic to me.

because I walked into that television studio and I was with these great engineers and producers and all this thing but there were talent folks that you see on television that I've been watching since I was a little kid and I was like I'm really here

and I walked over to them and they each took a cookie. He said, thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. I walked out that night just amazed. It's like I saw the Emerald City. I stepped inside the Emerald City. And it was out of cookies.

And the producer caught me as I was walking out the door and he said, you coming back next week? I said, yeah. So I came back next week and next week and next week. For six weeks, I came back making cookies. Not saying much at all. I wasn't trying to press anybody. I was just blessed to be there.

And at the end of six weeks, he turns to me, says, Bill, he said, it's summer's coming. And I have a stack of intern apps about that thick. He said, but everybody loves you, you know, you make great cookies. If you'd like to be our summer intern, the job's yours. I said, yeah. I became the summer intern when I was 20 years old. And after 90 days, they hired me. The end of that story and really the beginning of a new exciting chapter is I became one.

of the youngest major market directors in the country from that experience. And that's another thing that certainly changed my life and took me in a whole new chapter of what this career could look like and then being mentored by hundreds of producers, writers, great talent, great agency people who literally surrounded me and helped me really launch my television career. That's awesome. Yeah. And that's, you know, a testament. of what happens when you combine some very specific ingredients. You know, you combine thinking outside the box, you know, blazing your own trail, right? You were going to do something different than the other guys did and hedging your bets on the creativity

that it would spark a certain interest and it paid itself. It was worth its weight in gold, so to speak. And then you also put in consistency, right? You had to keep showing up. You could have easily took a day off and not. shown up for one of the days for six weeks, but you showed up every time. And so you are essentially building out the list of reasons why they should hire you. And all of those reasons turn into a job offer and being successful and continuing to work your way up, which all of it makes sense.

So if you combine those ingredients, that's what it takes to blaze a trail. You know, you have to be willing to do things that other people aren't willing to do. You have to be willing to go above and beyond. You have to be willing to step up to the plate when necessary. So kudos to you on all the ability, one, to act on something, think about something, act on it, do it over time, and then have that turn into success because that's, it's not easy. You put in the reps every day, which is awesome. But what I want to hear is, obviously, you became one of the youngest, you know, directors, which is an amazing, you know, kudos to you and shout out.

but what was that next decade like from youngest to what did the career look like and what are some of the organizations that you were able to contribute to? Well, the next season, it's like my life started in a way. Number one, I married my high school sweetheart. Somewhere along the way we decided we'd like to start a family. My career continued to grow as I started directing more things. And when you start directing more things, that means a lot of live programming. everything from news to sports shows to then pre-produced things, documentary projects.

It really broadened the whole realm of broadcast storytelling. And one of the things that did happen along with that was the recognition that being a television director sounds glamorous and sexy and fun, and I would tell you, it is crazy fun. It's filled with adventure. There's never a boring day, but you're not going to get rich as a television director. You could as a producer, an executive producer who's starting a program doing things like that. But as a director, you're just a piece of the machine. And so my wife and I decided, we need to come up some alternative ways of making money

and create some other income so that we can have this family and feel confident about the mortgage and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. So I began looking at alternative ways of making money, which was really my tiptoe into entrepreneurship. Because I would never have considered myself an entrepreneur, but now I had to to figure out something. So I tried some things. I tried multi-level marketing. I stunk at that. I was just bad. I mean, somewhere where it says failure, there's my picture by it, you know, with a thumbs up. Someone said, you seem to have a good head for numbers. And I had, even in the high school, I had got involved in the stock market and thought that was fascinating, how you could make money

work for you. And I got my securities license. And I did securities license and insurance, things like that. I sucked at that. And I mean bad. It wasn't, you know, because I didn't understand it. It involves sales. It involves sales around something I was not deeply passionate about. So I failed at that. But somewhere along the way, and this is one of the things I think it's important.

When talking about blazing your own trail, sometimes a blaze, the trail, if you look back, is filled with potholes and sometimes burn marks. Nothing too sexy. Like, oh, there's a beautiful trail. It looks like, this is, this looked like a mess here. for a season. But the idea is, where are you now compared to where you were? And have you gathered wisdom along the way? And the wisdom I gained along the way was certainly a little bit about entrepreneurship, about financials, about P&Ls, about balance sheets, about all those different

things. And someone came to me while I was out there searching, trying to look for that alternative form of income and said, no, wait a minute. You're a director, right? I said, yeah. And he said, you know, we produce a lot of these large-scale events for our sales teams in this industry. Do you think you could give us some help? Let me check and see, you know, I had produced live events for television, but not a live event for live event. It turns out that everything I learned in television, and it's what I still bring to the table today,

and that is when you're producing something, why are you doing this? What will it take to accomplish it? What are the ingredients? What is the project flow? What are the crew members and teams? technical resources, human resources, what will be the outcome of this? What is the call to action? And what is the journey to completion? At the end of this, now this might sound strange, but a little secret into the sauce behind spirit media is we don't just produce videos.

We don't just produce events and provide marketing strategy. I ask my clients right out of the gate. What will happen at the end of this engagement that will make you come running across the room and jump into my arms with joy. What will make you scream and raise your hands in victory? What will make you want to name your children after me? And I press them that way because I think a lot of people do things, whether they're in the production world or the business world saying, I need to do this next. That's great. The trail along the Yellow Brook Road is important. But to ask yourself, what will be that thing that will happen that you'll be able to declare mission accomplished in such a way that it brings you joy and fulfillment and excitement.

And I press people to find that because now we go on that journey together. And so when I brought that type of mindset to that first engagement where someone said, could you be a director? It was a game changer because I'd done something for him that he, never seen before and he started spreading my name around. That's great. Throughout early in my television career, I had this side hustle that took me around most of the Western United States, a lot in Los Angeles, a lot in San Francisco, a lot in Denver,

basically the West of the United States, where I began producing live shows for corporations. That's great. And that really was the deep birth of Spirit Media. media. That was a big deal. Until, until I didn't realize what my limitations were. And one of the defining moments of my life has not been so much defined by the victories, but defined by deaths. And my first death was when I was so exhausted, we'd had twins. And I just had a moment, moment in a television station where someone ticked me off. And he poked me on the chest. It got physical. I helped him to the floor, and I walked out with my last check.

And so this beautiful, illustrious television career, it's almost like there was a break in the road. I couldn't see the road, but there was a tiny trail of bricks called Spirit Media that was doing that said, you can continue. It's just not wide and narrow. And this feels like you've lost your identity. It feels like you've lost your security, but the path still there. and that changed me from being you're a great director to maybe you're a failed director and it was the death of that career that brought birth to a new season of opportunity for me

what was it like you walk out knowing it's the end and you're knowing that you're essentially going on your own you know from salary to commission essentially. So what is a you know what's the first thought? Was it scared? Was it happy? Was it angry, sad? You know, what was the emotion that you left with? And then what did that turn into, you know, come to the end here? The short answer is yes. It was I was angered. I was sad, but I also was thrilled because I had realized how much I had turned. what was a dream and I had to accomplish most of my dreams in the live broadcast space into a real burden. And I think a lot of us, we just keep going more, more, more, more. And that's what I was doing.

I was physically exhausted. I was emotionally exhausted. My wife had just given birth to our third and fourth child. They were twins, in case anybody's trying to figure that one out. And I felt all those things. I also felt like I needed to go back to my high school sweetheart, my wife, the mother of these four children, and say, I apologize for not minding this whole ecosystem better. I let things get out of control. And I could even say that I let my career become a mistress, totally consumed by it. And I don't know how we're going to do this, but I'm going to figure this out. We both had a time of grief, a little excitement, and a lot of prayer. And it launched us on the greatest growth period, one of the greatest growth periods of my life.

That's amazing. Yeah. And what I want to get, as we're coming to close here, Bill, I know that there are people out there that are going to listen to this. And whether they have aspirations to be just a business owner, a writer, a director. or producer, you never know. They may want to accomplish one of those things. As these folks are getting started, going, running towards the stream, what would some maybe three tips be to actually having it come to fruition? I know it's not easy just to pick three because as we've heard in your story, it goes so many different ways and turns into things we didn't expect. But

what would maybe a few of them be? Well, for me, those things, there's a lot, obviously, but those things become clear and became clear, not only with the death of my career, but eventually me dying. And in 1999, from a flight to Nashville, my heart abruptly stopped. And the short version is I had a very profound after-death experience. And it was in that moment, and the years after that, and even to today, having a moment like that, a profound moment, all of a sudden means all the insignificant things kind of fall away. It's like an emotion picture where the camera like zooms in. It's like, this now is important.

This is important. And if you hold onto this, that doesn't make things easier. In fact, pressing forward towards that dream, that place that you feel called to be is hard. I mean, people don't get to the top of, you know, climb the highest mountains in the world and say it was easy. In fact, if you're called to climb a mountain, every single day will be miserably hard until the last day. That's just all there is to it. That's part of the ingredients of doing something profound. And after my death experience, I came away with one, well, a lot of really important lessons, but probably one starts with the recognition that the breath we take today,

if you got up this morning, you took a breath? I don't think we earned it. I don't think we deserve it. There's nothing that you have done that says, boom, okay, I've deposited this, therefore I'm deserving of my breath today. It's just not the way it works. In fact, the breath that you took this morning and the breath that you're taking right now,

I believe is a gift. It's a precious, precious gift. And probably it's a top of the top. of the lesson list is the recognition is that your life is a gift, a precious gift, but it's more than that. It is a gift that says you have purpose. You have meaning. And your life is about more than you. Your life is about how you can have an impact in the lives of others. And so going to that next step, recognizing that you have purpose, is to say, how can I bring purpose and life to others? How can today, and it doesn't have to be profound, we talk about climbing a mountains,

but sometimes climbing a mountain can be giving someone a smile, giving someone a word of encouragement, of giving someone a hug when they're hurting, or even giving people space when they're processing. Because the truth is that all of us at any time are either in a point of tragedy, I've lost my career. I've lost this. I'm grieving this. Or we're about to have a tragedy or just coming out of one. We all walk through a period of life when we are experiencing things that stretch us and hurt us, but also grow us. Be that person that helps yourself grow. Be that person that helps others grow and recognize you really do have a purpose. I'd say the next thing

from that really is to, and by the way, and I write about this in the book that came after my death experience, the seven disciplines of relationship marketing where we go in the seven disciplines that once you decide your purpose, what are those missions? Now, a lot of people talk about goal setting. And you need to go out goals, set your goals, especially towards the beginning of a season, set your goals. But I want to tell you, the best way to have a most powerful goal is every goal is attached to a mission that serves your purpose. If you have an isolated goal out there, like, I want to lose 20 pounds. I want to lose it like, you know, maybe 10 pounds. That sounds good and there's value to it. But is there a mission tied to it? And is it purposeful?

So if you walk away from recognizing your breath, recognizing that purpose, deciding what are the missions I must live, and then attaching the goals to that, that flow is the yellow brick road that really leads to not just living purposefully, but living in a state of fulfillment. And that would be my prayer for anybody. If you could talk about success, you could talk about money, a lot of ways we measure stuff. But in the deepest sense, my prayer for anybody that watches us, any friend anywhere, recognize your life has value, live on purpose, and make sure that as you're doing that, you're leaving a legacy. Because every breath you take is also a building block into the life of others. And those would be my big three.

There's a hundred more after that. But you do that. that changes everything. It really does change everything. Love it. Yeah, I agree. You know, having value, having purpose, and living a life for legacy. You know, what can you pass down? You know, what's going to be around long after you're gone? And, you know, being a servant leader as well, you know, serving other people, helping people. So, hey, I appreciate you sharing your story, your journey, your words of wisdom. It's been an honor having you on.

I do want you to share, where's the one place people need to go to reconnect with you after the episode? Because I know a lot of folks, we're definitely going to put the link to your book in the show notes. But where's the one place you want people to go to get in touch with you, Bill? Probably easy if you want to get direct touch with me. Go find me on LinkedIn and DM me. I'm very accessible on LinkedIn. And if you want to know about the agency, we're spiritmedia.com. If you want the book, it's 7, the number 7.

rm.com talks about how my life was profoundly changed and I believe it has the secrets to change your life. Love it. Well, hey, I appreciate you again coming on, taking time out of your busy schedule and keep blazing your own trail, my friend. You are a true trailblazer and we appreciate you coming and sharing your story. Thanks, Jordan. Love you. I appreciate you so much. Yes, sir. Likewise. My pleasure.