The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – How to Live an Abundant Life by Carl Grant III

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

How to Live an Abundant Life by Carl Grant III https://amzn.to/41xQDMh To live the best life is to live the abundant life. To learn how to live abundantly, it helps to have a guide. Carl Grant III, author of How to Live the Abundant Life, is well-equipped to take that role. With decades of experience as a business leader, community head, and family man, he’s learned what it takes to live an abundant life—one that’s filled with meaningful activities and social connections, both professional and personal. In this book, readers will find a step-by-step template for living the abundant life and learn the following: Developing a positive mindset is vital to living with abundance. Helping others without expecting anything in return enriches your life in many ways. Finding your purpose and letting it guide your actions is critical. Seeking spiritual growth leads you to a life of abundance. Challenging your assumptions and taking on difficult, risky tasks sharpens your ability to achieve your toughest goals. While material wealth is not necessarily central to the abundant life, living this type of life—with an abundance mindset—can help you attain financial success. The contentment generated by such a life can be a powerful tool for achieving all of your objectives, whether they are centered on your work, personal, or financial activities. Let Carl Grant be your guide in this practical, no-nonsense blueprint to building a life that is rich in all the things that make life worth living. Get a copy now and live abundantly! About the author Carl Grant III is a married father of five adult children and a man of faith. He is a successful entrepreneur and a servant leader who lives in Austin, TX. He is chairman of a company that is working to eradicate diseases previously thought to be incurable. Carl enjoys fitness, boating, aviation, live music, and world travel. He is currently spending significant time in the Middle East, building bridges between the East and West. He founded two workplace ministries -- Sunday Service @SxSW and the High Tech Prayer Breakfast and spent 20 years volunteering in juvenile detention centers.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, without our audience of 15 years, we couldn't do it without you.

Because otherwise, I'd just be sitting here talking to Mike, talking to myself. Which is pretty much what I do on Fridays around here. Is sit and talk to all my other personalities. And try and keep the one that always says kill, kill, kill. From doing anything more that's going to add more ankle bracelets to me. I get one of them off next week. We wrote that show a couple shows ago last week the multiple ankle bracelets because that's what makes it funnier uh so there you go we improve on callback jokes every now and the show for 15 years folks we bring the ceos the billionaires the white house presidential advisors

the pulitzer prize winners the brilliant authors the minds and all that stuff and guess what none of them are me and that's why you're a guest on the show. And then you have a book, eh? So there you go. And we, so they come to you and they part their stories of life, their journeys, their, their cathartic times, the things that they've mastered and they help you improve the quality of your life by mastering. You embark in what we call the Chris Voss show glow, which I don't know.

I think we're making a coffee called that or something. Who knows? We'll find out later. We have an amazing gentleman on the show. And before we get to him, also, we got to do the plugs. Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortuness Chris Voss, the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 LinkedIn group, Chris Voss one on TikTokity and Chris Voss Facebook.com. He is an amazing author who's joining us on the show today. Carl Grant III joins us. We couldn't book one and two or us facebook.com he is the amazing author who's joining us on the show today carl grant the third joins us we couldn't book one and two or number four but we booked the third one he is the author of the newest book that has just come out december 11th 2023 hot off the presses you can still get

high on that print spell does anybody do that anymore or maybe you could try doing that on kindle the book is called how to live an abundant life because that sounds like a fun thing to do carl grant the third is a married father of five adult children and a man of faith he is a successful entrepreneur and servant leader who lives in austin texas he is the chairman of a company that is working to eradicate diseases previously thought to be incurable. Hopefully one of them is stupidity. Carl enjoys fitness, boating, aviation, live music, and world travel.

He's currently spending significant amounts of time in the Middle East, building bridges between the East and West. Good luck with that. He founded two workplace ministries, Sunday Service at South by Southwest, and the high-tech prayer and spent 20 years volunteering in juvenile detention centers. We probably met him. No, I'm just kidding. Welcome to the show, Carl.

How are you? Thanks, Chris. Good to be here. There you go. Now my audience is checking my rap sheet. So there you go. Give us your.com, Carl, so if you can find you on the interwebs. Just follow me on Instagram.

Good place to find me. Carl.Grant.ii. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside your new book and what it entails. Yeah, Chris. So I spent most of my life doing professional services business development, meaning that I was the first business development hire at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where I grew the market share there by 33%. And then I was global head of business development at Cooley for 20 years. When I got to the firm, we had 310 million in revenue annually. And when I left, we had over 2 billion in revenue. When I left after 20 years,

I initially embarked upon writing a business book about how I did what I did in those jobs. And as I sat down to put in a pen to paper, I really got to thinking about how I did what I did, what worked, and the fact that that's really a niche audience. There's not too many people that are going to try to sell accounting and legal services. So I really started to think about how I applied those principles that made me successful at work, at home, and in the community. And so I expanded the scope of the book to talk about your life, right? Because a lot of what I did in those jobs to be successful was contrary to human nature. And that's the approach that I take in the book. It's really, if you think about, you want something from somebody else, is your way to get that thing

from that other person going and asking for it. No, it's actually not. It's actually being giving towards that other person. And if you're giving in all aspects of your life at home, in the community, in your work life, you find that people want to give back to you. And so it's really kind of a contrary view that most people take in business books of how to sell things and how to do things. There you go. And as we've talked about in your biography, you espouse a servant leadership, which I think a lot of people are still adopting to or adapting to. You can pick your words, people. Go for it. And we talk about a lot on the show, since leadership's a favorite topic of mine, in being a servant leader.

And I think a lot of that's changing in the business environment and every place else. Give us a little bit of your history, Carl, in your words. What's your journey through life? What got you involved in the things you did? What shaped you? Who hurt you as a child? I was a bad kid, just like you, Chris. So I was a complete atheist until the age of 24.

And so I just did whatever I wanted to do. There were no bounds on my life whatsoever. And I was a very selfish person. And while in grad school, I came to faith. And that's really where things started to change for me. When you talk about servant leadership, I remember when I first opened the Bible and I saw a Bible verse that said, quoting Jesus, he who wishes to be first must be last and servant of all. That blew my, that just

blew my brain. I'm like, whoa, whoa. Like, and I had to try to think about what does that look like? Right? Because who doesn't want to be first? How can you be last and servant of all? And so I was a military officer at this point in my life. And I was really trying to, I just, that verse stopped me dead in my tracks because I wanted to know what that looked like. And I thought about as an officer in the military, you're hungry just like everybody else. But when it's time to eat, you don't go and eat first. You put your soldiers in front of you, you feed them first. You eat last. That's what it's time to eat. You don't go and eat first. You put your soldiers in front of you. You feed them first. You eat last. That's what it's like to be last and servant of all. And if you take that

approach in every aspect of what you do with your family, if you go me, me, me, me, and I'm going to do everything for myself, it doesn't work well. So instead, in my personal finances, right, I put God first, I give 10% of what I get. And then I've got five kids and a wife, you know, and horses. You've got a lot of giving there. A dog, right? You know, and so my whole life has been giving, giving, giving. And you know what? Through that, I found abundance, right? And so many people I know have all of these horrible problems. They're thinking about all of their problems. And I look at them, I'm like, you know what?

I don't have time to have problems. I'm dealing with everybody else's problems. Grant or Carl, you got to quit following my Facebook feed. And then you won't see other people have all the problems. I'm just sorry. I had to give the joke in.

It's real stuff. But it took me, I lived it for, I'm 57 years old now. I've lived it, right? And then doing this book, it was really a time of reflection. Just looking back, I've had a really good life, a really happy life. And it wasn't because I was trying to get personally rich. It wasn't because I was trying to get personally rich. It wasn't because I was trying to get everything for me. It's because I was pouring myself out into my family and then into my volunteer work. For 20 years, I led church services in a juvenile detention center.

When you go and you visit people whose problems are a lot bigger than yours, it makes whatever you're dealing with seem so small in comparison. I'll never forget the time that I went into the detention center. And normally it's mainly guys in there. There might be one female, maybe two. This time it was all females. Really? Yeah. And you know what? We finished early this time because the girls don't cut up like the guys do, right? And so we were done. And rather than just leave, we had like 10 minutes left. I said, does anybody want prayer?

And I never did this again, Chris, because I never opened myself up like this. When these girls came to pray with us individually, one of them told me that her dad was dying of AIDS. And because she's in the jail, and I don't know what was wrong with their other sibling, he was all alone. And, you know, that really, that really, you know, that hurt me, you know, thinking about that. And then the next girl came and she said, my mother was beat into a coma by her boyfriend. And I can't be there with her because I'm stuck in jail. And it went on and on and on, Chris. And when I thought about what these poor kids were dealing with in their personal life,

other than the fact they were in jail, you know, it really was hard to deal with. So it was almost too much, right? I'm happy to be in a group setting and share with them, but taking on the burdens of one after another, after another, you know, our burdens are pretty light compared to what some people are dealing with in the room. So I'll stop. Definitely. Definitely. It's indicative, you know, if you study why most people are in prison, their childhood lives aren't that great. And we need to fix that first, probably to quit filling our prisons.

So you've done a lot of different things. You have a company called Capital Raise. Tell us about what you're doing there. Yeah. So over the 25 years I spent in the marketplace, getting to know companies and getting to know investors. So I figured out very early on when I was selling accounting services for PricewaterhouseCoopers that nobody wants to buy accounting services. Audits are the most boring thing. I'm married to an auditor. She's beautiful. Did you just call your wife boring?

No, no, no. She's beautiful. But nobody wants to buy an audit. Any successful company is going to need an audit at some point in time, but nobody wants to buy one. And so what I did was I figured out that we audited most of the

venture funds in the country. And if I could be the conduit between the emerging companies and the money, then everybody loved me. And so I got to know all these investors through two years at PWC, two years at Fairfax County, 20 years at Cooley. And because I knew all these investors, I was a very popular guy in the business community. And so as I left my last job, I built a LinkedIn-like platform that has all of my investor connections. And it has a matching algorithm that matches their investment criteria with companies when they build a profile on the platform, we can look in there and see on a percentage basis, who is the best match for their company and make those referrals.

And so I'm doing that business with my son, which is pretty cool because as you've already established, there is a Carl Grant IV. And so we're kind of interchangeable. And so he works on these, we share an email address and he works on the referrals. He's actually getting to know all of the investors yet, but a lot of the investors himself. And so, you know, we're, we're able to get companies to the right investors pretty efficiently. There you go. We'll have him on the show when he puts out a book.

I'm just kidding. We'll just do them all. We were talking with the Tom Clancy people the other day last week, and we've had everybody on, but Tom Clancy, and we're joking that maybe we can get an ai virtual thing of tom clancy so we can make sure we we've had everybody on the show for the tom clancy teams so there you go now you have another company i believe that you run as well right i think you're involved in it do i have that right connects to partners oh connects to partners is my consulting company so yeah since i since I've grown all that revenue for

these big firms, I have other firms that want to engage me to figure out how I did that. I'll go in and I'll do business development training for professional services companies. I've done a large law firm, a large investment bank. I'm doing one of the big four coming up soon. So it's something I really enjoy doing. And then I get engaged by some of them to come in and help them actually write plans and execute plans. And so I don't want to go back doing that full time. Chris, I did it long enough, but I don't mind coming in and spending a day to a week working with companies to help them improve their business development.

There you go. One thing you talk about in your book is finding your purpose and letting it guide your actions is critical. Talk to us about why that's important. What does it mean to find my purpose? What is my purpose? I mean, my purpose today is to get tacos later, but that doesn't sound like what you're talking about. Well, we really do a deep dive on that.

And so, you know, to do that topic thoroughly, we're not going to be able to do it in a few minutes. Just tease it, man. We're not asking you to write to do it in a few minutes. Just tease it, man. We're not asking you to write the book on the show, Carl. We tease it out. There you go. A lot of people wonder or they feel like they don't have a purpose. That's one of the things that we start out. People enter life and they say, I was a mistake.

My parents weren't married or I wasn't wanted or whatever. And we dispel that notion. Have you been talking to my parents? No, I'm just kidding. Sorry. weren't married or I wasn't wanted or whatever, you know, and we dispel that notion, right? Have you been talking to my parents? No, I'm just kidding. Sorry. So the jokes we do on the show. So we started from the very basics, right? Where we established that everybody's created, God has created all of us for a purpose. And sometimes we need to figure out what that purpose is. And so I walked through how I found what I was meant to be doing. I never set out to do professional services, business development. I mean, that sounded boring to me, honestly. So I remember when I got a phone call, when I was working in this government job doing

capital attraction for Fairfax County Economic Development Authority, Pricewaterhouse and Coopers, the two large accounting firms then were merging to create the largest professional services organization in the world. And I was the very first person they hired to go out and sell their services. And I never thought I wanted to do that. In fact, when I got the call, I'm like, I don't think I want to do that. And the woman then told me what they were going to pay me. I'm like, okay, I'll do that. I'll do that.

And yeah, it was a lot more than I was making i got involved in only fans i'm just kidding i don't don't don't do that chris it's a callback joke we use on the show yeah yeah i agree with you don't do that so i when i when i started to do it i actually found that i was very good at it and so sometimes you have to take your cues from others to figure out what your purpose is. Like, for example, public speaking is something that terrified me. I remember when I was in graduate school in my mid-20s, and they joked about having us get up in front of the whole class and give an impromptu speech. I was terrified of that. And then later in life, I would have people asking me

to speak on something. For example, the scariest thing where I could ever imagine speaking is giving the sermon at church. Think about that. That's a serious thing to do. And I was asked to do it. And I did it. And And then afterwards I had people actually come up to me and say, that was really good. You were really good. And so sometimes you have to take your cues from other people to say, oh, you should be doing this, or you're a good speaker. For example, taking cues from others. I wanted to be able to play guitar and sing. I went to this Luke Bryan concert way back when he was just getting started, and he blew my socks off.

That dude could sing and play the guitar so well. I was in a private little reception where he was playing, and so I got on my phone and ordered a guitar. And I started taking voice lessons and started, you know, playing the guitar on YouTube. And after doing this for a year and a half, my wife said, you know, maybe you ought to give it up. Oh! I know.

Ouch. And I just didn't have the gift. Like as much as I thought that these country pumpkins, they can't be that. This can't be that hard to do this, right? But it is. Like if you don't have the gift, forget it. But you know what? I've got the gift of speaking.

And I had to try it and had to have people tell me that I was good at it. And so, look, now I'm a writer. I'm a speaker. I train people on how to do things. These are all things that I never set out to do. They're things that I found along the way. And so I take the readers through a journey of how to figure out what you're good at and then lean into those things and how to listen to others as they let them know. Sometimes you don't see it in yourself, right? Most of us are

pretty insecure. You get up and speak. You don't know that you were a good speaker. I didn't know that I was a good speaker, but you hear it enough from people as you do it. And you're like, maybe I'm a good speaker. So I was just invited to go to Pakistan and speak in front of thousands of people. And that's a pretty daunting thing to do, Chris. Plus if you don't do it well, they'll shoot at you probably. You're the only American in this room i mean obviously and you're speaking on a topic way out of your comfort zone and to people that you don't know and and boy you better be good at what you're doing or else you're gonna bomb there you go there you go finding purpose is so important i find that to be something it seems like a lot of people are listless now you know they're looking at instagram and they think that i

don't know chasing kardashians is their purpose a A lot of young men or men I find that don't seem to find their purpose until their midlife crisis in life. They think it's one thing and it's another. It seems to be what a lot of our young men have issues with is finding a purpose in life. A lot of people are thinking, if I find this, it will fix my problems. If I do this, it will fix my problems. Someone else will, if I find someone else that will fix my problems, it's like, no. And finding your purpose is so important. What your, what your goal is in life, especially as a man, because as men, it's our job to

live our purpose. I mean, we're, we're designed to spend a whole lifetime building ourselves and creating something that contributes to society and serve society, really. And Chris, it's not just one purpose. Your purpose can change over time. For 20 years, I was meant to do one thing. I did it well. And at the 20th anniversary, my time there was done. It was very clear I was meant to move on.

And now I have a new purpose. And you touched on it in the Middle East, you know, and that's a daunting new purpose. But I just got back from Saudi Arabia. I mean, I'm going back to, I've been to Pakistan twice this year. I've been to Saudi Arabia once, and I'm going back to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia next year early. And I do have a mission there. And you have to be comfortable moving and changing when your purpose changes.

And another thing people do in their life is they get their identity tied up in a job, right? And when that job comes to an end, I have a neighbor who had a, I'm not going to say too much about him because I don't want to call him out on this podcast, but he had a big, important job. And his identity was tied up in that job. And when the mandatory retirement came too early, it was over and he had no identity left.

And he went back home and ended up divorced. And, you know, it's kind of a sad story, right? And so you got to have a purpose that's more than your job, right? It's got to be more than your job. So I find my identity in Christ. I'm a Christian. I'm not ashamed of it. And then I find identity in my family as well, right? I'm a family man. I'm a father of five kids and a husband of 29 years. And I hope that marriage stays with me until I die, but things happen, right? People pass away and they lose people. But until that sacred bond ends, that's part of my identity.

I find my identity in the community, right? I'm a member of a church. I'm a member of an initiative here. I told you we started the largest event at South by Southwest Interactive last year. I'm involved in a lot of things that round me out and give me an identity that's way beyond myself or any job. There you go. There you go. I mean, you have to find your purpose. What makes your identity? It's really important in life to understand these things. And I don't think a lot of people sit down and really give it some thought. They just kind of, you know, life, social, you know, constructs,

hand them stuff, just do this, you know. My favorite line is those lines from Fight Club where, you know, they're sitting in the bathroom, Ed Norton and Brad Pitt, and they're like, so what did your dad tell you to do? I'm just paraphrasing, but, you know, he told me to go to school. And so I went to school and then I called him up later and said, what do I do now, dad? He goes, get a job. You got a job. What do I do now? I got married. You know, a lot of people don't think about these things. They just kind of step through them and maybe they don't think of them from like do from the purpose of identity and different things,

but it's really important. One thing you talk about in your book too, challenging your assumptions and taking on difficult, risky tasks that sharpen your ability to achieve tough goals. Why is challenging your assumptions important? So I like to do things that seem impossible to do, right? Not that everybody has to do it. I mean, it could be climbing a mountain or something, but I wanted to fly airplanes. Nobody in my family flew airplanes. I didn't have any pilots in my family. So I set out to do that. It took me a long time to do. I started out right out of college and I passed the written test. I soloed and then life happened. I got into graduate school.

I got busy, ran out of time and money, got married, had kids, like no time to fly airplanes, no money to fly airplanes. But when my kids started to get to a point where they didn't need me to spend their, you know, every waking hour with them, I went back to flying and I didn't, I didn't finish it until I was in my forties. And, and, you know, it was one of those bucket list things. It's not impossible to do something. If you want to do it, it's possible to do it. You got to, but you got to set little goals and, and, and, and achievable goals, right? Passing the written test, getting back. Actually, an interesting thing happened.

When I got married, I had a lot of trouble sleeping. And I have never talked about this before. I was prescribed benzos, benzodiazepines to help me sleep. And I slept like a baby for 13 years. I slept great. But then when I wanted to fly, Chris, I went in and I did the flight physical. I never had any problem passing.

And they said, oh, you can't fly airplane, taking these things. And you talk about a challenge. I now was told I had to get off of these things, which I didn't necessarily want to because I was sleeping great. You're sleeping well, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But they didn't tell me when they got when i when they started giving me these things that they're addictive and it took me a whole year to get free of the the side effects and so that is overcoming that was one of the biggest challenges in my life because a lot of people can't get off of those things i got off of them and and you know praise praise god i'm off of them today. But that made it even more challenging. And then to finally get my pilot's license, that was great. Another thing that I talk about in the book was when I was a kid, I didn't really apply myself in school. So going to Harvard was not something that was even in the cards. But as I started going

through life and working in the venture capital space, most of the people I worked with went to Harvard, you know, and I thought to myself, you never could go to Harvard before, but why not now? And so I actually got into an executive education program at Harvard and had my company pay for it, you know, flying an airplane, going to Harvard, those things are possible. It might be just walking a mile or having some goal that you have to do. It doesn't have to be some grandiose thing like what I've stated, but having those goals, writing a book, I mean, that's a daunting thing. That is a daunting thing. I mean, I couldn't imagine ever writing a book. I could write an essay, but a book? And so the

fact that I've got one up behind me right now, that just shows it's not impossible to do these things. If you set a goal for yourself, and you give yourself bite size, little pieces that you can do, write a chapter, write another chapter, right? Edit the book. You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it took me three years to do it, but it's done. And I'm here talking to you about it. And so my encouragement to the readers is there are things that you can do. There are things that are unique to you that you can do. And I talk you through a way to get yourself out of your comfort zone to do them because life is so much more exciting when you have a goal, something to accomplish, Chris. It definitely is. And assuming

that you can't do it, it's going to hold you back and limit your life. You know, I'm doing that right now. I'm writing my second book. And I have a couple other people who've been on the show that we're doing an accountability group for writing a book. And this is how I got my first book written. We're keeping a spreadsheet and every day we have to check in and put down that we did, how much time we put in doing the book, which usually the goal is to do an hour for each of us a day. So there's kind of some peer pressure, accountability. I kind of need that in my life because otherwise I go get tacos, which is my purpose today, as I mentioned before.

And like you said, my purpose, your purpose can change. So today it is tacos, evidently. That's the callback joke on the show. Those are important. And I suppose, as you also talk about in the book, developing a positive mindset to go along with that is important as well. A lot of people have negative thinking or what some people call stinking thinking. How do you make sure you clear that out of your high head and cobwebs maybe that you have from maybe what you were taught by your parents as children. Only you control what goes through your brain. And so I walk through how to get a hold of those thoughts, because it's like a negative loop.

You speak negative words, you think negative thoughts, and it's all you dwell on it. And I've been guilty of this in the past. It's just taken years to figure this out, Chris. And it's not something that comes naturally. Most of us have negative Chris. And it's not something that comes naturally. Most of us have negative thoughts. And one of the things that I've started to do, and this works for me, there may be other things that work for other people, but you replace those thoughts with other thoughts. And so something my wife and I started doing together is we wrote down all of the promises that God has made to us in the Bible. And we've written them down and we've claimed them out loud. And now we've gotten to the point where those

promises are ingrained in my brain. And so if a negative thought comes about, I can replace that negative thought with the truth from God's word, right? Not everybody's going to have the same faith as me. And so it may be other principles, but I apply principles God's word, right? Not everybody's going to have the same faith as me. And so it may be other principles, but I apply principles like that. If you have bad thoughts, you got to replace them with good thoughts. And if you're speaking negative thoughts about yourself, you got to change that, right? I mean, I see people who are my age, right? 57 years old that look like they could be my grandfather. It's because they're saying, I'm old. I don't even like to say that. I'm saying that as an example, but you speak it upon yourself, right? Why would you speak that upon yourself? I am getting younger and more lively as I go on through life because I speak positive things over myself, right? I go into the gym,

and I'm not saying you look old and decrepit. I'm saying you look great. You're getting better. You're getting stronger. You speak positive things over yourself, and you manifest that reality. It's amazing how it works. I say you look great for an old decrepit guy. Don't put that on me, Chris. I know. I shouldn't do that. I need to work on that too.

I've been feeling a little bit older, but I seem to be doing well. I really can't complain. I mean, I've lived a blessed life health-wise all my life. The brain, though, I don't know about the rest of that, but that's another story. So what have we talked about that's in your book that we can tease out to people to get them to pick it up? Let me go through some of the things I address. I address the mind. I address the spirit.

I address the body, right? Personal growth plan, personal relationships, boundaries. Boundaries are important. A lot of people don't put up proper boundaries. And if you don't put up proper boundaries, people will take all of your time away. So I talk a lot about that. I talk about abundance in the community and in the marketplace. So being likable, there's ways you can make people like you. And so we walk through some of those things, developing character and building a legacy and becoming part of a community and developing a positive mindset. So we try to take a very well-rounded approach. And then in each chapter, I have a little workbook type thing where you can go through and make sure you're

applying the principles that we talked about in the chapter to your life. There you go. One of the ways I found to get people like me, you know what? Bribery. Just kidding. So a lot of it, Chris, is being- Paul, you're a tough audience, buddy. I love you. You know, I think you're funny, man. You're being a giver and not a taker. That's a big part of this. When I sit down in the business community,

and if all the other person is looking for is what I can give them, it's not a very exciting conversation. But if I sit down with somebody who's out giving me, I'm like, oh, you need to know this guy and let me introduce you to this person. And you know what? I know this organization and I can get you into there. And when there's that mutual exchange of two people trying to help each other out and advance each other's careers or what they're trying to accomplish, it's a beautiful thing, right? And so that's something I've always tried to do, not just in the business world, but in my family, right? My kids want to advance in their lives. They want to get into college. They want to be successful as they're getting into their careers.

I try to be helpful to them because if you're a blessing to someone else, they turn around, they want to be a blessing to you. This year, I have all five of my kids coming home to be with me for Christmas. That's the reward that you get for being a blessing to other people. They want to be with you. I want to come to your house for Christmas. Where's my invite? Let me ask you this though. I play devil's advocate a little bit. What happens? How do you manage it when you're a giver person, you're a servant leader, when people don't reciprocate? When there are people in the world that will take and there are vampires in the world that will take, how do you manage that in your mind? How do you think about that and not let it destroy your negative, negatively affect your thought patterns?

I do, at the end of the book, I do talk about being strategic with your giving because you can't give to the whole world, right? And so you have to be purposeful with it and you have to be targeted. I can't help every 17 and under youth in the world, but I was, to help the kids that were in the juvenile detention center in Fairfax County and Loudoun County, Virginia for 20 years. And you know, there's 20 kids per month that I'm there to focus on. And I don't want anything in return from those guys, right? Part of that is part of the beauty of this is, is giving to someone who has nothing to give back to you. And you know what, that it doesn't matter if doesn't matter if they're taking from you. You're giving to them and you know what? Your reward isn't happening. My reward isn't in this lifetime, right? I'm helping those kids. If I can

keep one of those kids from going into the big house, right? In that juvenile detention center, they're either going to turn their life around because of somebody like me talking to them or somebody else talking to them or they're going to they're going to end up dead. Right. They're going to get out. They're going to they're going to somebody that end up, you know, overdosing and drugs, getting in gunfights, knife fights, or they're going to end up in the jail where they're going to go up into the regular population. And that's not a good life. And so if I can keep one of those kids out of there, I've received my reward. I'll never forget. I talk about it in the book. I went into a Chick-fil-A and there was this kid that came up to me, young person, just

going on and on and on about their life. Like, I'm doing this and that. I'm joining the army. I'm doing that. He was so excited about all the positive things. Like, who is this kid? You know, maybe it's one of my kids' friends that I don't recognize. And then after he talked to me for a while,

I realized it was one of those many kids that I administer to in the detention center. And I'm like, man, you know, sorry, I'm going to cry. I didn't know I was going to see it on this side of heaven right like to see one of these kids that that turned their life around like that and you know that was the one that i saw you know how many there must be out there that that listened to what we said took it to heart and made a change in their life i don't want anything from that kid i don't want anything at all i mean it was it was more than enough just to see that he didn't end up in jail or dead. And it's personally rewarding. It doesn't always have to be some sort of monetary reward or some sort of tit for tat. It's not about that. There was one other kid when we

were in there, I'll never forget. This kid was big, mean looking guy that I swear he was going to kill me if I got too close to him. It? It was a serious-looking, big 17-year-old kid. And my partner, he had the same reaction. Like, we don't want to get near this kid. And so for months, we would be in there sharing the good news with these kids. And he did nothing but to come and just be antagonistic towards us. And it's almost like he had an evil spirit in him. But I watched over the course of the year,

because I don't know what that kid did to get in there, but he had dropped out of high school. He was out of everything. And over the course of that year, I watched that kid go from having a scowl on his face, having a smile on his face, to being antagonistic, to carrying a Bible into the service with him.

And he had his name engraved on it. I watched him re-enroll in high school. I watched him enroll in college and tell me that he was planning on joining the military when he got out. And you know what? That kid who I wouldn't get near when I first walked in there, he hugged me. He hugged me on his last day in there. And you know what? He left that place never to be heard from again. So I don't want squat from that kid. I can't even remember his name today.

But you know what? Those are the kind of things that are personally rewarding in life. And yeah, you can't give to every 17-year-old kid or, you know, 17-under kid, but I gave to those kids. I don't regret one minute that i spent not one there you go i mean that's one of the one of the purposes that you know it's good to have as human beings we leave this place a better place than when we came to it and and and the impact that we can have you know there's lots of times where there's been impacts of what i've done

when when i've shared stuff sometimes that i didn't want to share because it seemed a little too heartfelt or you know i there's a story I'm sure a lot of my audience has heard, ad nauseum, but when my dog passed away from a seizure within a half an hour, it was so shocking to me. And so I bled it out with a half a bottle of vodka onto Facebook on a post. And I sat there for a half an hour looking at it going, I really don't want to post this. This is like too personal. It's, it's knowing who gives a crap, why, my, you know, whatever. And I, and then I shared it and went past out and it was amazing to me, the impact it's had. There's people that still remember it all these years later. I think it's been seven years now and eight years and people still remember it and it was interesting to me that

people because i thought it was kind of selfish too and people wrote me and they're like i cathartically going through what you wrote about in your pain i didn't realize that i hadn't resolved my loss with my father i hadn't got closure yet over his death i realized that i got closure with my pet or you know there's all these people that helped. And I was like, seriously? But, you know, being able to help people on our Twitter account, we were really huge on Twitter. We, there were two times where I was just posting quotes. In fact, it was an auto feeder. We had a quote thing that was auto feeding quotes into Twitter back in the day. And twice I had people write me and they said that they would plan to commit suicide that day and they were ready to go and somehow my random quote that had no intention of any of that

had turned their life around and they decided to go live their life you know you've had that a lot in your life i'm sure i've had that a lot of life where people pull you aside and you go and they'll tell you their story about how you help them. And you're just like, wow, it's crazy how, you know, what you do, you know, you hope you're put good in the world, but sometimes you don't get the feedback. And I'm sure there's a lot of the stories you and I haven't heard about. It comes back tenfold. It comes back ten you, it comes back. It comes back by people saying good things about you to other people.

And that just has a ripple effect. I tell you what, practicing this for all the time that I have, 20 years of my past job, I had literally to, I sold very expensive legal services. I mean, very expensive. And to sell them, all I literally needed to do was open my email inbox because I had so many inbounds of people referring people to me because I had done favors for people that it was overwhelming. I couldn't get to all of my emails. That's how it works, right? You put good out into the world and you watch what it comes back. I kid you not, it comes back 10 old. And so I have never worried about where my next meal was going to come from ever. I've never

worried about how I was going to pay for my home, my five kids, my wife. She stayed home to raise those kids. And just saying what I've done has worked. And so if you want to read about a guy who lived his life right, I've never cheated on my wife. I've been there for all my kids. I never missed one of their games, never missed a birthday. You know, I'm a guy who did things right, and I lived an abundant life. And what I did was I outlined in the book how I did it,

and I made some suggestions about how you can do it as well. Not everything I did for me is going to work for you. So I tamp it back, and I say, you know, if taking your kids on these vacations that I did doesn't work for you, go to the park. You know, go do something that doesn't cost anything. There's things you can do to be a blessing to your kids in their life. I mean, when I was younger and we didn't have any money, we'd go watch airplanes land at the airport. My kids loved it.

We'd go lay out on the ground and look at the stars. I mean, we just spent time together doing things that didn't cost a lot. I also give the expensive options too, because I've been blessed in my life and I was able to do some nice things with the kids and I lay some of that out there. And those things I did with them are some of the best memories I've had in their lives. I mean, I took each of my kids on a vacation individually and the blessings that those trips were for my kids and for me, being able to go and explore and see things in the world was just wonderful. There you go.

You've inspired the hell out of us, Carl. It's been fun to have you on and inspiring. Give us your final thoughts as we go out, pitch on people to order up the book. Look, if you order up the book, it's Carl Grant, How to Live the Abundant Life. It's on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Would love to have a review from you. Would love to have your feedback. I am genuinely interested in hearing from people. Find me on social media and send me a note, make a comment. Some of the ones I've already received have been so inspiring. It's really nice to hear about how people are dealing with these things in

their own lives. And I do care. There you go. Thank you very much, man. We really appreciate it. And hopefully we've changed some lives. That's the reason we do the Chris Vaughn show and share all these stories

is hopefully change some lives and, and share people's stories, the stories of the owner's manual life, as we always say. So thank you very much, Carl. We really appreciate it. And then it was your Instagram.com. Do we get yeah carl.grant.ii there you go so

thanks for coming on the show carl thanks to my honest for tuning in go to goodreads.com fortresschrisfoss linkedin.com fortresschrisfoss chrisfoss one on the tiktokity subscribe the big linkedin newsletter and the 130 000 group on linkedin thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time