The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Boy in the Yellow House: based on a real-life story of heartbreak, horror, and hope by Ray Sanders

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

The Boy in the Yellow House: based on a real-life story of heartbreak, horror, and hope by Ray Sanders https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F99FYV3G Raysanders.com Based on a real-life story of heartbreak, horror, and hope, The Boy in the Yellow House is a gripping novel of survival, resilience, and redemption. Kyle Sanderson grows up in a small yellow house, where love and fear collide under the shadow of his father's life-threatening violent outbursts. Forced to protect his mother and brother, Kyle learns to navigate a world where chaos is the norm and escape feels impossible. As he moves from the windswept prairies of Oklahoma to the halls of power in Washington, D.C., Kyle's journey is one of struggle, trauma, and self-discovery. During the exciting highs and devastating lows of his adventure, he encounters friends, mentors, and moments of grace that challenge him to break free from his past and embrace his future as he discovers the life he was destined to lead. A raw and unflinching look at the real world of teen pregnancy, addiction, and domestic abuse, The Boy in the Yellow House is a story of love, adventure, and second chances. Ultimately, it is about the power of forgiveness - and finding the courage to overcome the past that seeks to define you and hold you back.About the author Ray Sanders is a dynamic communicator known for inspiring and motivating audiences of all ages, He has a rich background in leadership development, broadcasting, journalism, and leading from the helm at multimillion-dollar companies. He has served as editor-in-chief of an award-winning news journal, hosted a prizewinning radio program, and continues to share insights, real-life challenges, humorous experiences and exciting adventures through The Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast. As a CEO, international leadership consultant, and having served as a nonpartisan production liaison with the U.S. Senate, Ray has led initiatives impacting remote communities worldwide. He serves Fortune 500 leaders and other sizable corporations, through his leadership coaching and business consulting firm, Coaching Leaders, he and his wife, Stephanie, founded Edify Leaders, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering leaders to use their influence for positive change. They cherish their six children and ten grandchildren—and counting!

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Because you're about to go on a moment. monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss folks is foss here from the chris fos show dot com there you go ladies gentlemen with our late six that makes it official welcome to the big show as always for 16 years and 2400 episodes of bringing the chris fos show because you know uh we just sitting around one day and we're like we should do a podcast day and we're like but no one's ever heard of a podcast day It was like 16 years ago. And we're like, yeah, that's probably all the more reason to do one.

I'm not sure that's what we're thinking, but we might have just been drinking really heavily at the time, and it sounded like a good idea. And I mean, only it was, because here we are all these years later. But we still need your help, damn it. Refer your friends, neighbors, or relatives, tell them to go to Goodreach.com, forward to us, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, forwardsess, Chris Foss, one on the TikTok, and all those crazy places they end up. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own, and do not necessarily. to reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show. Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review

of any kind. Today, anyway, another amazing young author on the show with us today. He's going to be sharing his stories of leadership, hope, management, business, his life, and how it all intertwines. We're going to get into his stories. His book has come out May 27, 2025. It is entitled, The Boy in the Yellow House, based on a real life story of heartbreak. horror and hope by Ray Sanders.

He's going to be joining us in the show to talk about his new book and some of his insights, his stories of life and journeys and how you can make your life better. And damn it, if he doesn't make your life better, you better go listen to the show about three more, four or more times because you probably look at your phone during the whole time. So stop that. Anyway, guys, Ray Sanders is a dynamic communicator

known for inspiring and motivating audiences of all ages. He has a rich background and leadership development, broadcasting journalism, and leading from the helm at multimillionaire companies. He has served as editor-in-chief, an award-winning news journal, hosted a prize-winning radio program, and continues to share insights, real-life challenges, humorous experiences, and exciting adventures through the Ray Sanders Leadership Podcast. As a CEO and international leadership consultant, having served as a non-partisan

production liaison to the U.S. Senate, he has led initiatives impacting remote communities worldwide. He serves Fortune 500 leaders and other sizable corporations through his leadership coaching and business consulting firm coaching leaders. He and his wife Stephanie founded Edify Leaders, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering leaders to use their influence for positive change. They cherish their six children and ten grandchildren. Wow. Welcome to show. Ray, how are you? Hey, Chris. It's great to be with you. Coming from the heartland of the Oklahoma City Thunder, NBA champions, baby. Oklahoma, the state there in the middle.

So give us your, I don't think that's what they're moving. The great flyover state with a great team. Is that what they call it, the great flyover state? Well, that's what I'm going to call it today, Chris. Oh, okay. All right, well, you live there. You can do whatever you want, then. Yeah.

So give us your dot-coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? Man, I appreciate that. I think the easiest thing is to just tell people to go to Ray Sanders. If they just go to RaySanders.com, they're going to find out all of what we do, and it's connected to everything that we do. Our nonprofit and everything can be found through links through there, our podcast, our books, our online assessments, all the things we do with Fortune 500 companies and other leaders. Just go to Ray Sanders.com, and they'll be hooked up nicely. So give us a 30,000 over you.

What's in your new book? Well, you know, Chris, I grew up here in the heartland, eventually lived in Washington. Washington, D.C. for five years and worked with the United States Senate and ran a company down in Texas, but we eventually moved home. My grandmother always told me to find something I was good at and stick with it. And so I ended up having six kids. And so I figured that one out. It wasn't for lack of television. And so I found something I was pretty good at and had six kids. Now I've got 10 grandkids. But I grew up, I grew up. You should have moved to Utah, sounds like. I don't No, no, that's not where my lane goes, but there's some things in life, you know, you hope to master.

And I guess other than being a whiteboard aficionado, I'll take claim to that one based on my grandma's recommendation. But I do have six kids and six grandkids. And the more you learn about this story, the more you realize that's amazing. Because I basically grew up in a small farming community just outside of Oklahoma City. And my mom was pregnant with me when she was 15. My dad was eight years, her senior. And basically he raped. It would have been considered statutory rape.

But he ended up marrying her. And this book is entitled, The Boy in the Yellow House. And the Boy in the Yellow House is me. It's written as a novel. And like I was telling you, Chris, I wrote it as a novel. It's based on a real life story. It's 90% my story. But I wrote it as a novel to protect the guilty.

I grew up in Canadian County, Oklahoma, and, you know, I'm just out of respect for some of those who know me closely, I just changed the names. Ah, that's pretty nice to do, because I would have just left them and screw these people and hang them out to dry. Some of them, I feel that way about it. And others, you know what, they deserve a little mercy and grace like all of us. Yeah, I mean, we're all kind of people doing. trying to figure it all out, I suppose, and I don't know, unless people do real evil and it's intentional, then I don't give them any grace, but it's good that you do. So I have a whole backyard filled with, with a loose dirt. Let's put it that way. Uh, we all do. Do we? Do we?

Oh, good. What I keep telling the detective when he comes by the house knocking. So what made you want to write this book? What was the motivator behind it? You know, I lived it, and so I learned a lot from it. You know, the song that's out there, you know, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I can honestly say that whenever your dad's tried to kill you twice and he beats the snot out of your mom, he's a drunk and does drugs, and nobody in your neighborhood thinks you're going to grow up to be anything,

you kind of have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder and an edge to fight. And this book is really about that story, but it's also about people that came into my life and help me be the man that I am today. And without them, I'm not sure that the boy in the yellow house wouldn't have become the man in the orange jumpsuit in prison. So I actually kind of initially wanted to write this for my own kids. I wanted them to kind of know their story to try to keep them out of the ditches. We've grown up, my kids, their story is nothing like what my story is. Man, I wanted to capture what happened to remind them. that it doesn't matter where you start, it's how you finish.

And you don't have to be held hostage by your past. And so that was my number one motivator. My number two motivator was I wanted to try to make a difference in the lives of the little boys and the little girls who live through the hell like I did in the yellow house. And then I wanted to write it for all those people, my coach, my mentor, my neighbors who stepped in. And I wanted to honor them.

And so this book is really about people that live inside the yellow house. And buddy, there are a lot of them. In Oklahoma, we have one of the highest domestic abuse, spousal abuse records in the whole nation. And so it's a pandemic. You know, it got even worse during COVID. And for the people that live inside that hellhole, and that was me and my brother and my mom. But it's also a clarion call, a wake-up call for all of us who go about our business every day. You'll go home today, Chris, you'll do your thing.

I'll go home today, I'll do my thing. And we'll go back into neighborhoods, and we sometimes forget what's going on in the lives of our neighbors on either side of us. And whether it's a little boy or a little girl whose mama's getting the crap beat out of her by their dad or somebody who's strung out on alcohol addiction trying to get through life or struggling with prescription medications. We're all dealing with, like you said, dirt. And everybody is. Tell us your dad tried to kill you twice. Tell us about this story because you can't leave that hanging.

Yeah, well, there's a couple of times. There's a couple of things. You know, bottom line is my dad was a farm kid and he got my mom pregnant when she was 15. He was embarrassed. He moved to the big city of Oklahoma City. He became a dock worker. And like a lot of us in life, he began to self-medicate through alcohol, eventually drugs. And when he would be wound up, if you will, he would come home a lot of times at night and just clear the kitchen.

table of all the hard work my mom had done on dinner and the fight would be on. And he would just beat the living snot out of her, drag her around by the head of her hair and things like that. Well, eventually she got tired of that. And we used to run across the street to a Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who were a couple of my heroes. And my dad would come chasing us. Sometimes we'd be in our underwear, my mom, and her nightgown. And he would chase us across the street and those those people would take us in. But eventually she got sick of putting up with all that, and she divorced him.

And then he went really crazy, really crazy. Wow. And so the two times that he tried to take my life was one time I had gone with him to be with my grandparents in our little hometown where I grew up. And in that little hometown was a little cafe. I don't know if you've ever been to these little cafes where they have a bar with just bar stools.

And behind the bar is there's a grill. and it cooks cooking right there in front of you. And we have a lot of those throughout Oklahoma in this part of the neck of the woods. Well, I was grabbing a hamburger with my dad that day, and we finished up. I was probably, oh, 10 or 11 years old. And at the end of the counter,

a small little town, maybe 500 people, was a little cabinet that carried all kinds of things like booing knives and weird trinkets and handguns, handguns, with ammo. And we're finishing up, and my dad looks over at that cabinet, and he says, said, hey, what do you think, why do you think your mom would think? Keep in mind that this

was right after the divorce. Why do you think your mom would think if you weren't here? And I said, like, here at the burger shop or here, grandpa and grandmas? No, no, I mean if you weren't here. I said, well, that would probably make it really sad. So we go to check out. It wasn't my dad do. He tells the guy that's checking this out. He says, yeah, I want that pistol and a box of ammo. And this is at the point in the movie where you go, hey, dude, you're supposed to run or say something to somebody, but this is your father. You don't think about things like that. And anybody who's lived through the hell that I've lived through, they know what I'm talking about. Yeah. You have this tension, this major stupid dysfunction that you

put up with, and it's your normal. So I get in the car with him, and he drives me out to what we call the old home place that was out in the country, and there's a big ravine, a big, deep, deep creek. He says, let's go down in that creek, and I'm going down in front of him, and I turn around, and he has a pistol loaded, and he points it at me. And I said, no, stop, stop, stop. And he fires to the left, fires to the right, raises the gun up and looks at me and starts to shoot me. And I say, Dad, Dad, Dad, stop, stop.

And he has what I would consider a nervous breakdown or a bipolar moment or something. And he falls to his knees, and he's sorry. Well, let's just say, I didn't leave the creek without a brown streak in my undershorts. I was scared to death. And so I go home and I tell my mom, I'm never, ever, ever, ever going back with him. And she agreed. So life goes on. And I grew up in a neighborhood where there were no fences.

And we were outside working out one day. And when you live in that environment, first of all, with your dad beating your wife most of your life, I had acquired a 12-gauge shotgun. And that 12-gate shotgun, I kept underneath my bed. bed for one reason. Your dad. And it's my dad. And there'd be nights that he would get out from the bar and he would come beat on our door. There were times he would take his spare tire out of the back of his, the trunk of his car

and beat on our front door trying to knock the door down, knock out windows and things like that. The cops would come. So I made up my mind that if this sorry son of a gun ever tried to hurt us or kill us, I was going to be prepared. And I kept a 12-gauge shotgun under my bed loaded all the time. well one afternoon we're outside and you sleep like a soldier in a foxhole i still sleep really like and i hear this car racing down the road and i look up and it's my dad and he's seen us and

and we're in the backyard he jumps the curb you just have to understand the size of the yard he chased us around the backyards did a fish tail donut and then he started chasing us back toward the house trying to run us all over my brother and myself my brother goes to one side my Mom and I go to another side. Long story short, he crashes the car into the back of the house, revs the engine up, backs up, spins back around, and drives the car up onto the back porch of our house. And at that point, you know where I was. My mom was in the back calling the cops.

I was running to my bedroom, and I ran in, pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun, put it on my shoulder, pumped it, and I waited as I heard not one, not two, but three doors get knocked down. and he comes around the corner after trying to kill us, and he went at the end of a 12-gauge shotgun right between the eyes. And it was that point, and I talked about this in the book, it was at that point that was the day that I had determined this ended, and my dad was going to die. Well, he wasn't expecting to have a 12-gauge shotgun between his eyes

when he showed up. And the next thing you know, of course, is you hear all the sirens and everything, and the cops show up, the SWAT teams. They're knocking down the doors and coming in. They're pulling up on me, telling me to put the gun down. Now, eventually they realized what a real perpetrator is. And I won't, I won't tell all the story, but I will tell you this much.

We didn't see him for a while after that. We didn't see him for a while after that. Yeah. Well, that's a good thing. Sometimes you've got to cross that line where you've got to make some people realize that you're willing to go farther than they are to get them to stop. I don't know how to say that any better, but there's empowerment in that moment, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Well, there's a lot to that, Chris, because if there's any women that are living in a similar situation in a better life, wife, or life situation, a lot of these women, they don't know what to do. Some of them have decent jobs or they've got three or four kids.

They don't know where they're going to go, what they're going to do. They don't know how to get out. So they put up with it. And the kids, they learned to live with it. So what do we do? We repeat history. And for whatever reason, my mom found the courage to break free and she got help from people that came alongside her just like me.

And we were able to escape that past. We didn't have to stay in that past. We didn't have to be held hostage in that past. And it's people like, like I said, Mr. Brown, Coach Wilson, Mike Kat, Oliver and Anita Powers, people that came alongside me and showed me that there was a better way that masculinity didn't mean you had to be mean.

You could be masculine and still be loving. And that's the one thing that I didn't have represented in my childhood. Yeah. I mean, masculinity is about higher emotional intelligence too. Your dad was very feminine. He lived in his emotion. Probably from trauma. There's probably a whole mess of, you know,

psychology you could break down there and was he raised by a single mother no he was raised he was he was raised the baby of of the batch on the farm and here's the thing eventually this story takes a turn chris i didn't see my dad for 35 years wow i didn't seem for 35 years and one night i'm in bed i'm asleep and i have a i have a dream a vision or something i don't know what to call it Chris. People may think that I had too much pizza. I don't know. But I'm sitting there in bed and I have this vision of what I would call an angelic figure. I don't know what it was. But whatever it was, it was ascending. And it was holding my dad. Not as I remembered him from 35 years earlier, but as I would imagine him to have been at the age he was at the current time. And in my mind,

it was like oh he's died now some people might think that they'd get emotional or sad about that i had a great sense of peace i'm like my charles manson is finally gone i don't have to worry about it anymore and i told my wife i said hey did you see that she says what's wrong go back to sleep here's the crazy thing about that story the next morning i'm at my office and i'm on my computer and i have an email pop up on my email and it's a distant cousin that says your dad is dying the very next morning he hadn't died he was dying and guess what his dying wish as to what what see you see me wow and and i don't know what you think or what a lot of people think and i called my wife and i said oh hell no i don't know he can rot and go to hell i don't care

for what he's done to our family i mean my mom i've seen it i don't i have no interest to shay brute say, this is where you've ended up, this is the hell you've built for yourself, I have no compassion, you've tried to kill me twice, tried to kill my mother, my brother. Yeah. No way. And then my wife, she says, well, what about what happened last night? And I go, oh, that is kind of weird. And for whatever reason, I decided, I called a friend and I said, I need you to go with me.

He wants to see me. and I need you to go for two reasons. One, he's dying, and I don't know if he wants to get back at me for what happened at that house 35 years ago, and he's dying, and so he knows he's going to die, he wants to kill me. I genuinely thought that. Jesus. I genuinely thought that. And there's every reason that should go through your head. I mean, that's not an apparation of whatever.

That's not an apparation of your imagination. that is a continuum of your experience from childhood. So that's not a fantasy of any imaginative sort. So you're right. And so then the second thing I said is I need you to go because I'm not sure what's going to happen when I see him because I'm a grown man now and I may put my fist through his face and I can end up going to jail. And here's a guy that's about to die any day.

They gave him just a few days to live. So he agreed to go with me, and here's what happened, Chris. I walked through that door. He swings around. He looks like he has cancer. He doesn't hardly weigh 100 pounds. He's got cannulas in his nose. He swings around in my breath.

I'm just like, you know, guys, you can be 100 pounds and still pull the trigger. He swings around in his chair and he falls to his knees, bro, and he grabs me behind my knees and turns his head into my thighs, and over and over, he says, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me. And at that point, bro, I lost it. I just went down to my knees and I just held my dad and we wept and we wept and wept. I sat down with him. I looked at him. I said, my gosh, it's just what I'm going to look like when I'm your age. And I just didn't have one good memory of my dad, Chris, not one, not one good memory. And I said, I said myself, I'm going to take something from my childhood and see if he remembers it if it goes well.

And I took a little pocket watch. He had given me a pocket watch when I was 12 years old. And I took that pocket watch with me. And so I pulled that pocket watch out in front of you. And I said, do you remember this pocket watch? And he looked at it and he held it. He says, oh, yeah, I do. And I looked down. And the pocket watch was stopped. at two o'clock, and it dawned on me. I said, I don't know if it's of the Lord, I don't know who it's from. I said, but dad, I think that that pocket watch says it's two o'clock, and I said, I think you and I need a second chance. And I said, I don't know if you've got three hours. I don't know if you got three days. I don't know if you got three weeks. I don't know how long you

got to live. It doesn't look very good for you. But here's what I want you to know. I do forgive you. And I am willing to no longer be held hostage by the past. I'm ready to move on if you want to move one. And so I asked him, I said, what does a guy like you do all day long? He didn't have anybody. He's living in a little one-bedroom apartment. What is a guy like you do who screwed up his life, blew off his kids, his family? What do you do?

You know what he told me, Chris? He said, I spend a lot of time reading the dictionary. I said, what? Reading the dictionary. And I said, can I see that dictionary? and I have that dictionary now. I have that dictionary. Chris, you know, some of your listeners are listening

and they're going, what's a dictionary? I'm just going to Google that word. But, you know, dictionaries did exist, and you know how thick they were. I picked up that dictionary, and I opened up that dictionary, and there was a word circled on the page. You care to guess what the word was, Chris, that was circled on the page?

And I'm not lying. This is in the book. You know, huh? What? the word was reconcile. Wow. And I thought to myself, I can forgive someone. And this is a great lesson.

This is the type of thing I cover. You can forgive anybody. They don't have to ask for forgiveness. You can forgive someone and you can move on from your perpetrator. Don't let them hold you back based on the harm and the hurt and the pain that they did from you. You can forgive them. and then you have freedom for the past. Don't be held hostage by it.

But I had the opportunity. Not everybody got the opportunity that I got, and that was the opportunity to reconcile. And not everybody gets that opportunity, even when they forgive, and not everybody can be reconciled because somebody doesn't want to reconcile, or somebody's dead, or somebody's crazy,

or somebody's in prison. So I had the privilege of reconciling from my father. But here's the amazing thing. And this is the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a powerful thing. It not only helps you as the person forgiving the other person, it helps the person that you're forgiving. And you know what? We all need forgiveness.

We've all done things to people. We all could benefit from being forgiven and also offering forgiveness. But here's the crazy thing, Chris. My dad didn't live three days. My dad didn't live three weeks. He didn't live three months. nobody could believe it he lived three more years wow three more years and the doctors and the hospice they had him i mean it was like watching a a ufc fight they were pounding on the pad they were

counting him out and he had hope he had an opportunity and so for the next three years i rebuilt my relationship with a guy that had really been an awful, awful influence in my life. Wow. And that's amazing, man. You were able to reconcile. You know, I imagine he became, I guess he behaved himself. Oh, he was still a hell of him.

I mean, he was still a fundraiser. I mean, he, I mean, but he was pretty, you know, confined to a wheelchair. And, you know, he was nothing, he was, I wasn't really, I hate to say this, but I wasn't, he wasn't the kind of guy you take out and you're just proud of. I mean, he looked really scruff and rough, and he wasn't a one-cap. But you know what, dude, he was my dad, and it took me 35. Get this. I didn't know where he was.

For 35 years, I didn't know where he was. I did not know for 35 years because he disappeared that day after I'd held a shotgun on him. Yeah. And would you believe that he lived 35 miles from me? The whole, the whole, I didn't, I'm going to, there's a part to this. For 35 years, I'd been apart from him. and then he lived 35 miles from me. Not until this book, not until this book was finished.

Not until this book was finished. And I have some of his belongings, and I was going through it in my garage, and I was going through a box of his. And what I found, and this isn't even in the book, this is something I found out later. The dude had become a convicted felon. He had become a convicted felon. That's why we didn't know where he was.

And here's the thing that I found out. He had been pardoned by the governor. And he never told me that. And I never knew about it until I went through his stuff after he was dead. Wow. And how do you get pardoned from the governor? Man, it's called Little Dixie, baby. It's called it's who you know.

I grew up in Canadian County. And one farmer knows another. One guy knows another. And it's a good old boy system. And, you know, if you know the right people to talk to the right. people, he was able to get his, uh, get his felony reversed and he was pardoned. Wow. So let's talk about how this translates into leadership and influence of other people.

You said, you know, you wanted to pay homage to the people who help you see outside of the box that you were in. I grew up, you know, I grew up, I grew up in a cult. And I, it was very lonely and, of course, I was told that I was told that. I was satanic and I was evil and then I was possessed by the devil and then I was a horrible person and I was going to go to hell and all this sort of shaming and guilty because I just wouldn't believe things without logic and reason and finding when I finally got old enough to find voices in the world that told me I wasn't crazy like George Carlin I remember when

discovered George Carlin and it's talked about religion and I realized I wasn't alone in the world. I, you know, because for most of my child, I thought I was, you know, this freak that they would tell me I was a freak because I didn't belong. I didn't believe in shit that made no sense. Still doesn't to this day. In fact, a lot of people leave the cult because they find the internet and start doing their research. But, you know, I live through that. And it, and so, and there were other people that shaped my life that helped me, like you were, maybe some of the people helped you, they showed me that there were other people that had other thoughts in the world and that I wasn't insane. And they were the people that helped leave me

of the darkness. I don't know if you want to talk about some of those people you talked about in your book. I call what you're talking about, the power of personal influence, the power of personal influence. And that's what I want people who live outside the yellow house to recognize. Every one of us has a story and every one of us can do something. There's a lot of people and plenty of who live inside the yellow house and the hell. But there's guys like you and me, Chris, we could ignore all that or we can decide that we want to try to make a difference. Mr. Brown lived across the street from me, and he got to know me,

and he got to know me as a person. And one of the things that Mr. Brown did is he was a geologist, and he taught me about rocks, and he helped me start my first rock collection. But that old man wasn't just working on a rock collection with me. He was investing in a young man. And we all have those people around us. And I'll give you another story. When I was in high school, I was a B teamer.

You probably had an A teamer, Chris, looking at you. You're probably a guy to start. I was the skinny little thrill of a kid, 100 pounds. I've since been eating Taco Bell. Well, we call that cat food here in Oklahoma. Probably a prey. It probably is. I mean, you know, we got in that text, we know the real thing when we see it.

And I don't think that's it, buddy. you're sure you're right but but I was a B teamer and I was I got to travel with the A team one time and I was sitting at the end of the bench we were killing our arch rival we were up by like 30,000 points I was the last guy on the bench that hadn't played you coach Wilson calls me into play they throw me the ball the buzzer's about to buzz and I get to half court dribbling I'm nervous as I'll get out and I kick the basketball off the end of my foot and the game's over and I feel like a total idiot. I mean, it got worse. I ran down into the locker room. I hit my head on a sewer pipe. I just wanted to crawl in a bandbox or ride home with the cheerleaders. And I was so embarrassed.

But here's the, here's the thing, bro. Here's the thing. 50 years later, I still remember what Coach Wilson said to me at the next practice. After the shame, after how much I felt like an idiot, It's just he and I. It's dark at night. I talk about this in the book. It's dark at night. And he's putting chains around the handles on the doors, those kind of doors, snaps the padlock, puts his arm around my shoulder and looks at me.

And he says, Sanders, now you and I both know you're probably never going to start on the A team. Okay, pull the spear out of my heart. Okay, thanks, coach. But then he said this, but then he said this, you keep your work. ethic and you keep leading the way you're leading and you're going to be something someday now that has stuck with me for 50 years now bro i'm i'm nobody special i mean i don't i'm not i'm not chris voss i'm not in the one percent of podcasts i'm not running for office i don't you know i've done my fair share of things and i got i got credentials that are kind of cool but people you know what

i've learned people don't give a jack crap about all that what they care about is how they can relate to you and how you can relate to their pain, and can you be real? And one of the things I tell my clients all the time, we've got to be hot, baby. It's got to be honest, open, and transparent. And that's what Coach Wilson instilled in me. And so at that point, it was a turning point in my life. I ended up running for a student body president.

I end up becoming involved in student senate at the University of Oklahoma. I ended up getting a job at the United States Capitol, working with the presidents and all the senators. It was life-changing. And for a kid that grew up in a farming community, for me, it's like, how did I get here? And we have a saying here in Oklahoma, you're just a turtle on a post. Turtle on a post. You can't get off it, right?

Because you're flat on the post. How does a turtle get on a post, Chris? Oh, that's true. Huh. Somebody put it there. And Chris Voss, no matter what hell he lived through and all the religiosity that he went through, is doing what he's doing because somebody's. somewhere made a difference.

And I dare going to say, you're a kid in a yellow house. You're just like me. And somebody cared enough to come alongside you and help you get out of that hellhole. And that's what this is about, is trying to help people realize you have influence. I was speaking in a prison not too long ago. And I'm in the prison with 50 inmates that are learning about leadership. That's why I spend my whole, my dude. I help companies grow and I help work with their leadership teams.

I try to help companies reach their full potential as well as their teams, okay? I'm sitting here with 50 inmates that are doing life, and they're learning about leadership. And you can be a leader no matter where you're at. And I couldn't believe this. And you can read all the gurus out there. And I asked these 50 inmates, I said, give me one word, give me one word that describes leadership. And in unison, all of them, together. not one person deviating in unison, the word they used was influence.

And Chris, that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to steward my story. I'm trying to steward my influence to try to make a difference in the lives of little boys, little girls and women who live in the yellow house and try to inspire other people. I mean, look what you're doing. You're using your influence worldwide to try to make a difference. But we somehow forget, we get into our little cocooning of America, And we forget that a smile at the convenience store or a pat on the back or reminding a kid,

hey kid, you've got potential, can make a difference. And that's what it's been my wife doing. That's what we do at Ray Sanders.com. That's what we do with our firm. You know, we have our Fortune 500s. I had a federal judge asked me recently. He said, what have you observed about the leaders that you work with? What would you say that they have that's consistent?

And I said, you're not going to believe my answer. And I said, what I would tell you is we're all insecure. We're all insecure. We're motivated a lot by our insecurity. But when we begin to realize that we're gifted and we can make a difference and we have influence, it'll change the way we go about our lives that we get over our insecurity by giving back to other people. Giving back is so important too. And it helps keep you grounded and teaches you gratitude as well.

Let's get a plug in. I see some different things. They see minister coaching, executive coaching, speaking, consulting, podcast. Tell people how they can onboard with you or find out more on your website about some of the service you offer and feel for you to flesh them out. Part of what we do through Ray Sanders coaching leaders, Ray Sanders.com is we work with the C-suite. We work with top leaders, really trying to help them maximize their full potential. And I come at it this way. That's nice and everything.

I'm not a life coach per se, even though I often say this. life affects work and work affects life. What happens at home affects work and what happens at work affects, you know, life at home. Sometimes I'll tease these CEOs and I say, hey, man, you know, you're making headlines. And I have some Fortune 500s and they're actually in the news making, making news. I said, you're making headlines. And they go, oh, I didn't see it. What was it?

I said, no, I'm not talking about those headlines. I'm talking about the headlines that are on your head because you and the old lady are fussed. She puts you on the couch and you're sleeping on those coroneroy pillows again. And you're making headlines, baby. And so we deal about life. We deal about life and work. And I get real, man. People say, Ray is raw and real.

And when somebody works with me, I say, look, I'm not going to pussyfoot around. I've been a CEO. I've ran multimillion dollar companies. I get it. And I'm going to tell you how it is. And you're going to be honest with me, open and transparent and hot. And if you can't be hot and honest, open and transparent, I don't want to work with you. But you know what?

They tell me, man, I love working with you because you'll stand toe to toe with me. And you will call me out when I'm going to be called out. But you also inspire the crap out of me to get with it and be all that I can be and be the leader that I need to be and help me leave my team and leave my company to success. So that's Ray Sanders.com. That's coach. And then you've got the podcast too. The podcast covers a lot of that stuff.

That's, they can, you know, the Ray Sanders leadership podcast. They can go to Ray Sanders, find the podcast. that's just a tool. We take a lot of the topics that we talk about in leadership, and people can download those. They're not real long. They're not long for them. They're pretty short.

We have about 10 to 12 online assessments that people can take that will help them with their leadership skills. They go to the resources page. We have two books out. We have four more books that are coming out within the next year. And then I want to mention it. We have a nonprofit, and that nonprofit really aspires to help leaders take who they are and make a difference in the world.

And we've done that in a couple of ways. We do some things with inner city kids from Washington, D.C., kids that live maybe not in yellow houses, but in row houses. We brought them out and we do things with inner city kids. And then somebody said to me one time, hey, you know, you mentioned religion. I'm not a religious dude. I am not into religion. I am a follower of Jesus.

I follow Jesus' way and I follow his way, but I'm not a religious person. I'm not about that. I'm not about religiosity. I'm not about traditions of man. And I think the Jesus got it right in a lot of ways. I mean, if I really believe if we'd love our neighbors as ourselves, like he said, then the world will be a better place. And we could just start right there. If Congress and Putin and Trump would just do that one thing that he said, love others as you love yourself, we'd probably be all right. And so many people add on to that, and that's where we get into religion, and that's bull crap. I'm not into that. But we come alongside ministers who are given their lives, don't make a lot of money,

and we have people that underwrite our work among ministers. And we have about 12 coaches that pour into the lives of these ministers just like we do with our CEOs. And man, you don't have to look very far to look in the news that there's some guys that are jacked up and screwed up in ministry. And they're guys, and they're wearing orange now too, because they've done some really bad things. Just because you're, you've got a little clergy caller and I think doesn't mean you're not jacked up. And so we say it this way. We provide fierce accountability and unwavering encouragement.

And so that's our nonprofit that we have. And we'd love for people to connect with us there if they want to get behind that. Awesome sauce. Well, it's been wonderful to have you. And what amazing stories. We could go all day with your stories, but we want people to buy the durn book because, you know, they got to buy the book. Yeah.

just go to Amazon. It's Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the boy in the yellow house, the boy in the yellow house. I'd love for people to go out there and buy it. And, man, it's real important. Give us a review. Tell us what you think about it. I really appreciate you doing this with me, Chris. I really do. You got it, man. You got it. And we appreciate having you as well. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Ray. Thanks, Chris. Appreciate you, buddy. Thank you. And thanks, thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodrease.com, Ford's Chris Voss, or a Ray's book. The Boy in the Yellow House, based on a real-life story of heartbreak, horror, and hope, out May 27th, 2025. Thanks for tuning in.

Go to Facebook.com, Fortezs, Chris Foss. LinkedIn.com, Fortezis Chris Foss. Chris Foss, one of the TikTok, and he and all those crazy places on the Internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that you have us out. Great show, man.