TrueLife - The Unlikely Felon - A Memoir of Ambition, Elder Care, & Jail - Will Young

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/https://www.unlikelyfelon.com/Imagine you’re taking care of a loved one late in your life, dedicating years of your own life to do it. Thus began a journey that spiraled into a nightmare for Will and Kay Young. Will’s grandparents needed elder care, and so this ambitious couple decided to take this responsibility on, while also raising young children of their own and pursuing grand entrepreneurial goals. Then... a knock at the door on a cold day in February 2011... This was no courier service delivering a package. This was the police, many of them, instantly swarming their home. In mere moments, their lives shattered into a billion pieces.  Peppered with humor, Will and Kay's adrenaline-charged and hellish ride through the legal system is the story of people doing their best to help loved ones. It's also about being in jail―literally and figuratively―and how quickly the American dream can become a nightmare." If you secretly enjoy watching a train wreck―this is your book. I hope this story makes you think, scares the hell out of some of you, and maybe challenges some of your deeper thoughts. Get ready because the knock, knock is coming―the day that you will be called to meet a challenge that requires all your bravery and patience and your best, authentic self during the challenging times ahead. So take off your judging cap, put on your thinking cap, and buckle up for one gripping emotional rollercoaster ride. One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear, Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life podcast. I hope the birds are singing. Hope the sun is shining. The wind is at your back. We've got a great show for you today.

We have an incredible author, a speaker, a family man. and a book that everybody should check out. But I'll let everyone listening be the judge of that. As I introduce Will Young, he wrote a book called The Unlikly Felon, a memoir of ambition, elder care, and jail. And while it is incredible, it's more traumatic of a ride through the legal system, a story of people doing their best to help loved ones. And there's so much more to say, but I'll just kick it off to you, Will.

what do you think about the introduction or is there anything else we can maybe get people aware with before we start jumping into what's really happening in the world here? Well, I think it's, what happened to me can happen to anybody in a lot of different situations. Now, I made a lot of mistakes, but the reality is you find yourself in a tough spot. But the thing I try to get across when I talk now is you can come back. You can, these things can happen to you. And I'm just an average guy. But you can come back.

you can rebuild your life, you can redevelop your ideas, you can, you still have the, it's amazing the friends that I do still have. Now, I've lost a lot of friends in the process too, but I found out who my real friends were. So yeah, anything that goes on that sort of, I guess, note of what I try to get across. Yeah, that's well said. I've often found, and I'm curious to get your thoughts if you agree with this, that sometimes the most traumatic things that happen to us, if we do the work, we can realize how much we learn about ourselves, our society, and people around us when we come through the other side of that trauma. Have you found that to be true? Yeah.

And I think, too, I noticed in some of your writings, you use the word evolution. And it's, for me, it's been this whole process of who I was before all this happened. I'm completely different. And actually, I'm a heck of a lot happier today than I was then. But when you think of going through all this stuff, you've got fear. and you've got concern and doubts and uncertainty. And then you get through it and you go, wow, I'm a better person today than I was. But nobody ever, when you're going through it or before, you never think like that.

But once you do, you're like, wow, this is great. I'm a better person now. Yeah, life has a way of forcing evolution, it seems like. And it puts us through the test that we need to go through in some weird way. Well, for those people just listen, maybe you can give like a, without giving too much away, Maybe you can give like a synopsis of kind of what happened to you. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I start the book off with a knock at my door.

And it was actually February 9th. It's been, gosh, a month ago, or 10 years ago a month ago, I should say, got a knock on my door and went to the door expecting Amazon or a neighbor or a kid in the neighborhood maybe selling something. And I open the door and it's the police. And they come in and they start searching my house. My wife and I were both here, and they start searching my house. They start boxing things up. They don't really tell me what's going on. Now, they did show me that they had this one page that was a search warrant, which

I've never seen a search warrant. So now, remember before this happened, my life of crime was I had some speeding tickets and an open container in college, an open container ticket. So here I am a young 40s man at the time. And I've got the police in my house, and they're doing a search. They're boxing things up. We don't know what's going on. About six hours later, they leave.

So what had happened is we had taken care of my grandparents for literally about 15, 20 years. And we had this incredible relationship. They were just almost like best friends versus just your grandparents. We had so much fun. We did a lot of activities and vacation and all those things, just different relationship than normal. But we took care of them. And then as they started to get older, they started to go through all the health issues that

elderly people do. They were actually great until about late 80s, 88, 90. I mean, very healthy. Then they started to get dementia and physical issues and just, you know, make a long story short. The reality is we ended up taking care of them. We took care of the estate. We used money for their caretaking as well as for ourselves. And we had some step relatives that didn't, they had given us approval, but then they changed their mind and basically said, we don't agree with how you use the money. They were the ones who called the police. Police show up at my house. Everything just kind of starts to roll from that point. Wow. There's so much to think about there. I guess if we'd take it back to the beginning, what was it like to all of a sudden

just have some police come to your house, start rummaging through your stuff? I mean, that seems like pretty scary to me. Well, you see it on the movies, right? That's the only way I'd really seen. And the only thing I could think of is I kept saying, can I talk to my attorney? And I had a business attorney at the time. And I didn't know what else to do. I'm like, because I, and it was funny because when they first came in, I said, do you, are you supposed to be at the neighbor's house? Because there were rumors that were going on in our neighborhood and a house around the corner was selling drugs. They had a young, like a young 20s kid or something. And that was the rumor. So I said, are you sure you're at the wrong house? They're like, no, we're at the right house.

And I'm like, that's impossible. And then I even thought about my wife. I'm like, Like, was she having some weird affair behind my back and now I'm caught in? I mean, these are all the thoughts going through my mind. It had nothing to do with my grandparents. I didn't think anything of that. And when they showed me the warrant, I did see their name on it. I thought, well, what are you talking about? This is crazy.

This doesn't make any sense. And so, yeah, you just totally lose everything, I guess your beliefs in the system, everything that you've kind of formulated up to that time of what you think is right and wrong. being treated fairly and all of a sudden you're you're caught in the system yeah was it were there how was the relationship between your step family before they decided to to turn on you yeah it's a great question and and there were a couple um things that had happened in their life i think that shifted their thinking but we were actually good friends um they would come out and stay at our house they're they're in a different part of the country and i think what happened that one of them lost their job

They had all these other things happen. And so money became a big focus of their life in conversation. And suddenly they were like, well, we don't remember agreeing to that. And we don't, we didn't say it that way. And my mistake was, and I don't give legal advice. I'm not a lawyer. But the thing is, is when you're in this situation and you're a caregiver, you're taking care of somebody, you got to update the wills. You got to get everything in writing.

If you're paying yourself, which we were doing, you got to have every little detail. I relied on my word and handshakes and a few emails. And so I was in a bad, I was almost like I had walked into someone's house and they had been stabbed. I went over, picked up the knife and suddenly here come the police. And I'm like, oh, well, I didn't do it. And they're like, sure looks like you did it. Because you're the one standing.

You're like, no way. So it was a very, very odd to say at least. Yeah. And I think it's incredibly relevant with the. how many baby boomers and how many people are in situations right now that are retiring and all of us have parents that are getting older and you know it must be it seems to me and i'll bring this back but i'm going to want to widen the horizon for a minute it seems to me that especially in the west we have taken this idea of taking our parents or our grandparents and shipping them off to

a place where we don't have to see them because it's uncomfortable or it makes us feel a certain way or or maybe we're just too busy and we have our own stuff and we don't have the capabilities or the abilities to take care of them in a way that they need. But it seems to me that someone you love would probably get better care if they're with people they love. Is that something that went into your decision making? Absolutely. In fact, and here's the other thing. You hit George, you hit right on the point of what I try to get across. When you put them in assisted living, it doesn't stop all of the issues. And that's what people think.

They're like, well, because there comes a time where you just can't care for them anymore, whether it's the dementia or the physically, you're just not trained to do it. But the reality is that you put them in assisted living, well, now you've got to make sure they have their doctor's appointments and their laundries done and all these things because there's different levels of care. Some people, I think, have this image that there's this care where they get everything and massages and their toes, you know, their nails and toes done. It's this incredible thing. That's one percent of the facilities out there. The reality is you have to do a lot. And we had both

them in there at the same time. So both my grandmother and grandfather at the same time, which only made the situation even harder on us. So my wife is spending probably 10, 15 hours a week of the facility. I'm sitting 10 hours. We're trying to raise kids. I mean, it's, so that's the hard part, too, is not only do we ship people away because we think, well, that's, I don't have to deal with it anymore. That's the best thing for them. But now, even in that assisted living, you've just compounded the problems. It's even worse.

Yeah. It's quite a conundrum we've found ourselves in. I'm hopeful that as we move forward, and even though that's not exactly what your book is about, I think that your book has many dimensions because it does shine light on that. And it does broaden the horizon of what can happen and what can happen. try to do the right thing. And so it's, it's, it's, it's interesting to go from there. So, so the, the cops come in and they, they come in. What's the next step is there? How do you finally figure out like what's going on? Yeah. So they, they finally let me call my lawyer. And,

a gentleman was named Jeff and just, he was a great guy. He actually passed away, um, since all this happened. But I tell Jeff, there's police in my house and he says right away, do they have a search warrant? And, and this guy's a business lawyer, really. But obviously, you know, trained a lot of different things. And this is probably his first time of having a client call him. And this is going on. And he said, well, have you said anything? I said, no, they really, they've asked me a few things, but I haven't answered.

I said, I need to talk to my attorney. They finally let me call you. And he was great. I mean, he just said, you know what? Just relax for a minute. He made jokes, you know, does everybody have their clothes on? Yeah, he was just trying to really, I mean, he could tell in my voice. I'm like a scared, right?

one of the most scared I've been in my life. And he said, here's the deal. I've got a defense attorney. What we need to do is if they don't arrest you today, we're going to have a meeting with her, and we're going to start to figure this thing out. And it really, it may be common. And I even told the police, I said, well, are you arresting us? And they said, no, no. And so they, apparently they were come to find out, they were searching for all kinds of other things. Like, was I running illegal businesses? Was I selling drugs? Was I growing marijuana? I mean, And what I've learned about the legal system since then is they, right, they try to trump up charges.

They try to bring as many charges as they can because then the negotiation comes down to a little bit easier for them. But no, he was, he was great. And then he connected me in and we started the process. And as I talk about in the book, everybody says, well, if you're innocent, you got to go to trial. You got to go all the way. And the reality is that's just not the reality of the court system.

The county we were in has a 97% conviction rate. They have one or two percent. go to trial. I mean, if everybody went to trial, we'd have to have buildings all over the place with courts and we would never get anything else accomplished. So I get that part of it. But that's the reality is once you're in the system, you're in a situation where, and the cost too. I mean, the cost of lawyers and consultants and all the things that you need to go to trial become a big factor. And so that's where we were at at that point. We were trying to figure out, do we go to trial or do we plea bargain?

Wow. That seems like a pretty traumatic decision to make, especially when you are looking back at the way in which you feel, you know what, I haven't done anything wrong. I'm doing the right thing here. What is this decision people are pressuring me to do? And like you said,

if you don't have the money to go up against the state, which has unlimited money, they have unlimited lawyers, they have a track record of doing everything one. And then on top of that, there's this, you know, lawyers probably wouldn't say this, but I will. It seems like coercion to me. Like, you have all these things.

You want to fight us or what? Exactly. Is that how it felt? I mean, what did it feel like to be in that situation? Yeah. Well, and the other thing that you don't realize is that when you're caught in that, I don't even know. I mean, obviously it's a nightmare, but you're caught in a situation where you don't know

the rules. There's all these unwritten rules. You don't understand the whole. process. And again, my criminal background with some speeding tickets. So I'm not like a person who's been through this many times and I know the system and all that sort of thing. But the other thing they do is they penalize you. So if you do go to trial and you lose, I could have had three to five years of prison versus end up with work release, which we can get into what that is. I had no idea what that was. But where, you know, jail, let's say a month of jail versus three years of prison. Are you

going to roll the dice on that. And my wife was involved too. We had little kids. I mean, was I going to take her into this to where she potentially could have two years in prison, three years in prison versus what actually happened? So. And then even if you are, even if you go to a jury or goes to trial and you're completely innocent, now you've lost a year, two years of your life, all your money, none of that gets recouped. And yeah, it's pretty sinister. Yeah, it's, and there were, And again, as I say in the book, I made a lot of mistakes. I did a lot of things that I should have done differently. But the reality is this should have been a civil matter.

And it started as a civil matter. And all of a sudden it became a criminal matter. The other thing, too, with the county we were in is they were very, they had some new district attorneys that had, they were really, their main agenda was against elderly crime. And so this fit their whole kind of, agenda and where they were going, even though it really didn't fit, but they were trying to fit a circle into a square. I mean, we were on the five o'clock news. We had all the media was at our

house. It was a, you would have thought we were Bernie Madoff ripping off elderly people all over the western United States. It was insane the way they cast this whole situation. So, but that was their agenda. And if that's their agenda, then that's what they're going to fulfill. Well, you know, on some level, I think that it would be naive to think that you, the state doesn't make a state makes a lot of money from elderly care you know they they make a ton of money there and here comes these people like well hey you guys who take care of no you're not we're not going to give you a tax break ticket we need the money from these people you know and that that maybe maybe that's not a hundred percent fair for me to say but if you look at the stats you can see

what generates money for the state and you can see the laws that are made in the state are often made to you protect that revenue but that being said what what were they charging you with? What was it that made you guys look so bad? Yeah, it ended up being one count of theft. That's how they determined it. And so they said that this money we had used over three to five years to cover their expenses, as well as to cover our own.

We had all kinds of business problems and life problems. They determined that that was one count of theft. Well, here's the problem. When you look at the letter of the law, you've got two elderly people who couldn't speak at that point, their dementia was at a point where they would not be witnesses. So technically, by the letter of the law, we had broken some laws. And that's what our defense attorneys talked about is, and depending on the day you go to trial, what your jury looks like, who shows up that day?

Do they have elderly grandparents or parents? Have they never dealt with this? Are they a business owner? I mean, we're business owners. Do they get what your goals are, what you're trying to accomplish? And so, you know, as you mentioned with the state, the state has all kinds of, different agendas with elderly and i get it they want to protect them they want to protect we knew we knew of a couple a situation where their mother had a neighbor end up getting on the

the mother's accounts it was writing checks and doing trips and buying cars and all kinds of stuff that's what they're trying to protect against but we got caught in in this and and and too with that agenda we we were i'm not going to say local celebrities but we were known locally and so they used that as kind of here's this couple that that do all this good stuff in the community. Let's go ahead and take them down because that will then connect to our agenda of we're tough on elderly crime. And so you can see how diluted this whole thing gets.

It's bizarre. Yeah, it is bizarre. And was there, did you end up going and doing some time? Yeah. So it's a boy. And it would get to work really seriously. We were preparing for the trial. And I do have to say that the district attorney did one thing that was kind.

The day that we went in to do our plea, they told the media the wrong date on purpose so that everybody and their brother wasn't there. And so we walked in. There was nobody in the courtroom. We do our plea of guilty. And then you set for about 30 days later where the judge is going to make a decision on what you're going to get. And so we show up that day.

We've got all of our friends, 500 some up, the courtrooms pack, the newspapers are there, the media, everybody. And the judge, it was interesting. I thought he was a really great judge, very kind gentleman, older gentleman, almost he's retired now. He was close to retirement at the time. He was, I think he got the situation. But there was so much influence and media there that he had to be really careful how he did this. he started talking about we have to put people in prison and I'm just going well oh my my attorney thought

this was going to be a little bit of jail time potentially and now he's talking about prison and he but the thing he talked about was every elderly person needs somebody to care for him to I think he used the word put a pillow under their head and make sure they're okay and then he said but we you guys are seen as leaders in our community and we you need to make sure you follow the law when you're dealing with these sorts of things. So it was kind of an example thing. But he basically, he gave me six months of work release, which I ended up doing 85 days because there's the same called Good Time.

You can do good time in there if you behave. But it's basically set up like a college dorm. And so you have, everybody's seen in the movies, or if you've ever been to jail for a night or whatever, you have a cell and it's set up that way. But this is not the case. They call them pods and it's set up as a college dorm. room type thing. You have to be there in the evening. You sleep there overnight. In the morning, you go to your job or your work. I got to go home because I had a home-based business.

So during the day, I got to go home, see my wife and kids and work. And then at night, I had to go back. I had to stay on the weekends and holidays and ended up doing 85 days. It was a very interesting process to say the least. Yeah. What an incredible shift in your life to see happen. Before you, before the final day where the judge and the media is there, was there a lot of relationships that were broken because of the, the spotlight that was on you? Yeah, yeah. In fact, I might get emotional. I get emotional about it, but it was, you know, I mean, I had suicidal thoughts. I was drinking. I was, in fact, I make a joke in the book, but it, I mean, it's just a reality. We walked in and we were

meeting with our attorneys before we walked in the courtroom. And one of our attorneys, she says, I'm celebrating 35 years of sobriety today, which was really cool for her. But I thought to myself, I've been sober for eight hours, you know, kind of thing. That's where I was at. And I was, and I felt like I had lost everything. I mean, my reputation. I was going to, I was going to run for mayor of Denver. I had a campaign started. I had started a company that did consulting and politics. And, and so I was in, and, you know, when your egos built on, And that's a lesson that I've learned that I talk about a lot. When your ego is built on what you've done and quote who you've become and somebody takes that away from you, it's devastating.

I mean, and I was, I was suicidal. I was going to it. And I felt so guilty because my wife had been such a great caregiver. I mean, she took care of her mom and dad. Her mom and dad passed away from health problems. She took care of both of them. Then she takes care of my grandparents. And they called her a granddaughter.

And here I was putting her in this situation. and then my kids. You know, what's going to happen to them? So you've got all of these different thoughts going through your mind and of things that I had never dealt with. Probably things I should have dealt with. But bottom line is I'd never been in this kind of situation before. Wow. What an incredible shift in modalities and a shift in ideas of who you are.

And so what was part of the ego-discipline? I guess the fact that people that you thought were friends were no longer wanting to talk to you or were their family members that were the same way. Yeah, absolutely. There were mostly friends or I guess I call them associates, but as one of the media outlets talked about, I was a well-known entrepreneur who had done a lot for nonprofits. That's the way they described me in the city locally. And I was the guy that you could call or I could make a couple phone calls and I could. potentially get you a job, get you an interview, raise money, get your charity fund. I had that kind of capital. I mean, I had conversations with our mayor at the time and our governor. And I felt like I was kind of moving up this track to probably be a politician.

Thank God that it worked out. Anyways, I know. But you know what I'm saying? You're on this track and you think that everybody loves you and everybody's your friend. And then this happened. And there were people who couldn't get away from me fast enough. that I had helped a lot, that I had done a lot to. And then there were other people.

In fact, some of them were surprises stood right by us through the thick and through the thin and we're right there. Besides our kind of core group of four or five people who were incredible, I can't even describe the risks they took because of all the media. So if you're connected to us, you don't know what the media is going to do. Are they going to try to push you into the situation and say, well, you're friends with Will. So that must mean that, you know, you're a bad person too or you're doing bad things.

So that really helped me even moving forward to gauge what, what is a real friend to me? What is somebody who I care about? And yeah, I knew all these people, but did I really know them? I guess I did. And it's, that's, and the reality of who do you really love in your life? Who really means the most to you? Who should you be spending time with? I mean, you just start asking lots of questions that I probably didn't ask before.

Yeah. it's it's incredible to think about and you know situations like this or sometimes a close death in the family or any sort of real tragedy usually does one or two things to relationships it either brings them closer or it pulls them apart and i'm curious if even though it was such a you know an adrenaline rushed hellish situation you know do you think that it benefited i i it had to even though was crazy. It had to on some level open up your wife's, yours, and your children's ideas to what is possible and what you can do to overcome situations that are beyond your control. Can you talk to that a little bit? Yeah, you hit it. You're, I mean, it's, you're hitting it right at the heart,

which is this whole, I guess this whole thing about who we are and right and why we're here, right, and what we're truly doing. And it, and most people, most couples, let's start with, just relationship with my wife. When you go through this, you get divorced. You lose your house. You lose everything. We didn't. We have an incredible marriage today that we didn't have before this all happened.

So what I'm saying is that this is really the best thing that ever happened to me. Other than my marriage, my kids being born, it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Now, it's taken me a while to get there. Yes. Because you got to get over all that trauma and things that happen with it. But the reality is I am such a better parent. In fact, when I was sitting at work release, I remember it was the first night, the first couple nights you do what they call qualification. They qualify you as are you crazy?

Are you going to hurt other people? Are you normal? Are you standard? And then they put you kind of in different pods based on that. And I remember looking up at this exit sign. There was an exit sign. And I said, when I get out of here, I'm going to be the best damn father, best damn husband, best damn friend that I could ever be. You know, and it wasn't all of suddenly I'd been about goals and wealth and all this stuff.

And not that those things aren't important, but are they number five on your list or number one A? And for me, that was always my driving force. And all suddenly I sat there and went, when I get out, that's what I'm going to do. And that's what I've worked towards. I've coached all my kids' sports. I've been involved in all their school. My wife and I, we do date nights. We spend every morning we have coffee together.

I mean, I think God, this happened to me because I'd probably be divorced or dead, to be honest. I don't know. Yeah, it really gives you insight into the propaganda or it gives you insight into the narrative that is given to us. Like a lot of times we'll see things on TV. And then we not only do we get the narrative of what the media wants us to see, but we begin to understand how judgmental we can be or how easily swayed we can be or maybe jealous we can be like, you know what? I bet you like I kind of deserve that. I got that from him, you know, or exactly. It's so crazy to think about. But it's beautiful because I think it shows real growth when you

find yourself in a situation of your road to Damascus moment or your come to Jesus moment and you're like, okay, I'm here. What am I going to do? And when you start talking about changing your life, changing your goals and not only changing them, but acting upon them, whether it's coaching your kids team or, you know, making sure the words you use to become a better husband or a better friend or become a friend people would want to have is it speaks volumes of your character. And I think it speaks to what the world is trying to teach you there. What do you think are some of the biggest lessons that your children learn? Oh, wow.

Well, it's one of the reasons I wrote the book was for them. Right. Right. I mean, that was someday, they were, in fact, one of my kids wasn't born yet, but the other ones were, let's see, five and five and two. Wow, that's tough. And thank God, though, I mean, yeah, there were 17 and 14. That's probably a different conversation. But someday I knew that this media is going to live forever. It's there forever. And they're going to find it. And their friends are going to find it. And they're, who knows who's going to find it. But I wanted them to know

the real story. Now with the, like you touched on it, the whole evolution of the media in this process. We think that we're getting told the real story. And all these things. In some cases, maybe we are. Maybe it's a 50-50 deal. But the reality is a lot of these things are not true. And for my kids, it was like, I want to write the story. But also, as I've seen them grow and evolve, we preach all the time, you can overcome anything.

Yeah. Anything in this life. And I'm an exam. And it's not like just dad saying, oh, that's my dad telling me I can do all these. It's like, no, no, no. Listen, I went to jail. I built things up to a certain point and literally crumbled in front of my eyes. And I had a couple choices.

I talk about Shawshanker, damn shot. I love the movie. But Andy, the character that Tim Robbins plays says, you know, get busy dying or get busy living. And it was like for me, I literally, I so many times wanted to commit suicide. But I just kept fighting through and fight. And that's why I tell my kids, I say, you know, let's address mental issues. Let's talk about depression. Let's talk about these things.

By the way, I've dealt with it. But the bottom line is, you can come back. You can make a comeback. You can. You can rebuild again. If we can, you can. And so I've seen it in their schoolwork and their athletics and things. When the hard times have hit, they just keep, they pull through.

And I just kind of almost wink at them. I'm like, you know, your dad made it through. Look at this. You can do this. You can do this. Yeah, and I think it just gives such a unique perspective because sometimes as some people have been very fortunate to be born with an ability to create, whether it's a business or whether it's accomplished goals. And sometimes a lot of those people become very accomplished, but they forget or they never really go through the turmoil of, you know, a total collapse or a total breakdown or having everything ripped away from them and then. being forced to build back in a different direction or you can even say build back better.

And when you talk about getting to the point of suicidal thoughts, like now you're entering the realm of mental wellness and you're under, you're almost rebuilding your models of the world. And only then, I think, can you begin to empathize with people that are in that state? And a lot of people find themselves in that state regardless of what color they are, how old they are, what they've accomplished. And going in that state while incredibly frightful and overwhelming is almost a gift because it allows for empathy. It allows for you to go, oh, my God, I can see this guy over here.

You know, I'm going to talk to him for a minute, you know? Exactly. You talked about how your mental map has changed after going through that situation. Yeah, I mean, you're hitting on everything. It's this, and there's times where I feel like it's an out-to-body experience. Yes, yes. because who I was from who I am. And I catch myself even thinking things that I used to think back then,

beating myself up because I haven't achieved this or I haven't done that. And all of this stuff that society keeps telling us, here's what you need to do or social media. When we look at, you know, they're living this incredible life and I'm not. And it's just like it's so, I think it can be so overwhelming. But for me, it's, and I've broken it down into some different tools and techniques, the way I start the day off, I do meditation. Never did meditation before I started meditating.

I started journaling a ton even more than I had ever done before. But just using tools to say, okay, if my paradigm has been completely changed, then how do I rebuild this life? And I didn't want to be like, well, now I don't, now I can't, because there's so many doors that were shut to me. Sure. Once you're a convicted felon, you can't even, you can't even shoot a gun, right? You can't go to, you can't do any, any, there's so many things you can't do. but even professionally. There's so many things that the door was shut on me.

And instead of saying, oh, you know, this is this is horrible. What do I do? I said, well, what are the doors that are open? What can I do? You know, write a book. I can do talks. I can help people. I'm getting messages and reviews on the book, which are fantastic.

People are saying, hey, I just had a conversation with my family about my elderly parents this last Saturday. I used your book as an example. I'm like, that's so cool. Yeah. You all said, hey, I was a burned out entrepreneur like you, ready to take my life. And I read your book and I feel like I can get through this. I mean, I'm getting stuff like this.

And that's what makes me go, that's what I was put here to do, right? Is to get through all this stuff so that I can start to help. And I can show that that paradigm can be shifted. And you can rebuild. You can make your life what you wanted it to be maybe from the beginning. Yeah, it's it's fascinating to me to see how sometimes, you know, life just gives you a shove like, over here, dummy, you know. Or a wrecking ball.

Yeah, yeah, a wrecking ball coming through my living room. Yeah. Yeah, an actual wrecking ball of law and order and love and family. And it's so interred. Like so many of those emotions are so powerful, like love for family, goals for life, ideas of family. It's interesting to me to get to see how as an entrepreneur turning to an author and now inspiring a different group of people or touching a different group of people that maybe you never thought you would interact with. What is something that you learned in the process of writing this book that kind of surprised you?

Oh, yeah. I laugh because there's just so many things that would have never predicted. million years, but I think it surprised me that I could, could be okay with not trying to be great all the time. That really, that surprised me because I thought my ego was so built up that I couldn't survive if I wasn't on this certain track and doing that. That, that surprised me. It surprised me that I could be a good husband and a good father. I grew up with a single mom, real dysfunctional family and it surprised me that I could figure this thing out. And I'm still working on it. I mean, I got teenagers. I'm still working on it. But it surprised me that I can do this and I can

have balance in my life. And I can exercise and be fit and I can eat well because you just get so stuck on who you think you should be or who you're going to be. That surprised me. I think it surprised me some of the close friends who stuck with us. And because I didn't know, like we talked about earlier, I didn't know who was going to stick with us, who didn't want anything to do with us. Some of those people surprised me and overwhelming surprise. Even to this day, they've helped both my wife and I have our own business. And they've helped us with contracts and with opportunities. They risk their reputation in a sense to do that.

That was surprising. Yeah, just so many things like that. Do you like, what do you think it is about our society that projects the only path of success is wealth, accumulation, and youth? Like what is that? Has that something that's been accelerating or is that just because of the age we are? What do you think that those forces are that drive our young people to see these metrics as success? I'll go back to a little bit of the writings that I've seen on what you've written about and fear. Like I've seen you write about fear and suffering and that whole process.

And I think I see so many people that, to your point, are living a life they were told to live. They might be in a dead-end job. They've got a dead-end relationship. Their kids are horrible or not doing what they want to do. And all they want to do is watch Netflix and get on Facebook or whatever. You know what I mean? And I think, and maybe they're not. that's the downside of capitalism, right? We've got, we've got all these entrepreneurs starting all these cool companies.

It's cool apps. And I knew when, so we started the first 56k ISP in Denver back in the day. Okay, that's when that was fast speed. Yeah. This is 1996 for, I know you guys know I'm a dinosaur, but that was fast speed. But I saw this whole thing. And I remember going, man, there's so many great things about the internet. But what about this or that? And you've seen it now. You've seen it to where people are just stuck. So what do they turn to? They turned to alcohol. They turned to drugs. They turned to cheating on their mate.

Whatever. They're turning to all these things instead of having conversations with their wife and their kids. And being very honest and saying, listen, just because society is telling us all this stuff, doesn't mean we have to go down that track. I tell my kids all the time, find something you're passionate about and go do it. If you want to be a lawyer, be a lawyer. But don't be a lawyer because you think you're going to make a lot of money. going to be great for you. Do it because that's what you really want to do on a day-to-day basis

and you want to change the world or you want to defend you, whatever it is. And I think that's, to your point, again, on that fear and people, almost unconscious, I think, for some people, right, versus conscious. And we get stuck in that. And also, I think we're bored. I mean, think about 100 years ago. People talk, you know, they talk about, I said 100 years ago, you were worried about clean water. You were worried 150 years ago. You were, you worried about food. I mean, my grandfather would tell stories of his grandfather talking about on the farm how we were worried if we'd have food next week. Now, how many of us worry about that? I mean, there are people obviously have food problems, but for the most part, who's worried about,

I can go next, I can go down the street and I can buy food? You know, I can, and we're almost bored. We just, we don't have the things to push us to be better mentally and physically. and except for podcasts like yours or books out there or shows or things. And I'm a big podcast junk. I read everything. I read everything. I read everything. I'm building my mind.

I'm building my energy, my positive. I think people, they're influenced by all of that negativity. And they are. I say it all time, dead in marriages, dead end jobs,

dead end lives. And here's what you have. It's unbelievable. Yeah. It's such an interesting paradox because it seems like, in a way we're so decadent, but yet we live a life of scarcity. And maybe not scarcity of food or scarcity of things, but scarcity of spirituality or scarcity of meaning. And it blows my mind because everything's at your fingertips right now.

And it seems to me if you can start a podcast, you can write a book, you can do all these things. You could potentially, you as an individual could potentially reach a million people by starting a YouTube channel, whereas a hundred years ago, you could maybe speak at the town hall meeting if you were influential. And so I'm hopeful that what we're seeing is a change in the way we see ourselves interacting in the world we live in. Hearing you explain to your kids about what they can be and how they could do it is inspiring to me.

And I think to all the listeners, like, that is a shift we need to see because when you act from a place of scarcity, you're scared, you're greedy, you're selfish, and you're fighting for a battle that helps no one but yourself. If we could just stay on this topic for a minute, what do you think, what do you think has changed in your life about your ideas? We'll do this. Can you define what you think influence is and to define how your ideas of scarcity are? Well, influence for me, I think we're all influenceable. I think it's silly. And I had a mentor, a very successful business person said that all the time.

It was like, listen, Will, whatever you're around, whatever you put in your mind and your body, whatever you're listening to, whatever you're watching, that's going to influence you. It's just the way it is. I mean, there's one out of 10,000 people that probably has the will to not be influenced on that. But we all are influenced. So if you're watching stuff, if you're hearing things, if your friends are taught, the people you're around, your family, that's what's going to influence you. And to me, then you know, that you get into the scarcity thing is, right, it goes back to how people are, I guess, evaluating or judging things, right? Because if you only judge it financially, well, then if your finances aren't where you want things to be, then you're going to be devastated. If you're only judging it, and we all know people like this, we all, oh, you know, you.

you're judging it just on how you look. Maybe if you're overweight, underweight, losing your hair, I identify with some of that. Your hair is, you get too much hair, not enough hair. You're too thin. You're too fat. Whatever that thing that you're evaluating on becomes that scarcity. Because like you mentioned, we have plenty of food.

We have shelter. We have all of these things. But the scarcity is what is inside. It's that emotional, right? It's that lack of love. And for me, that was two things I couldn't do before this. I wasn't very good at showing love. I would say it, but I wasn't real good at showing it.

And I wasn't good at accepting it. And that's why I challenge. I'm going to be launching something later this year, but for men over 40, I think that we have this weird thing where we just cannot accept love. And if you give me a compliment or you tell me you love me, I kind of go, do you? Or what do you want for me? Yeah. Or whatever, you'll fill in the blank.

But I think there's this, this, this interesting thing about can you accept love? And I thought it was silly, like woo-woo stuff. Like, that's kind of, that's woo-woo. But the reality is, I've really, and I work on it every day, just accept that someone loves you, that someone appreciates you, that we did a last night at volleyball banquet for my daughter who's ending her club volleyball career. And the parents sat there and said, you know, will we, we love being around you. We love the relationship with you.

And it kind of, I went to, oh, do you? That's skeptical inside of me. And then I went, I love, I love you guys too. I love that. I love that we have this relationship. And it took me a long time because it maybe it was my ego. I had to maybe in order, I felt like I had to push my ego down in order to accept it. But that's, that's a reality for me is if you accept that love, your life is going to get so much better.

So much better. Yeah. I agree. And it reminds me, I was talking to a gentleman yesterday, and we were talking about medicine. And he said something that he just said it in passing, but I thought it was so profound. And I think it speaks to the same transformation you're talking about. But he just used it in a reference to medicine. And what he said is, you know, George, it just seems odd to me that we study the brain

when we study all these degenerative diseases. And even in medicine, all we do is study diseases. Like the world might be better if we study people that are performing at an optimal level and then figure out it from there. And when you were talking about, you know, for so long, I just thought about all these things of my ego and then I started accepting maybe people, maybe I can be loved or maybe that's not weird.

But when you start seeing things from this level over here or maybe it's just a perspective switch, you know, and maybe that can only happen when you go through traumatic events like you've been through, maybe that's, you're getting slapped around a little bit and you say, wait a minute, I've been thinking about this all wrong. But it does seem to me that, you know, whether it's the traumatic event you went through, the way in which you change the love for your relationships, maybe the way you redefine love, maybe the forcing of you to have to redefine who you are from the ground up made that perspective.

But let's say someone found themselves on the edge of trauma, whether it was through a long-term family planning issue, whether it was the collapse of a business or the collapse of a relationship, knowing what you know now, knowing what you've been through, what advice would you give to someone that finds themselves facing a threshold guardian? Well, that was one of the reasons I wrote the book, too, is I wanted to save things I talk about is, listen, you don't have to go. through this stuff and end up in jail or whatever the situation is before you make those changes. And for me, it's, when I think of the advice, and again, I'm not an expert in any of these fields. I haven't studied all the research. But the reality is the past 10 years now, I've worked every day on, mentioned the meditation, I've met on the journaling, on just talking, on therapy, you know, talking to somebody.

I encourage people all the time. It used to be you have a therapist because you're messed up and the stereotypical thing. It's just not true. And a therapist can be different levels. It can be a really good friend, a counselor. It doesn't have to be a psychiatrist who's going to try to pump you with a bunch of stuff. But the reality is I think that's where most people are at is how do I start on a day-to-day basis to do the little things that are going to allow me to make the changes? because, you know, as I remember who said it, but they're like, if you try to change 34 things on the

first day, you're not going to change anything and you're going to be stuck in the same situation. But for me, that's when I just encourage people and through the stories that I tell in the book, but also just here's an example of how I didn't know anything about meditation. What is this about? This is so bizarre. But I love that now. I mean, I do 20, sometimes 30 minutes a day I've built up to. And I love that time to just get into my own head and figure out what's working and what's not working and how grateful I am.

And I always think gratitude too. I think there's just not enough gratitude out there. I don't think people are instead of they're so worried. And you touched on earlier, they're so worried about what's lacking. They're focused on what's lacking instead of what's working. Yeah. Do I have a great relationship with my partner? Are my kids doing well?

Am I healthy? And you're always going to have areas of life. I think it's Brooke Castile that says life is a 50-50 deal. And I really believe it's like no matter how much money, how much good looking, how much whatever you are, 50% of time, it's going to be a struggle. And 50% of time, it's going to be fantastic. And the sooner you start to deal with that, I think the easier when those problems and trauma hits, the easier it is to work through it.

Yeah, that's what I love about your book. Like, it really allows people to have this shift. You know, there's just a question I was thinking about, and I'm curious to get your opinion. Have you spoken to someone and told them going to jail was actually a great thing for me? And if you have, like, what was the look on their face like? You know what I mean? Because that's such a shift.

Probably think I was drinking heavily that thing. Yeah, well, you, they do. They look at me like, how is that possible? That's such a, I wish people could imagine that. It's so bizarre, you know, and I was in, you know, I mentioned they, they qualify you for where, where you're going to be at. And I was with all the people who they had DUIs and they hadn't paid child support. And so they, they were people who had broken laws, but they weren't going around pilvaging

and hurting people and things like that. But I just, I started to actually have friendships in there. I was there for 85 days. And I started to help them. And I would read my success magazine and my books. I had Victor Frankl's book, Mancers for Meeting, one of my favorite books in the world. And they'd come to me and go, what the hell's that about? And I'm like, and I'd start to tell them.

And so it just came down. It came. And as you talked about it before, it's, do I look at this as horrible, the worst thing that could ever happen to me? Or do I look at this as this is my opportunity to redo? It was kind of a redo. Now, you know, you lost a lot of things, but at the same time, it's like I can redo my life. I can start over and I can do it the way I wanted to do it or I should have done it or whatever it is.

And that's why I think when I, and again, it's taking me time. I mean, the first week out of work release, I was not, this was not the conversation I was having. And I was embarrassed, y'all. You're just embarrassed. You feel embarrassed. But the bottom line is over this time, I've been able to just on a daily basis build to that point of saying, jail was good for me. It was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I'm not encouraging everybody. Right, right. And I think you should go do it or try to find yourself there. Go break a bunch of laws. No, no, no. No, but what is it in your life that is causing that sort of situation? to where you can redo. I mean, that's the best word.

It's a do-over for me. Yeah. Yeah. Getting the opportunity to rebuild a foundation that may have some shaky scaffolding is an incredible gift, especially if you do it consciously. And like you said, it doesn't happen overnight. There's a lot of shame involved in that. Absolutely.

It really, once you do the work and you have to do the work, whether it's talking to a therapist, whether it's meditating, whether it's rebuilding your relationships, like, that is doing the work is rebuilding the foundation. And most people that do that have the same mindset of like, oh, you know, it was so hard. And I would never choose to do that. But I'm glad that it happened because it wipes away the judgment part of you. It wipes away all these things that you thought were beautiful views, but were really just rose-colored glasses. And you're like, oh, that was just muck on the window.

That wasn't a rainbow. Well, that was an oil stain. What am I doing? Exactly. And so in some ways, I've heard people say, you know, things like, there's a Chinese saying, this is may you live in interesting times. And like, that's kind of the metaphor for like, yeah, I hope some, I hope some horrible things happen to you because that's when you learn who you are.

That's when you learn what you're really capable of. And I love the fact that you've made friends that. at a level that you would have probably looked down on before. And you learned so much about yourself. Absolutely. What do you think, in your opinion, is the best part of the relationship with your wife that has changed? Oh, wow. I am such a better husband.

I literally, and I don't remember who I got this from, but it talked about creating better experiences for the people around you. Like, how do you make whatever you're doing? I mean, if you're cleaning the basement or you're, whatever, or you're on a trip to Vegas or whatever you're doing, how do you make that experience better for everybody around you? And that's what I've really been focusing on. It's like, how do I help my wife?

Is it by doing all kinds of chores today that she didn't expect me to do? is it by dropping off flowers at her office that she didn't know I was going to do or writing her a little note or whatever things that. And my wife has always been, she's been just fantastic and just she's naturally very loving and giving. And for me, that's just not the case. And maybe that selfish is probably another word. I was always very self-centered. That's probably a great word, narcissistic. I would throw all these words out when describing.

And again, recovering. I'm still recovering. But it's that. I think that's what our relationship has become because I've kind of met her where she was working so hard. If you had a pendulum, it was like she was working so hard. And I'm working like this. Instead, it's like, let's meet in the middle.

And let me treat you the way you deserve to be treated like when we were dating. Like when we first fell in love. And it's amazing. And that's changed me so much too. I've given so much more love. I've accepted the love. And now we talk about more things. We have coffee every morning.

We talk at night. We just, we have this. And not that we don't disagree or things happen. Everybody. Everybody. Like everybody does, right? But because of that, because I think I was willing to work on it,

to be a better husband, to be a better father, to really be committed. Maybe that's a better word. Committed all in. That's another word I'd use. But because I was willing to do those things, that has made our relationship so much better. And I'm so glad that she was patient with me. And I always tell, I tell some of the younger couples, I'm like, just maybe you had to wait until he's 40 or 50,

but I hope you will. Because maybe it's a male thing. I don't know, but we just tend to mature. And I know I've seen some of the data on that. Our brains develop and mature at a later time than females. We all know that. But I think that kind of plays into it. It's like, how do I have a great relationship when I'm just not even maybe ready myself or mature enough myself? But yeah, that's that's been fantastic. Yeah, this idea of communication and honesty, it seems to be something that goes with traumatic situations. And, you know, I think sometimes a lot of people who are oriented into building businesses or have this idea of success as an accumulation of wealth. And there's nothing wrong with it. But sometimes, you know,

there's a saying that says you can you can't serve two masters. And if you're in a relationship and you have kids in a family, as a man, that should be your priority. But sometimes, at least for me, I can't speak to anybody else. But for me, I struggle with the idea of like, well, the more I provide, the better family man I would be. So I should pull myself into this container over here. And then there, I know I'm not around here. I know this. But if I just keep pouring myself into this container, soon the couple overflow and everybody will have enough. But that that kind of becomes a sort of lie that you tell yourself because you've gotten far away from the relationship now and now it just becomes something you're doing. And when that picture is shattered,

uh-oh, you know, now you got to start having those real relationships. But that's a, that's a richer relationship. And it's better than this other thing. It's better to have one unit than two individuals trying to live separate lives in one house. That's what I have found in my life. And it's similar. It's similar to, like we're similar generation. How people grew up. The man went and he worked all day and you hardly saw him and the wife took care of all these things. And that was kind of our image. And so to your point, it was like if I, and that's I think how I felt too is, well, I'm bringing in the money. I'm providing all this stuff. Why do I to do anything else because that's that's what a man does and it's like well no no a real a real man

is somebody who who loves and takes care of their family and their community and their friends and all of those things and yes is providing important of course but providing is in a lot of different ways right providing is not just financial and that going back to the whole thing with society is we need more people that are providing emotionally in our communities and i see that locally i see that with our charter school and our daughter's high school and all. It's like, provide more emotionally. You know, if you're only focused on that you're going to bring in money and you're going to work 100 hours a week, I don't know.

I don't know if that's what the world has plenty of that. Yeah, exactly. The world needs something a little bit deeper. Yeah. And on some level, like when I pan back and I factor in all these cool people that I'm talking to and I factor in some of the things you're telling me about stories. And, you know, when I factor in, the idea of providing for your daughter is more than just money, but spending time and doing

like a breakout room or just providing time to be with someone you love and be there wholeheartedly. You know, then I think you, you get to redefine what those words mean. And in a way, I think that's what society's doing. I know there's all this crazy stuff like pronouns, but it's still redefining situations. Yes. And if we can redefine words, maybe we could, maybe we need more books like yours to redefine what relationships are. Redefine what it means to be a father. Redefine what a traumatic experience is.

Well, it's honesty too. It's being, for me, this book was 100% honesty. And that was initially the hardest part for me was how do I, because I would always kind of hidden things. and I was, I just, I just never was really being completely, totally honest. And, and when I wrote this, it was like, I'm going to tell it all. The embarrassing things, the things that I feel humiliated shame, you use great word shame. But I'm going to, I'm going to do it because if more of us start to do this, again, I'm just, I'm just an average guy in Western United States.

I'm no one special. But if I can say, look, here's honestly where I screwed up. Here's what I need to work on. Here's the honest truth about my life. Everything doesn't work perfect. One of my friends back of the day said, you're too buttoned up. And I was like, what in the hell are you talking about? But I get it now.

It's like you're not letting anybody in. And that's what you've got going on is people that are putting up this shield and they're hiding behind things, whether it's social media or their job or whatever. They're hiding instead of just coming out and saying, look, this is honestly me. And that's why I'm all for, I'm all for people being who they want to be. I was on the interview last week and somebody asked what, ideally, how do you see the world? If you could change everything, what would you change? I said, let's just start loving each other.

Let's just be who we want to be. Love who you want to be. Do what you want to be. Dress how you want to dress. I don't care. Be you, but be honest and authentic. Stop hiding from all this stuff and stop lying to yourself. People are lying.

It's like be honest. Yeah, that's a big part of, I think it does come back to shame or it comes back to scarcity or maybe back to fear is that we want to be loved and we're afraid of if we, if we show people who we are, then we're vulnerable and they may not love us. But that's the opposite. Like even though there's probably some of that there, you know, if you look back at to like, let's just say we talk about the biography of, uh, Carnegie or we talk about these robber barons. Yes. It talks about how incredible they were. They did all these things. But like, you talk to their kids. Their kids like, that guy was horrible. I hated that guy. I want to part of them. You know, and it's like, oh, I see. That was the image of society, right? And I think it still goes on today. It's just done a little bit differently.

Maybe political correct. I'd use all kinds of different words with it. We hide behind all kinds of different things. But it's the same sort of formula that's happened where we believe, or somebody wrote back in 1930 that this is what life is supposed to be. This is how I'm supposed to act. And it's just so false. You know, we're finding that out with diet, right? I mean, there's, okay, all this stuff we've been told we were supposed to eat and not eat and drink and not.

It was because somebody wanted to sell something, whatever. Point being is that, you know, how can we get to that honest part of who we. we all are and start engaging in more honest conversations. And how is that going to help us with our family and our community and our business and so forth? Yeah. I love to look at things on a longer timeline. You know, it's hard because we all look at our own life and we see where we were or

maybe when you teach your daughter to ride a bike, you envision yourself learning how to ride a bike. But if you can just pan back and go, oh, so I am part of this giant lineage of beings and we're getting better. Like, we're getting a lot, we're becoming a lot more honest. We're starting to treat each other a little better. Yes. And, you know, there's still this generational trauma that's happening, especially as like a

gen X or like, I can see my parents and I can see millennials and like there's this people don't know anything. These people are dummies. We're like the bridge like, okay, no, some of these guys are right. Some of discipline. Some, you know, and so. Yeah. But it's such a beautiful time.

Yeah, I tell my kids all the time. They, they see me coming. Oh, God. here comes dad with his positivity. Yeah. Self development. But I say, you guys realize we're on a blue dime going 63,000 miles an hour through space and a big circle.

I mean, if we just thought about some of this stuff, maybe we'd treat people differently. Maybe we'd have a different attitude during the day. I mean, you know, it's, and there's a bunch of cliche stuff around it. But that's the reality, isn't it? I mean, that's what I talked about in the book. We've been through my wife and I gave away. a child at 16 years old. And then she's back in our life. We now have a grandchild. And that got into all kinds of issues around keeping children and adopting children and all this stuff. And I was 15

years old. Can you imagine you think your life is ruined because I'm not following the way I'm supposed to. I'm supposed to go to college, get married, have a kid, go to a dead end job, all this stuff I'm supposed to do. And here I am 15 years old. And I'm not. I'm not going to be able to do that stuff I'm supposed to do. So that's what I've continued to talk about is how do we get ourselves on kind of this track of focusing on not only the narcissistic things about myself, but what's in it for me financially? How do I get rich? How do I do other stuff? Instead of how do I help my fellow man?

How do I become a better person? And what are the skills that I can develop to reach my goals, but also to help my community, my family, the world in general. Yeah. Do you think that's just a direct reflection of the people, our leaders and the people at the top is this idea of here's how you do it? Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's, I think it's just been ingrained in so many generations that this is how we do. it that there's not a lot of thought about maybe why we do it instead of and I know those are big things that you know there's a how and a what and a why I think we get caught in how and what so much because it's more analytical it's more it's almost like engineering driven it's easier it's easier versus why and I even ask myself that question all the time like why am I doing this why am I creating this product why am I doing this talk why why why why because the why tends to lead in the right direction. I think companies are getting better at that.

I think people and communities are getting better at. It's like, why are we here? Why are we doing what we do? Forget about what? Forget about how. I can watch a YouTube video for 15 minutes and figure out how. Yeah, you can. Totally.

Pretty much. And I'll be this good at something. But isn't that the reality is why? Why are we doing this stuff? Yeah. And it can be uncomfortable because it brings up a lot of issues that some people don't want to talk about. Why are we doing this? Well, we're doing it for the customer. Then why aren't we providing better service? Because it costs too much money.

Well, then why are we doing it? Exactly. That's exactly right. I think that companies are even starting to gauge and measure things a little bit differently, right, versus just what's our quarterly returns and what's our monthly profit and what's this. How about how happy are our employees? How efficient are we with our vendor relationships and our customers and what are we doing that makes sense that's not financially driven? Community driven, right? Corporate responsibility has become a bigger factor now. Thank goodness. But that's the reality. It's like, why are we in the community? How do we help just to make money? It can't just be about just making money anymore. I mean, we know that now. It's got to be something deeper. And I think these are challenges.

I think we can overcome them. Yeah. And I think the book you've written does a good job at beginning to break that down. And sometimes I think that, you know, we're all part and parcel. Like each one of us is similar. Like the human being is a small part of the community. The community is a small part of the town. The town is a small part of the state.

The state is the small part of the state. is the small part of the nation. But the same things that happen in our individual lives are often a direct reflection of what's happening in the country at a larger scale. And so when an individual like yourself writes a book and is very honest and telling about some things that really helped them, even though there's things mixing it that they're not proud of,

I think it speaks volumes of what's happening in our nation. And it's the contact like we're having today. It's the people calling and reaching out to you saying, And Will, thanks for writing this. Like it helped me with my family. Hey, Will, thanks for writing this. I found myself in a situation I wasn't proud of. And thanks for talking about it.

Like, it's amazing. It's like the pebble in the pond. You could throw a tiny little pebble into a nice flat stream of water and all these ripples, you know, emanate out. And that's what you're doing. That's what the book does. I'm super thankful that you wrote it and you're spending some time with me and moving forward.

Do you want to talk about what you got coming up in the future? It sounds like you may have some things coming out. Yeah, I've got to, I'm building a, a platform now, but it's called the comeback builder. And just doing a bunch of things, a bunch of kind of strategies and initiatives around, as I mentioned, men over 40. I think a lot of us felt like I did. And even now in my early 50s, it's how do I, as a man who's at this age or at this point,

how do I deal with all this stuff? If I am in a dead-in relationship or I'm in a dead-end job or, or my kids are a disaster or whatever whatever's happening. I'm out of shape. I mean, I know so many people that, you know, they need to lose weight. They're on seven different pills. They're doing all this stuff. And I just think that I want to have a little different perspective.

It's not a raw, raw. And I love Anthony Robbins, but it's not his approach. It's a different approach. It's a more, I call it an authentic approach. Like, here's where I've screwed up. Here's where I've failed. And here's the things that I'm doing now that are making a different. for me. And again, just an average guy who's doing this, not anything special. And I think I'm

hoping that a lot of people will identify with that. Yeah, it seems like a good strategy. And Lord knows there's an audience for it. We're all honest, right? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Have you given any thought about, right? Like, sometimes I've, I've talked to authors who started, they say every author's book is auto, their first book is autobiographical. Have you ever given any thought to maybe writing like fiction books, it seems to me, once you begin to understand the way the world works or the way your life works, then you can begin building another world on top of that. And some of the greatest science fiction writers or some of the greatest storytellers of our time have been people that have lived interesting lives. Have you thought about writing any fiction? It's a good question.

I've been asked it a few times. The only thing I write about I'm actually working on another book is what I've lived through. And this one's more a business. It's an idea for health that we started that didn't work. But, and I talk about the whole process of what I went through and why I think it could help the world anyways. But I can only really talk or write about what I've been through. I think to write fictionism, I'm a huge Steve, you know, Stephen King fan. I don't know.

I'm just not, I'm actually not that good of a writer. I'm getting better. But I think to be really good at fiction for me, you got to be a really good writer. And so I just, I think maybe someday I'll get there. But until then, it's like I just, and maybe too, it's more my, my passion is to write about stuff that I, right? I know about or that I've experienced and, and I can kind of relate to a little bit better. But I wish I could. I wish I could write fiction.

Yeah. I remember when I started off my journey, like, you know, reading as much as I could. And I started off in the world of, you know, the idea that fiction can be fun, but reference is much more enlightening. Yeah, I start drifting into the world of like, let me read this book over here. And then next thing you know, you're just consuming whether it's Stephen King or Brandon Sanderson or, you know, all these different fiction writers. And then it kind of dawned on me, oh, it's all fiction. All of it. You know what I mean?

It's all fiction. Like that story is really no different than that story. And this story is kind of better, you know? And like, and so it just gets back to labeling and stuff like that. You brought up the world of health care. Like, do you see, it seems to me if we look at demographics, I read an article, and I don't know, I can't cite the article, but the article was saying something along the lines of there's 10,000 baby boomers retiring a day. And we know that the baby boomers are a giant, you know, a giant block of our society. And we also know that health care, whether it's Medicare or Medicaid or even Social Security, seem to be in a big.

bit of a crisis. How do you, like, if, if you, if you were to put on your speculation hat, what do you think the world of health care looks like in the next 10 or 20 years? Well, I can't, I chuckle because we'll have to do another podcast where we just talk about this because this is about a four hour conversation probably. But the reality is I did, I did research coming from a non-health care person, non-health care background for five years. We worked on this project. We went out, we were raising money. We were doing different things. So I got to see it from all different angles.

And the short story of a really long conversation is that throughout the system, a lot of things were, there were unintended consequences that happened as health care was built, that were very financially driven. And the problem with health care is it can't all be financially driven. It's not like we're buying a car or we're going to a restaurant to have a great steak. you have human beings physically, emotionally involved in this situation, life and death are at stake. And in the system, too, I don't think it was even created by the people who were involved in it. They just kind of naturally it happened.

If you look at what health care costs back in 1960, you could go have a baby. And I think when you walked out the door, it was $12 or something. I don't know, $8, whatever it was. It was very minimal. And then as that's progressed over 30 or 40 years, all kinds of people started getting their hands in the pie and started realizing that we could make money off this. Again, that's entrepreneurialism. That's capitalism. I think a lot of us are all for that.

The problem is that health care, the health of people, the care of people got lost and the shuffle. And the reality is, and I talk about this with our story in the book, is that there's no transparent marks. for health care whatsoever. I mean, there's a little bit now, but it's just not real. I mean, if I want to look at the stock market and know what the price of Microsoft stock is today, I can do that. If I want to know what a house costs or a car, I can do that. Try to go find out what a surgery costs or what a certain type of procedure, whatever it is.

No, it's, and the range, can you imagine going to buy a car and you're going to get a, a sa what this uh Subaru and the same Subaru same year almost same car is at one place 49,000 and over here at 6,000 same car same everything your first question would be why what yeah I don't understand that is part of the problem with health care and so the cost it's and we keep talking about the wrong thing coverage I hear that word all the time coverage cover every politicians. We need to cover everybody. Well, we can't cover everybody if the cost keeps going up and up and up and up. It's cost. That's the whole problem. We need a transparent market where we know about costs. And I'm not saying that people should, the doctors shouldn't be paid. Well, in fact,

a lot of doctors are getting hammered in the process. They're not making the money they wants they used to make. I'm not saying that. I think you should get compensated for what you're doing. The problem is nobody understands the market. There's no transparency. and the costs keep going up and up. There's also a third party in most cases paying for it. If it was coming out of our pocket for most of us, we'd probably look at it a little bit closer. But that's the problem.

It's coverage. And now you mentioned elderly. It's like you've got millions of people who are turning 65, 70, 75. They need special care. The statistics still tell us the last six months of life is when we spend the most money, a lot of times, is to keep somebody alive for six months. that gets into all kinds of issues on philosophy and life and death and all that stuff. But that's that's a reality.

So anyways, I'm probably talking too much on it. But that's another, that's probably a good guess we have to cover is, I can talk for hours. But I was an outsider who got into it. It's kind of like almost like I became a drug dealer to see how people bought drugs. It was kind of like that. And so I know more about it than I ever wanted to. But those are some of the issues. Yeah.

It's fascinating. I think it's relevant with the book and your story and it's it's something that we're all up against, I think. And it's it's whether we want to deal with it or not, it's better to try to find solutions than pretend that there's not problems, I think. Well, and think of elderly care. I mean, you're going to have, I think it's one or two million people a year are becoming caregivers in the country, right? So every year one or two million more people are becoming a caregiver. And it's a hidden thing. It's like a, I mean, you don't go to a cocktail party. Go, hey, by the way, I'm taking care of my great aunt who has dementia and it's driving me nuts. I'm ready to jump out of a building. Nobody does that. It's a hidden kind of problem because that's how we treat it all the time. But more and more of these people, and that's why I talk about too in the book is that you're going to, you have like an 80% chance that you're going to become a caregiver at some point.

Whether it's your mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather, sister, brother, you name it, friend. whoever it is, you're going to be involved. And there's some things you're going to need to think about. There's some things you're going to need to figure out. But it is. It's almost this hidden sort of thing that nobody talks about. Nobody addresses that there's an elephant in the room and we need to talk about it. We need to figure this out.

And as you mentioned right at the start, why are we putting people away? Why don't we get connected to people with our community when they're elderly? Why don't we get them involved like they do in other countries where they have totally different processes to how they handle their elderly people. And we don't do that. How do we, we just hide them away and we put them in places and we, we throw them some food. We do some things. And that's what was so, so strange for people would look at us. So strange, like, like, Will, you act like your grandparents are your best friend. I'm like, they kind of are. We have this incredible, cool relationship. I mean, we go to the bar and have shots. You know, your 80-year-old

grandma, you're having, you're having fun and you're doing things like that. And I know everybody's relationship is different. But to me, that's part of our problem. All these millions of people becoming caregivers, they don't legally know what to do. They don't know what to do on a day-to-day basis. And there's a loss of that empathy and love and community connection. Yeah, I'm a little nervous for the future. I think that, you know, when you look, sometimes I have a little bit of animosity for the boomer generation. I feel like they were given a lot. And I feel like they have these incredible standards for people because they had things kind of easy, at least in my opinion. Maybe that's not fair to say.

But they were given a lot. And now here they are facing health care. And hey, guess what? Remember all that stuff you never invested in? Maybe all these lazy people underneath you, they don't really want to take care of you. So it's like on some level, I do feel horrible because I love my parents and I love the boomer generation. But a lot of it, they drop the ball on their watch.

And maybe they don't understand it yet. or maybe that's what all this race to MRNA is or all this race to longevity is, is people scrambling like, wait, we forgot to figure this thing out, you know? So it's interesting. It's a good way to say it because I think, you know, and you hit on a really good point there, which was as you've got this generation of people who made a lot of money off of the healthcare system. I mean, I remember, I remember being a kid and it was like, you know, Bobby's dad is a, not a pediatrician may it was a pediatrician i don't remember or maybe it was a primary physician

whatever it was but and you know he makes 300 000 whatever it was i just remember it was it was a lot more than the average person right was making and and again that's changed now but there's a lot of other people um and from that generation who made a ton of money off of it and to your point that's fine but why weren't why don't we why didn't we invest in systems to help this instead of that. It shouldn't cost $25,000 to spend a night in the hospital. That's nuts. I just look at people and I was in rooms with CFOs of hospitals and insurance people and I'd look at them and go, this is crazy. And they're like, well, that's the way it is. And I'm like, no, no, this is, this is not. Am I, I, and I felt like I was the, maybe I'm the crazy person. But you know what I mean? It's like, and that generation,

that generation before us, they, they kind of facilitated this thing to get to that point. And now they're, and now they're sitting there trying to figure out, what do we do about it? Nobody, nobody knows. Yeah, nobody knows. Well, Will, I've kept you here way over the amount of time we were supposed to talk. I, I'm thankful for your time. Oh, no, this is great. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's a good conversation. I'll have to have you back and we can get into more ideas about how we see anything shaping up or we could talk about the new book or sometimes I do some panels and I just like to bring people back and have a great conversation. Oh, I'd love to. I'd be honored if you'd involve me. I'm sure my kids would say I talk too much, but I love this. It's near and dear to my heart and I just, I love what you're doing. I love your path and again, your discussions on when

you talk about the whole evolution from fear to understanding and from unconsciousness to consciousness and all of the things I think make the world a better place. So thank you for everything today. Appreciate it. The pleasure is all mine. But before I let you go, where can people find you? Oh, yeah. I got the old copy of the show real quick.

Yeah. The unlikely felon. We played around with a lot of different names. And a good friend of mine who helped with some of the early editing. And she said, what about the unlikely felon? And I went, wow, I love that name. So, yeah, available on Amazon, all the typical book, sources and lots of good, I think there's 44 reviews now. It's been out for a little while.

I'm just grateful for all the feedback and everything. And yeah, it's been a fun journey. And I'm looking forward to helping as many people as I can. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody, the links will be in the show notes. Check out the book because it's something that I'm willing to bet if you read the book, you're going to identify with more than a handful of things in there. And it's, it's, it's really a book about well-being, understanding and family and bravery and corruption. And it's, it's got every possible plot twist in there that all good books have. So it's a really good one. And that's all we got for today. Ladies and gentlemen, hang out for one second. Well, I'm going to close us out. But ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for

spending some time with Will and I. And check out the book. The links are in the show notes. And check out Will's site. What's the name of the site? Don't you have your own site as well? Yeah, unlikely fell in.com. Okay. So that's perfect. Can read more about what I'm up to in the book and all that good stuff. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that's what we got. Aloha.