Chris Sullivan: Donating an “Angry” Kidney To Slow Down and Speed Up

Hey, and welcome back once again to Hard Knocks, where we bring on exceptionally cool and fun guests to act as mentors to you, the type of mentors you wish you always had so that you can learn the wisdom and not just the standard pieces of advice you might find elsewhere online. This time, we’re talking with Chris Sullivan, a man who is not just a kidney donor that constantly challenges himself so that you can learn exactly what you can do if you put your mind to it, even with a single kidney. And also as a father who has had the unfortunate circumstance of having to guide one of his own children through the bouts of cancer.

There is so much wisdom to find here and a lot of color and context given to common piece of advice, like don’t sweat the small stuff that will take on a completely different meaning after the show. Well, welcome to Beyond. Thank you.

This is super fun. Yeah. And I’m gonna just drop straight into it because you don’t need a starter, right?

You do this for a living. So you won’t just hit you with hard questions like that, right? Right, absolutely.

Yeah, all right. So take me back to the day where you decided to donate a kidney and tell me what happened.

Okay. So every living donor has what’s called a journey. It’s their donor or their giving journey, their donor journey.

So my journey started a February afternoon. It was a Saturday or a Sunday night, it was a weekend and I was in my kitchen and the television was on in the background. We have a small TV in the kitchen and something just caught my ear.

And you guys have all been in that situation where you’re doing something, but then something catches your ear.

Yeah.

And it stopped me in my tracks. I stopped and I watched the ending maybe 20 or 30 seconds of a piece that was on one of the local news channels about a, I can’t remember it was a woman or a man, but somebody who had donated a kidney and saved a life. And like nothing else in my, like a bolt of lightning, I literally was just dumbfounded.

Watched this, turned over my shoulder, looked at my wife and said, I’m doing that. It was that instantaneous. Wow.

Somebody told me a few months later that, that was God tapping me on the shoulder and whispering in my ear. Which really stuck with me, it was pretty profound in terms of the impact it had. And like I said, nothing has ever impacted me like that.

Now, what I have learned since is that people who donate kidneys typically have amygdala, an enlarged amygdala, which is a small part of your brain that sits kind of back behind your brainstem. So those who have large amygdalas are very empathetic and will do things like donate a kidney and are very giving versus those who have shrunk in small amygdalas tend to be child molesters and murderers and people like that. I’m really glad yours is large.

Yes, exactly.

So they also say that most people, and I have found this now being around a lot of donors who donate non-directed because that’s what I was. I donated non-directed, meaning that I didn’t give to somebody I knew. I just gave a kidney out of the goodness of my heart because it felt like the right thing to do.

Everyone I’ve talked to and everything I’ve read is everyone makes that decision with the same lightning bolt. Whether it’s a news piece, a billboard, a bumper sticker, something they read, but they had never given any thought to it. It’s not something they had planned.

They didn’t live their life thinking, I’m gonna donate a kidney when I turn 45. It’s an event, an awareness that is just instantaneous and then they’re on a mission. Wow.

So when you make that decision, what were some of the first things going through your mind in terms of like, I gotta do this and then this and then this, like what happened next?

I mean, probably the first thing that went through my head is how much work am I gonna miss? Typical workaholic. And is it gonna hurt?

Honestly, that’s really about it. And then I did some research and at no time did I really think, is it gonna limit me to do things? And that’s one of the big messages that the group I’m with, Kidney Donor Athletes, that we really try to promote is donating a kidney does not change your life.

In fact, it has done nothing but enhance my life in ways that I couldn’t even have thought of before I began the journey. And you do everything, you post donation, you do everything you did before donation. The only thing you can’t do is take ibuprofen.

Really? Because ibuprofen is processed through the kidneys. And since you only have one, they wanna give that one kidney a break.

And so you have to give up ibuprofen. Wow. So you just take Tylenol instead.

That’s it, otherwise it’s, most people to donate, you have to be healthy and the doctors say, just stay healthy. So keep doing what you’re doing.

Tell me more. So you mentioned that your life has improved. So tell me more, what do you mean by that?

So I will say from a personal standpoint, I’ve also read it and studies have shown that once you donate, your sense of worth, potential for life, you’ve saved someone’s life, which is a pretty cool thing. Not that I harp on that, but that’s a really cool thing. But just the overall sense of giving and purpose is elevated.

And studies have shown that those people who donate a kidney actually live longer lives than those with two kidney. And it has nothing to do with the science. It has to do with the wellbeing and happiness.

Now there’s also a piece of that where it has to do with health. For the most part is you’ve donated, you’re gonna be more cautious in terms of what you do and what you eat and what you drink and things like that. So it all ties together.

That’s one piece of it. The bigger piece for me is, I often have said, I donated my angry kidney. So my left kidney was my angry kidney.

Not that it was angry, but I donated my angry kidney and whoever got it, I never met the person.

But they’re really angry.

Yeah, right. And I say that because once I donated, I had a tremendous amount of angst and anger. And I used to have a really short fuse and that all went away.

Wow. It’s really amazing how, I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore. I travel a lot for work.

I’d be one of those people if the flight was late. Unacceptable. Screaming at the young lady behind the counter as if she has any control over the weather or the airplane.

I don’t do that anymore. It’s not worth it. I just don’t sweat the small stuff.

It’s taught me a lesson in humility. And I am really just a much more calmer, happier, at ease person. And then there’s another piece and that is all the amazing people I have met in the donor community.

What an amazing group. Just we all have something in common, but these are people who live purposeful lives. Right.

And really meaningful. And I have met, it’s harder to make friends as you get older. I have made lifelong friends in my fifties with donors that I never would have met these people if I hadn’t donated.

It has brought fulfillment and richness and purpose to my life that that’s not why I did it. I truly was moved at the idea that I am very healthy. I was gifted with good health.

I can live as anyone can on one kidney. And so my thought was, I’m gonna share my kidney. I’m going to save someone’s life.

And that was really the intent. And that’s all I was looking for. And what has come out of it is this just deeper sense of giving life purpose, richness, and friendship and relationship.

It’s pretty amazing. I think I’m a better father, better husband. I feel like I’m a better person.

I don’t know. We’d like to be the judge of that one.

Exactly. And I’m not as angry.

So those are all unanticipated.

Completely.

Right. And your anticipated things were that you were just going to be doing something that was really good for someone else. But you don’t know who that person was.

Right? No.

You have no idea.

Yeah. So in the donor, living donor world, and these are regulations and laws put into place, the recipient controls a lot of that.

Okay.

So they control relationship. They control communication. Okay.

It’s up to them whether they want to have a relationship. Now that’s a different story if it’s a directed donation, meaning that John, you need a kidney. You and I know.

I’m a match. I don’t. We know each other.

There’s a relationship. In the non-directed world, it’s completely controlled by them. And understand that people who need a kidney are usually pretty sick.

For the most part, they’re on dialysis. A lot of other health issues come with that. So these are people who carry a lot of health issues with them.

And then there’s the sense of guilt. Like, oh my gosh, somebody gave me their kidney. What do I do if I have a relationship with them?

Do I need to keep them abreast on, you know, I ate a pizza last night. Sorry. You know, things like that.

Of course, none of that matters, but I’ve heard in research in that these are some things that some donors, I’m sorry, recipients deal with. And so my recipient was a young man at the time, 32 years old. I knew he lived in Wisconsin.

He received my kidney, which is now his kidney, at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Oh, cool. And he wrote me an email.

And it was just really short and sweet. It’s, you know, thank you very much. I’m doing well.

I appreciate it. And one question he did ask is why? Why did you donate?

That struck me as interesting in terms of, for me, it’s easy. I’m in that world. I’m doing it.

I know why. But then I put myself in his shoes and I’m like, yeah, here’s a stranger who just donated a kidney. For what reason?

Why? And you know, my answer was, like I just said, I was given really, I was blessed with good health. And if I can share that, I’m happy to do it.

And I told him, I said, you don’t owe me anything. I’m not looking for anything. I just want you to experience all the things.

I think about, I think this is what I wrote him. You’re 32. At the time I was 50.

I think about all the things I experienced between 32 and 50. And I want you to experience those things. Birth of my children.

First baseball game. You know, graduating high school. All proms, you know, homecomings, going to weddings, friends, you know, other kids, vacations.

You know, all those things that sometimes we take for granted. And I think that’s part of just the overall greater you know, sense of purpose that came with the donation. Right.

So you mentioned research. So you saw this television commercial and now you’re gonna take action. Step me through some of the research that you did.

And I’m really curious what kind of research you did that was maybe not traditional and some things that you would tell someone else like, yeah, that was probably not worthwhile, but this is what I really found along the way that was, you know, something interesting.

So my first answer to you is, have you met me? Research? Really?

I tend to shoot from the hip.

So hey, we’re doing a kidney. How’s next Thursday? You had the aim.

It was your word. I wrote that down. Research.

I did do some research, but an issue is like, hey, how’s next Thursday? You know, it was pretty much, I’d made my mind up and then I decided, yeah, I should probably do some research.

Right.

So research, number one, health impact really long-term and that’s very quickly put to bed. There really are no long-term health impacts. And like I said, studies have shown that typically those who donate tend to live longer lives.

Okay. Very, you know, less than 0.01% in terms of any type of health issues. And the question I often get is, well, what if you need a kidney?

Well, I have a kidney. Humans can function on 25% of your kidney, which means you have two. So 25% is half of one.

So with a one kidney, you actually have double of what you need. You’re fine. If I do, or any donor happens to have a kidney issue or I would need a kidney, I, because I’m a donor, living donor, I immediately go to the top of the list.

You know, so I wouldn’t have to go on a waiting list. So there’s a bit of an insurance policy there. The research that I did, you know, also for me was athletics and sports and staying active and which is how I came to find kidney donor athletes, which I’ve become very active in.

Are there going to be any limitations? And very quickly I found, no, there are no limitations. And then the other was pain, you know, discomfort, what’s to expect after.

And that’s one of the, probably, if not the most, one of the top two or three questions we get from people who are considering donation. What’s the recovery like? How long am I going to be laid up?

And so on and so forth. And for me, it was really easy. And I don’t, everybody has a different outcome.

Everybody has a different story. But mine was pretty simple. So I donated on a Thursday morning.

I was home Saturday morning and I was on an airplane the following Monday, traveling for work. Yeah, and so they want you to move. You start with walks and you get back into it.

It’s about six weeks. And then you’re just really back living, you know, full life, no change. But it’s pretty remarkable.

It’s just the power of the human body in terms of healing. But back to the research, I then got very much involved in terms of who else has done this, what organizations or groups are out there, which is once again how I find kidney donor athletes. And I have often said that from the very beginning, I look at, if you’re going to be a living donor, part of that role is also advocacy.

So a lot of my research went into how can I become an advocate to provide information, awareness, education for the 100,000 people out there who are waiting for a living donor that are on dialysis. And I just wanna be clear, dialysis is not a cure and dialysis is actually just a prolonged death sentence. Companies like DaVita and Fresenius, the leaders, they provide a great service.

They do amazing things. They keep people alive, but at the same time dialysis is really a miserable way to live. So advocacy has become a big part of my life, a for living donation.

And there was a big part of research that went into how can I personally be a better advocate? How can I help kidney donor athletes be a better advocate to solve this problem for a lot of people? And it is a solvable problem.

It’s unlike cancer or heart disease or things like that. Kidney disease, yes, that’s a disease, but saving people’s lives, it’s actually probably one of the easiest things that can be fixed. There’s 100,000 people out there in a country of 280 million that are willing to donate and they don’t even know it.

They’re me. They just need the trigger. They need that- That moment.

That moment. And that’s a big part of what we’re doing at Kidney Donor Athletes is trying to provide that moment and awareness to the people who don’t even know that they are living donors just waiting.

Yeah. I know one thing you love doing that’s very inspiring is you go to all these massive hikes and mountains and travel the world. How much of that is, I mean, well, maybe a better question would be when did you start doing that?

Like what changed that you’re like, I’m now gonna start doing this?

So I’ve always had an adventurous streak and I’ve always been an endurance athlete since my late teens, early 20s. I found that in kind of the end of my high school career. So it was always adventurous.

So done Ironman and marathons and long bike rides. I will say that that has moved into, as I’ve gotten older to where those type of events tend to beat up my 50 or five-year-old body a little bit more than I like. So I’ve gone into, I still like doing adventure and things like that, but I’ve toned it down a little bit.

So maybe instead of marathons and a hundred mile mountain bike rides across the top of the Rockies, I’m now doing hikes and treks and things like that. So it’s always been part of me. I’ve just shifted now to do them for awareness.

So kidney donor athletes, we have the One Kidney Climb, which is an annual event. I’ve been on two of them. The first one was to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

There were 21 or 22 living donors that made it to the top, which is a great group. And then last December, I led the One Kidney Climb to Guatemala, where we did three volcanoes in Guatemala in four days. There were a group of 17 living donors.

These are just amazing events and the camaraderie and the bonding that we get between the donors on the trips are fantastic. And then we do a lot of media and publicizing the events to get them out there to promote awareness. So yeah, it’s just, I am passionate about that.

I love it. And it’s fun. It’s fun, but it’s also, they’re hard and they’re designed to be hard.

These aren’t vacations. So thank you, everybody who has donated to help me be part of these. I’m not going on vacation.

I just wanna, you know, there’s not a lot of lounging going on. Right.

I mean, it sounds like a great crew. And to join it, you have to donate a kidney.

Right, that’s the entry. Exactly, right. And the only entry to being a member.

Lifelong friends, community, donate the kidney. Right, right. It’s a pretty low cost of entry.

What are the kind of things that you were a little bit afraid of or that were kind of perceived barriers that would like, oh, I’m not sure if I’m really ready for this. Was there anything like that?

You’re talking in regard to the donation?

Yeah, yeah.

To be honest with you, John, I’ve had people ask me that question from day one and my answer is nothing. Okay. I never looked back.

In fact, I had to go through the testing and it’s pretty rigorous testing twice. And so that’s 120 vials of blood. That’s urine tests and that’s full body testing and pricking and prodding and MRIs and CTs and CAT scans.

So they make sure you’re healthy before they’re gonna take a kidney. And only about 13% of those who raise their hand, whether it’s directed or non-directed and say, I’m willing to donate, only 13% make the cut. So they found out some physical or psychological or some issue going on that inhibits them.

A lot of people don’t even realize that there’s something. And so they are eliminated from being a donor. Now, if you make the cut, well, then great.

Then you go through more testing. So I started the testing and I then was the fall, it was September, October. I said, I did the testing in the summer.

I was approved late summer, early fall. And I said, okay, we’re gonna do this and I have a big business trip. I went to Asia for a couple of weeks and then I was gonna do it afterwards.

Then my mother got hurt. She was in traumatic injury. She fell and basically I broke her neck.

So that I had to take care of her. So that pushed it off. And then I was ready to do it in the spring of 20.

And what happened in the spring of 20?

Yeah.

So the whole world shut down because of COVID. I think it was the spring of 20. And then I timed out.

You have one year for when you do all your testing. So all the transplant centers were closed in the spring and summer. I timed out.

And when they opened again, so it was 19 actually. And they opened again, I timed out, I had to go through all the testing again. And so we pushed off and then I was cleared in August and then I donated September 30th of 20.

Oh my goodness. Yeah.

You had a long runtime.

Yeah. So, but to answer your questions, long-winded, at no time did I ever second guess and say, hmm, am I scared or should I do this? Yeah, a little nervous.

But that’s, I think, to be normal in terms of major surgery or whatever. But I wasn’t, it was more about, is this gonna hurt and the pain? It was never a question of, you know, long-term effects and why would I do that?

No, I had committed from literally when that lightning bolt struck me on that Saturday in my kitchen and there was no turning back.

So you mentioned 100,000 people are on dialysis right now, but the fallout rate is only 13% get through. So that means I need roughly eight to nine times that number. Right, so almost a million people need to go through the process in order to end up with 100,000.

Right, and I will also correct that there’s 100,000 people on dialysis on the waiting list. There’s another 300,000 people on dialysis who aren’t on the list. Either they’ve chosen not to be on it or they didn’t qualify.

It’s a pretty rigorous, you know, and I don’t know all the details, but from what I do understand, it’s pretty political. It’s rigorous. There’s a lot, there’s money involved.

Anytime you get money involved, unfortunately, then there’s greed and things like that. I will also say that the underserved, so the African-American community, the Hispanic community, the, those who live at or close to the poverty line, those communities, they’re the underserved. They’re the ones who need the help the most.

They don’t have the ability to do a podcast or a social media, you know, blast to friends to say, hey, help me with a kidney. They’re the ones who a lot of times don’t even know they’re eligible for a kidney. And these are the people who get left behind and they’re the ones that we are really trying to serve, finding kidneys for them because they just aren’t able to do it themselves.

Yeah.

So what’s the message then to people that as you’re on an airplane next to somebody you don’t know and you get talking and I’m curious how you, how you’re responsible or how you feel responsible for turning that light bulb on for somebody else?

So at no time will I ever be pushy about it. Okay. And I’m very clear on that.

That’s a very personal decision. And I understand that not everybody wants to make that decision. That’s fine.

What I say is ask me anything. I am happy to talk about it. And then I leave it up to them in terms of a stranger or whatever.

And a lot of times there is curiosity. And once I open that door, then stand back because the floodgates are gonna come in terms of you ask the question, I’ll give you an answer. The short answer though, is if somebody is interested I will say, take the next step and be the next one.

And that’s actually a name of a campaign that I’ve been working on with KDA for the last six months with Brian Teal with Mile High Deaf and Abby Collins with Collins Consulting who’s a public health consultant. We and kidney donor athletes have developed a campaign that’s called take the next step, be the next one. It’s a three-year social media campaign that uses social media in both the donor and recipient side to try to advocate for more awareness and also to initiate an emotional response to get people to take the next step.

Ask about it. It doesn’t mean you need to give your kidney next week but if you have any curiosity, just ask the question. We’re happy to answer.

What’s the craziest question someone has to ask you?

That’s a good question. That’s a great question. Nothing’s really jumping in mind in terms of kind of it’s a lot of the same.

Well, can you eat and drink and exercise and recovery and so on and so forth?

Or like gender or age or?

Yeah, so yeah, I get that. Am I too old or too young? And it’s pretty much I think 18 to 70.

I know 70-year-olds who have donated. So yeah, honestly, I can’t really- But there’s no gender issue at all, right? No, that’s the beautiful thing.

Kidneys are blind when it comes to age and race. Yeah, no, I heard that.

That was the right kidney, right? Yeah. That’s right.

That was my left one.

The left one’s gone. The anger one’s gone.

I mean, what I’m hearing is that you’re not out of the running yet. That’s exactly what I heard.

Yeah, exactly.

So I wanna put that in a Ziploc bag let that marinate for a little bit. I wanna go back to something really interesting that you said. That I’m seeing gleams of like a hard knock kind of getting unearthed here.

You mentioned that one main thing you really learned from this experience that changed you was learning that notion of don’t sweat the small details. And that is a piece of advice I think you see in every single self-help book. It’s literally everywhere yet everyone still sweat the small details.

So what’s the context behind why that hits so hard for you now? What changed between the Chris now that understands what this really means and the Chris when he was maybe in his 20s that was like, sure, I don’t know what that means.

Yeah, I think some of it has to do with age and experience and a lot of gray hair which comes a little bit of wisdom. And you learn through hard knocks. It’s interesting.

I think part of it is psychology. Part of it is emotional of the donating part in terms of going through that I gave an organ and saved someone’s life and the impact that truly has. And until you go through it, you think about it and then having gone through it, that’s purpose.

That’s important. That has meaning. A delayed flight, the meal not being exactly right at the restaurant, kids screaming, it’s not important.

And it’s just a deep breath. Now I will say layered into the story of donor right around that time, there’s some other things that happened in my life that impact that as well. I had a job change that was not of my making but it really ended up to be the best thing that could have happened.

The position I was in was eliminated and it came out of left field. I really didn’t expect it. And that’s a gut punch that happened shortly after my donation.

And putting me into the position I am now in combination with kids getting older, moving out of the house, going to school. So a lot of different things were layered in there that added to the overall life experience. I will say, hard knock, that whole job experience and post donation, I am a very tenacious person.

I don’t give up, I don’t quit. It’s one of the things that I’ve thrived on in terms of these crazy endurance sports like Ironman triathletes and 100 mile mountain bike races and so on and so forth. But that also then has a double edge sword.

So one side it cuts really nice, but on the other side, it also I’ve learned that I’ve been in some jobs a couple of times in my career where I should have cut bait. But because I have that tenacity, my answer is I’m just gonna work harder. I’m just gonna put my shoulder into it.

I don’t quit, I don’t give up. Where now stepping back, looking at it, that was a situation where you not quit, but you probably should have moved a different direction about three or five years ago. But that’s the double edge sword.

I don’t quit, I don’t give up. And I just put my nose to the grindstone and sometimes you need to slow down, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Like this is a time where I don’t wanna use the word quit, that’s not a great word, but realign, refocus.

And sometimes that can be a significant change. The third or fourth, I forget how many layers we’re talking about here is I read a book that summer that I was looking for my next career called Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. Changed my life.

And it just fell into me at the right time, which was right in that I was 51, 52 years old, job had been eliminated, what am I gonna do? I don’t necessarily wanna go back to what I was doing because I wasn’t happy, but yet I was in that, put your shoulder into it. And I’d probably still be there if that hadn’t happened and miserable.

And I read this book called Strength to Strength, how to live the second half of your life better and more fulfilled. And it just spoke to me in terms of what you need to do. And that can be a significant life change in terms of leave a job, maybe leave a bad relationship.

And in this case, I will say my decision was made for me because my employer decided to end our relationship. And so I was now looking for a new job, but it helped and guided me to where I am now, which I am so fulfilled. I’m enjoying this job more than probably any job I’ve ever had.

And I love the challenge, it’s great. So that’s the final layer in that whole story. And this all kind of gleans together in this big glob or layers over that about four or five year span.

So it sounds like to me, the big difference for you that a lot of other people don’t have in that changing of don’t sweat the small details or the small things from being advice to being wisdom is a layer of perspective.

Absolutely.

And from what you’re saying, it really feels like what changed was all of a sudden, as soon as you donated a kidney and you realized there’s like a lot more here. All these things were like way lower on the mountain versus like way up here. So what for those people who maybe donating a kidney isn’t their thing, but it sounds like to like fully understand what don’t sweat the small details means.

They need a perspective shift. What advice would you give someone?

Go do something that is completely out of your comfort zone. Donate a kidney. There’s a Japanese word for it.

And actually I read it’s in a book called the Comfort Crisis. I don’t know the author, but it’s a great book about how we as Americans or just the Western world has gotten really comfortable. Everything is about comfort, faster, more efficient, quicker how that is actually truly goes against the grain of who we are as human beings in terms of we’re still designed as we were 300,000 years ago where every meal wasn’t guaranteed.

And you had to fight the saber tooth tiger and life wasn’t sitting on the couch and so on and so forth. And we’ve gotten pretty comfortable. And because of that comfort, it’s a crisis in that all the diseases we deal with and so on and so forth.

But one of the things that the author talks about is it’s a Japanese word, Japanese program to every year put yourself in an uncomfortable position, whether it’s for a day, a week, a month, whatever, but something you haven’t done that’s really uncomfortable. Different perspective. I will say, for instance, just we’re talking about the kidney world, go spend a day at a dialysis center.

Go volunteer and spend a day at a dialysis center and watch what dialysis truly looks like in terms of see what these people have to go through and what that looks like. Go volunteer. Even if you never climbed a mountain, go climb a mountain.

Go do something that’s puts you into a different place and makes you uncomfortable and gives you a different perspective.

I love that. For those of you watching, that’s what we’re gonna label as one of our first hard knocks here is that to understand what don’t sweating the small details really means, if you truly want to understand that and have that for yourself, you need to push yourself out of a comfort zone so that you can see the world a different way at a different angle, at a higher elevation. We’re using all these mountains, right?

I mean, first we’re talking to you, right? I’m making you feel at home here. That’s what you need to do.

And that’s the shift required for that to really turn into something with wisdom. That’s really cool.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, that’s me. Well, let’s, why don’t we shift completely here? Let’s throw you on your backside.

Okay. All right, so we talked about the KDA and your story there. So John and I were doing a little bit of looking up of you and your background, things like LinkedIn.

And so you were a chemistry major with a minor in math. And what was the other one? Math and business, okay.

So tell me- He’s a nerd. He’s in good company.

Yeah, that’s true. Exactly. That’s a good point.

We have three nerds here. This is crazy. So tell me about what was the moment you decided being a chemistry major, I’m gonna go into sales.

Take me on that journey.

Yeah, so I’m gonna even go a little bit further back. And so here were your tenacity again. I’m a freshman in college and I was taking a myriad of classes and the business stuff, not so much.

I remember I took a class in architecture, not really that much. I took a chemistry class. This is challenging.

So once again, it’s hard. What do I do? Put my shoulder into it.

That’s a good thing, yeah.

I’m gonna work hard. This is an organic chem that you were in? At that time, I think it was just chemistry 100, whatever.

But everyone else was saying how hard this is. I’m attracted to that. Did I have any particular fondness and love for chemistry?

Probably not, if I’m being 100% honest, but it was hard and it was viewed as hard. And so there’s that tenacity, put my shoulder into it. I’m gonna show the world and myself that because it’s hard, I’m gonna do this.

So I’m gonna be a chemistry major. And it just so happens that the other classes, you take a lot of math and I am not a math person, which is crazy. But then you also took some business classes and lo and behold, I have a chemistry degree with a business and a math minor.

I graduated in four and a half years with the sole purpose that I wanted nothing to do with chemistry. And I said that. I was done with school.

I am not a scholastic person. That was my brother. He inherited that from my dad.

I got more on my mother’s side, which is work with your hands and much more of the social, outgoing, eccentric, if you will, kind of person, which is another reason I was, I stuck out in the group going through the chemistry, the same grade. There were about 15 or 20 of us that kind of went, we were all gonna be chemistry majors. And while they were studying, I was skiing.

And while they were talking about going to dentistry school, medical school, I was talking about how I’m gonna go travel the world. While they were talking about building their careers, I was talking about where my next adventure was gonna be. So different, but yet here I am, a chemistry major.

In Pittsburgh at the time. Yeah, so I went to the University of Pittsburgh. Yeah, okay.

And so I was just such an odd duck and they looked at me as if, and a few of them I remember having conversations afterwards and they just said, you were a fish out of water. But I did it. I graduated.

I had my chemistry degree. And literally the day after I took my last final, I was on an airplane to Colorado to come out here and be a ski instructor. I didn’t even walk.

I did not walk to get my diploma. I said, you can mail it to my home in Pittsburgh. I’m going to Colorado to go ski.

Why does that not surprise me with the type of Chris that I know now? I’m thinking Colorado was calling your name.

It didn’t mean anything to me. I had finished the race. I had done what I needed to do and now I was ready to go move on and do something fun.

So I spent the next few years skiing around the world and it was fantastic. But then that kind of wears out as well. And then I met my wife in those couple of years, now my wife, and we settled down and got married and kind of the rest is history.

But yeah, chemistry, there was never any desire to be a chemist, right? And never really any desire to do anything in chemistry, even though I will say that I am built for sales and that I went into technical sales in the coding’s world. And so I did use my chemistry quite a bit and it actually gave me a leg up in many situations.

I became known as a subject matter expert within my industry. I was inducted into the Decorative Concrete Hall of Fame in 2017 and all this. There’s a Hall of Fame for that?

There is. Oh my goodness. Tell me something, tell me about that.

It’s not as exciting as it sounds.

How am I going to make it exciting? I’m thinking baseball cards right now. Yeah, exactly.

But what would the stats be on that, right?

Number of feet laid? Nope, has nothing to do with that. So, but it served me well and provided a great leg up, if you will, in terms of having that chemistry in an industry to where I was able to use that and leverage that as part of my sales.

And so I’m fascinated with your decision-making process because most of us employ the use of friends and mentors and we go through this excruciating detail about making decisions, right? And it sounds like you made this decision impetuously using your own words. So now I’m a chemistry major and then you decide, well, I don’t want to do anything with chemistry.

So now I’m going to be a ski instructor. Help me understand that transition. Like someday you woke up and said, you know, I’m going to be Jean-Claude Keeley and I’m going to go out and ride in my- No, not too far off.

It’s a combination of just who I am and that’s the way I make decisions. But also I think at that age to where really a lot of shooting from the hip. And I paid some prices for it too.

You know, so hard knocks. There were definitely some wreckage on that highway looking in the rear view mirror that was caused by, you know, being so impetuous and fast decisions. And, you know, for the most part it’s all worked out and it’s been good.

But at the same time, yeah, definitely have made some decisions based on that quick do this, I’m done with that. This sounds good. And, you know, looking back on it, I have no regrets that there were decisions that were made that look back on and go, probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

Any were, what were one of those in particular? Yeah, you know, so early on in my career, I know this is gonna come as a surprise, but, and I said that I was very loud. I donated my anger kidney.

I would make decisions very quickly. And in one of my jobs I was in, I was so rough around the edges. I had alienated myself and pretty much ticked off everybody in my business group that my boss called me one day and said, you’ve ticked off everybody in the business group.

You need to leave. Wow. Yeah, so I had to go switch divisions.

I had to go to a different division. He wasn’t letting me go. He was just saying, nobody here wants to work with you anymore because you’ve just ticked them all off.

This is a Chris I don’t know.

Well, that’s the Chris pre-donation.

Okay.

That was the angry.

Tell me more, so angry means a lot of things. Like what does angry mean in this case?

Running so fast that, thinking no one else can make decisions as fast as I do, just quick and expecting everyone to understand what I want. And I need those decisions today. And what do you mean you have other things that are more important?

And just being very restless, being very demanding. And I think we’ve all dealt with people like that to where it just happens a few times and you’re okay, but then it keeps happening over and over again. And what happens is you just pull back.

I don’t want anything to do with that person. So that was me in some situations.

What do you do today when you meet that Chris out in the marketplace?

I have a few of those people who work for me now. And so we have great conversations. And like you are me 25 years ago.

And so let me, if you’re open to it, can I coach you? Let me guide you. Let me share some insights.

I didn’t have a mentor at that age. And if I did, I think it really would have helped. And so now I’ve learned.

And so I will mentor those that I can. But I recognize, so the first thing is I recognize it instantaneously. I’m like, that was me.

How do you recognize it? It’s the first thing that I recognize is it’s just really speed in terms of moving so fast, you get out over your skis, you miss things, you’re making poor decisions, you are not paying attention, you’re not communicating well, you’re not realizing that you have to work within a team. So that’s really the first thing I recognize.

And that the other piece that I recognize is by over communicating. And like, do you have it yet? Thinking that, oh, I’m sitting on top of you, I’m driving it.

And what am I doing? No, I’m just annoying the living crap out of you. That’s the other piece that I recognize.

So those are really two big things that come screaming that when I see that, aha, I recognize it. I’ve been there. I know what that looks like.

I can help.

So what’s the coaching to be more self-aware? How do you, what do you do?

I am going to use a Mark Repkinism, and that is slow down to speed up. Slow down, understand what you’re doing, plan ahead. Don’t just shoot from the hip.

Think about what you’re doing. Dial into your mentors, ask the question, get advice, communicate. Like, hey, how do you, what’s the best way for us, instead of me coming at you, what’s the best way for us to talk about this?

How would you like to hear from me? Versus me thinking, if I call you every 20 minutes, that means it’s gonna get done faster. Yeah, probably not.

So why don’t we have a conversation? Do you want me to call you every 20 minutes? Oh, okay, once a day?

Fine, then I’ll call you once a day. So just, you know, baseline, it’s nothing fancy. It’s nothing complicated.

It all really usually comes back to communication, alignment, understanding. Are we collaborating or am I needling you?

Sounds like a big change in that particular piece of advice is to give up some of the control you have to allow the other person to be collaborative in the effort.

Yeah, absolutely.

It’s like sharing the ownership.

Yeah, and I see that a lot with the younger generation, especially the hard driver. So a great thing I heard years ago that somebody actually tagged me with was thrust and vector. Do you have thrust and vector?

So it’s an aviation saying. So thrust is propulsion and vector is direction. Two of those together are very powerful.

I have a destination. I have a very distinct focus. I know where I’m going.

Throttle, and here we go. If you’ve got one, but not the other, so thrust without vector is chaotic. You’re just going, but you have no direction.

If you’ve got vector, but no thrust, you’ll sit on the couch all day and think about, well, I need to do that, I need to do that, but you’ll never get up. So the two together work really well, but then it’s also controlling the throttle on the thrust, when to go fast, when to go slow.

How do you make that determination?

I think it’s sense of urgency, depending on, so speaking in the sales world, level and scope and size of the deal, customer size, customer importance. Am I going to go full thrust and vector on a very small project that has very little implications? Probably not, but now bring me an elephant of a potential project.

And so now we’re going to get some thrust and vector. We’re going to make this happen, collaborate, make sure it happens. So it’s really size, scope, importance, lots of different feedback that comes into it.

Also have learned that I understand my strengths, and then I am going to surround myself with people who have the strengths that I lack. Those are my mentors. Those are the people that I seek feedback from.

And you guys are part of that. You’re part of my resource network. You guys are the marketing geniuses.

That is not a gene I inherited. I don’t understand that world. I’m not good at it.

I don’t have the creative side. You guys do. So when it comes to that, that’s when I call David and John and say, guys, I have an idea.

And I drip on you and then I walk away. And then like magic, a week later, you come back with pages of great, beautiful programs.

What I’m hearing is that he thinks of us as the Chia Pets. Remember, those little, small little things you dip in the aquarium and all of a sudden like, oh, they start growing, or the ones that- They grow hair.

Yeah, they grow hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That’s what I’m hearing. So the last thing I’m kind of curious about that training is what do you challenge someone to do? I mean, there’s one thing to say, great.

You know, you need to slow down to speed up. And unless it’s at the perfect time, perfect place, that’s gonna go to one ear, not the other. And what is usually the first thing for someone like that?

You’re like, do this. Like, what’s the small step you ask them to take that gets them set in the better direction?

First thing is stop. Just stop. And whether it’s for 10 seconds, 10 minutes, a day, a week, whatever, let’s just stop.

Talk to me. I bring out my Barry White voice. Talk to me.

Let’s have a really calm conversation. Explain to me what’s going on. And then I listen.

And then there might be periods where I interject. And then it usually comes back to let’s prioritize. Number one, is the customer taken care of?

Because that always has to come first in our world in the sales. Customer first, then let’s take a look at inside. And then let’s break it apart and understand the different pieces.

How did you work it? And how could we have done it better? This went well, this didn’t go well, this was okay.

And we break those pieces apart and we take a look at it.

You’re describing a really good mentorship there. So I got a couple of questions related to that. First is, you said you didn’t really have a mentor.

Do you think that Chris, with both kidneys, would have actually sought out a mentor or been open to somebody that was gonna give them a little bit of direction?

That’s a great question and I’m glad you asked because the answer is emphatically yes. I can remember from a very young age in my first job actively seeking a mentor. And I had people who guided me and who helped, but at no time did I truly have that mentor that I will say I have now.

I’ve got some really good mentors in my life and coaches. And that’s something that I remember the last two or three jobs actively seeking. And I had a few coaches, but none of them ever clicked.

So these would be executive coaches, sales coaches, mentor type coaches in business, which then overlaps into life as well. And so the answer is yes, I was seeking those out and just either for financial reasons or the company didn’t see value in it, or I wasn’t in the right position, but I never had that mentorship. And I’ve often said that the Chris with two kidneys, the angry Chris, that if I had had a mentor, I think there would have been some significant differences in terms of I probably would have avoided some of those hard knocks and I’d probably be in a slightly different place.

I’m not gonna say better, but I think I would be richer and at least have had more experiences, if you will. And you know what, I’m gonna rescind that and probably say, yeah, I might even be a little better. Okay.

Yeah.

So what’s the advice to finding, again, what would you have told your younger self about finding a mentor? How would you have said, this is how you need to go about doing it?

So I think the first thing is, if I could talk to myself 20, 25 years ago, my advice would be seek a company that values culture and mentoring. That that’s worth, I’m not gonna put a dollar number to it, but salary and mentoring, absolutely. I would take that guidance and mentoring and take a reduction in pay, which at the time probably I’d be like, you’re nuts.

No way. But now looking back on it, a company that values that, that provides that. And if the company doesn’t do it, then you need to work harder at finding it yourself.

It’s so very important.

And one of our good friends talks about education and that most people believe that education ends at the end of those four years, right? If you went to college, otherwise even earlier. And his point was, it should never end.

In fact, you wanna continue to invest and probably invest even more than you did in your undergraduate degree. So you assume an undergraduate degree is gonna cost $100,000 these days. But as you get into your career, you need to be thinking about spending that same level of money later on in life.

Is that?

I agree with you 100%. I would say that school, whether it’s a trade school or college or whatever, that’s just the beginning. That is the foundational for education.

I am a believer in lifelong learning. Now, I will say that that comes in lots of different forms. For some people, that’s a master’s degree or a PhD or the curriculum in a university or that type of setting.

For others like me, that education is hands-on, in the field, taking seminars, being mentored. There’s lots of different forms. So one size does not fit all.

And I think I would encourage anyone, you need to find how you learn. So is it taking a class? Is it going back to school?

Or is it in the field, hands-on? How do you learn? And then hone in on that and grab it with both hands and don’t ever stop.

So I know you as a teacher. And when I think about learning, sometimes the most beneficial way that I learn is by having to teach that to someone else. So tell me a little bit about your journey because you’ve done, I think that’s part of the Hall of Fame, right?

It’s part of it, yeah. So that is the Decorative Concrete Hall of Fame was started by Ben Mickelson with Concrete Decor. And he wanted to recognize leaders in the decorative concrete industry, which is a very niche, it’s a relatively small industry.

And he wanted to recognize those people who outside of their, your job, but outside of that, who raised that particular industry by giving above and beyond. So you’re not gonna get recognized, you’re not gonna make it into the Hall of Fame if you made a lot of money and you were successful because that was your job, that’s great. It recognizes people who gave above and beyond who did something.

And so in my case, it was, I latched onto the need for education within the decorative side of troubleshooting and understanding. So this ties into the chemistry side. That’s something I realized very quickly is that industry was blowing up and exploding in the 90s and 2000s.

And there were a lot of people who were explaining how to do it. And there was such an influx into it that people got ahead of themselves. They were doing projects and they were moving faster than the technology and there were a lot of problems.

There were a lot of failures in the field. There were a lot of complaints and the industry as whole was getting a bit of a black eye. And I realized very quickly, there was nobody out there explaining why the problems we’re having, how to fix them and that’s called troubleshooting.

And so I created an entire series and just hundreds if not thousands of classes and seminars. I wrote four books on the whole idea of troubleshooting in the industry and what it’s all about. And yeah, taught me a lot from the standpoint of I learn by teaching.

I try to get the foundation, the fundamentals, I’ll do the research and so on and so forth. But then where it really is solidified is when I then can regurgitate and teach and watch that person and see the light bulb go off. It’s very rewarding.

So I think- And from, I’m sorry. And from what I’m hearing, the decision to do all of those things came at an instant and you didn’t think about any of them.

It came pretty quick.

Yeah, once again. That’s what I was gonna ask, yeah. Yeah, there’s not a lot of, yeah, I mean, honestly it’s- There had to be like, what was the moment though?

Cause that’s a thousand classes, four books. That’s a big commitment. At that point, you’re talking about, you’re not doing something just because you know it should be there.

You’re doing it because like there’s something else driving this too.

Yeah, so there’s a bit of recognition in terms of I was trying to create a brand of Chris Sullivan at the time. And there’s also a part of, it was helping my career in sales by creating that brand. It was helping the company.

There’s a paycheck, not from that, but then that derives additional financial benefit. But honestly, the underlying cause out of all of it, I think dies back into the empathetic giving side of, I like teaching. I like sharing.

I like passing the knowledge on. I get great purpose and fulfillment from that. It means a lot to me that if I can share knowledge, if I can save someone the heartache and the headache because I am showing them, don’t do that, do this.

Or if this happens, this is how you fix it. I’m like, wow. Honestly, I would say the greatest emails that I got were not the ones where, oh, the class was great or thanks and so on and so forth.

The ones that really resonated with me is I took your class five years ago and I remember you said this and I used it and it saved the job or whatever.

It’s the students who come back years later.

I mean, that’s like, yes, yeah.

Have you always loved teaching? No. Your first answer was no.

So when was it? He was a ski instructor, so he could teach anything.

It was in my 20s is really. So early on, I don’t ever remember wanting to be a teacher. It wasn’t something, but then I will say the first instructor or teaching environment was as a ski instructor in the 20s, in my 20s, mid 20s.

And I realized after doing that, just a very little bit is, this is fun. I like this. This is great.

I like the sharing. I like the knowledge. Skiing is fun.

It wasn’t an overly difficult job, if you will, that the saying was, if you left with eight students in the morning, you come back with eight in the afternoon.

And that was about as hard as it gets.

So there wasn’t a whole lot of P&L or the lifeblood of the company on the line here. This was before helmets though, in skiing though. Yes.

Yeah.

Okay. Just wanna make sure there was danger.

Long, skinny skis. The industry has come a long way since then. The crazy one piece, flashy color suits and so on and so forth.

So a little bit ago, you mentioned that you always wanted to have a mentor. What made you feel that way?

Oh man, you’re gonna get me to dig into some personal emotional stuff, but okay, let’s do it. So my dad, it was, I think it really stems from, I didn’t have a great father figure. My dad loved me.

We had a family unit there. My parents were married for 40 plus years, but my dad was very different than me. He got married later in life.

He was an older gentleman. And right about the time where I was in my formative years, so late grade school and junior high, when you needed dad to catch baseball and take you to the football game a lot, my dad went through some really tough situations. He was laid off.

The entire industry he was part of literally evaporated. That was the steel manufacturing. He worked on the supply side for a company called Draveau.

Brilliant man. He was an engineer. He worked on the equipment design and manufacturing side that went into steel, but that whole industry in the 80s just up and evaporated.

And he just never got back on his feet. And so, he was an absentee father during my formative years. And I think part of that really stems for that, when I wanted to throw the baseball, it was my mom who threw the baseball.

When I needed a ride to my baseball game and who was there watching me, that was my mother. My dad, he went through some tough times and we had a good relationship. We came together at the end of his life.

He’s not with us anymore, but we hammered that out. But there were some rough years there in my late teens and my 20s. We did not really get along.

He’s very cerebral and I’m not in terms of just very smart guy. He had full ride scholarships to high school, private school and college, very book learned. That’s not me, just very, very different.

And so, it was kind of a different path. So, I think that was a piece that was missing. And so, I then went looking for that and filled that void on my own without even really realizing it.

Is that one of the reasons why you left Pittsburgh to come out here to Colorado and ski?

Probably underlying, but I think part of it was just a sense of adventure. Nothing against Pittsburgh, great city, fun place, but it doesn’t have the adventure that Colorado does. The mountains were calling.

I came out here with a friend my senior year in high school and I’d never been west of the Mississippi. He invited me to come to Colorado to go skiing with him on spring break. And we flew into Steamboat and we spent a week out there and that was it, I was hooked.

Like, this is where I want to be. I wanna be in the mountains. So, the first opportunity I had, I took it.

Yeah, we’re hoping that not many more people hear that because the housing prices out here are crazy already. No, no, I like that now that I have a house. I like that, I’m in that camp now.

So yeah, that is not a new story. There’s probably a couple million other people who heard the call go west. I think a quarter of the city of Chicago has moved here in the last 20 years.

I believe that, yeah.

Who was your first mentor?

Who was my first mentor? Probably my mother, if that counts. I mean, she’s my mother.

Totally counts. Who was your second mentor then?

Second mentor, I had a high school history teacher, Dr. James Mooney, who was probably kind of a second mentor for me. He’s an interesting guy.

Remember his name?

Yeah, he was a high school history teacher, but then he also mentored students and every summer took a bunch of kids, handpicked kids. And we did backwater canoe trip in the boundary waters of Canada. Not the boundary, I’m sorry, Algonquin in Canada.

And, you know, just that. And so he was really important for me in my latter years of high school. Because there was a time that as I approached my senior in high school, I had no interest in going to college.

I had no interest in anything other than skiing and, you know, being a lifeguard. And I was really very- You were a lifeguard. I was a lifeguard.

I had a lot of thrust. I had no vector. And so he got me vectored in, in terms of you need to do this.

And he gave me some great advice and he’s probably the reason I went to college, which is good. And then he kind of guided me when I was at the end of college, he went through that same thing. Okay, great, now I’m coming to the end of college, what do I do?

And he’s the one who encouraged me to go out and be a ski instructor, go have fun for a couple of years.

Sounds like you stayed in contact with him throughout college.

I did. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to him, but I talked to him actually well into being married with children.

Wow.

So he’s retired now. I think he lives in Albuquerque or Santa Fe, New Mexico is the last I heard. Okay, you ought to send him a copy of this.

I am. So yeah, and I don’t know if he even realizes the impact he had in terms of my life, but it was, so the second mentor kind of early on. And then there were a few, the kind of came and went through my career and had an impact on me, but there was a kind of 15 year period there where I didn’t really have a mentor per se.

And those were important years when I really could have used that.

You talked about transitions. And so you talked about one job that ended without you seeing it coming, but your ski instructor, that thing went to something else. How did you make that decision?

What led to that? Because you probably didn’t get fired from the slopes. No, I didn’t.

Right, you didn’t bring back seven when you’re supposed to bring back eight.

Great story. So my wife and I, we met, we were both ski instructors here in Colorado at Copper Mountain. That’s how we met.

And we spent a season teaching here skiing and it was fantastic. And at the end of that season, we were both invited to come back next winter and teach in Samarit, Switzerland. I’m like, all right, sounds pretty good.

We’ll do that. And so we- Twist my arm.

Yeah, right, exactly.

So we then went to Europe and we taught a season in Samarit and it was fantastic. And at the end of that season, Vicky had been doing it for five years. I’d only been doing it for two.

I was, I’m ready. I can do this for a few more years. This is fun.

And she had actually started her master’s and wanted to get back to it. She had put it on hold to do that season. So she made it very clear.

She is done with the skiing instructor thing. She’s done it for five years. She was really ready.

She’s a couple of years older than me. She was really ready to get onto the next stage of her life. And she wanted to go back and finish her master’s.

I, on the other hand, was invited by the manager of that particular ski resort, the company where before they get assigned to different places. And he came up to me in March of that winter and said, hey, I got my assignment for the summer and I need an English speaking sailing instructor. Do you know anything about sailing?

I’m like, well, I’ve done a little bit of sailing at summer camp. Perfect. I need a sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera for the summer.

Would you be interested? I’m like, wow. So Vicky’s going back to the U.S. I just got invited to be a sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera.

Were you married at the time?

No, no, we were just dating.

Okay.

So what am I gonna do?

Yeah, exactly. Okay. Ta-da!

I feel like music needs to enter right now. Yeah.

So that’s what I call my first life decision. The fork in the road. The first big fork in the road.

Sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera? Go back to the United States.

You picked the sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera, right?

I did not. Oh, man. What a surprise.

My mother to this day said, I was sure you were gonna be a sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera. Vicky was great. She put no pressure on me whatsoever.

She pretty much said that you do what you wanna do. It sounds fantastic. I’ve had five great years.

If you wanna do a couple more years, that’s great. But understand, and this time we were seriously dating. You know, so this wasn’t just, we were seriously dating.

We’d already talked about potentially getting married, getting engaged. So there was a future there. And her words were, if you do the Italian, then I’m going back to the US to get my master’s.

You’re going to Europe. We don’t know where this is going. You might meet someone else.

It could be the end. But it wasn’t, she did not give me an ultimatum, which was fantastic. It’s one of the reasons I love her to this day.

It’s never been, you have to. It was, make the decision that’s right for you, but let’s talk about consequences. So I thought about it.

And so at that point, I decided, I think I was 26 or 27 years old, and it was probably time, even though I could have been a sailing instructor. I’m telling you right here.

I’m sensing like a 1% of regret right here.

Yeah, probably a little bit. More along the lines of, it would have been fun, but at the same time, I don’t regret it. It was the right decision.

I came back, got an internship with Bayer that turned into my first job that turned into a position in Denver. And then we got engaged a year or so later and got married and three kids and the rest is history.

Wow. Okay, now wait a minute. Bayer gave you an interview.

No background whatsoever.

I had a chemistry degree.

Like years ahead of like eight years before, right?

It wasn’t that long. It was about two years.

Okay.

Yeah.

You did a lot in two years.

Yeah, so I did have a good friend in Pittsburgh, family friend who had a senior level in Bayer. She didn’t get me the job. She got me the interview.

And so I’m very thankful to Darla McCormick, to 100% transparency. She did get me the interview, but she made it very clear. She said, I’ll get you the interview.

You need to earn it. And I did. And I got the interview and it led to an internship and I worked my butt off in that internship.

And that turned into offering a position which worked well.

Internship meaning there was a defined end.

Yes, it was I think a three month or a six month internship. Okay. That was pretty clearly understood.

Like we’re gonna give you a test drive and if you fit the culture and if you’re a hard worker or whatever, probably we’ll turn into a position. So funny story, I can remember going through the onboarding for the job and there was a gentleman who was getting hired on into the same division in the technical in the lab. And he and I were talking about past job experience.

And he was talking about, he worked in a lab at this company in chemistry and so on and so forth. And it was like, yeah, I just ski instructor in Switzerland and Colorado. And everyone kind of looked at me and go, yeah, that’s my experience.

And they still hired me. All right, I’ve got to cycle back slightly here. So we went from a man who spent a bunch of time learning chemistry or rather even before that, not even sure he wanted to go to college.

Goes to college to learn chemistry. That’s not easy by the way. And getting two minors along with that and doing all this other adventuristic stuff.

What advice did this history teacher give you? I want to know. Yeah.

You know what? I want myself to hear that advice right now. That wasn’t advice from anybody.

That is, you wanted, you asked me, we’ve talked about that kind of the word, tenacity. That is that inbred tenacity from a standpoint of, call it a dog with a bone. Like you put me on something, thrust and vector.

I don’t quit. Yeah, but what changed? What changed was, I think it was something to prove.

And once I committed to it, I’m not quitting. I don’t quit. I follow things through for the good or the bad.

We talked a little bit about that in terms of, yeah, I just like chemistry. This is hard. Everybody says it’s hard.

Don’t really love it, but because it’s hard, I’m going to do it and I’m going to make it work and I’m going to pass and I’m going to get out. And then, I think before that it was, well, college, college is tough. Yeah, maybe not my favorite thing, but yeah, all right.

I need to do this. I’m going to do it. And then once I make my mind up, I’m doing it.

I don’t quit and just I go. And so it’s just that commitment, that tenacity, but it wasn’t anything that anyone told me. That’s just something that’s always been inbred in terms of something that’s inside of me from the standpoint of, I’m going to do it.

From when you were little, little or later on, because you mentioned a little bit about your father. And I’m wondering to what extent, and I’m not trying to play shrink here, but to what extent was that working on your mind? Like, hey, my dad kind of gave up and I’m not going to.

Yeah, that probably plays into it. But I can also remember, and my mother has told me, even as a young child, I quit. You know, it was like, I’m going to go build a fort, go run in the woods and build a fort, you know, just crazy things like that.

I’m just going to do it. And that’s just who I am and how I’m wired.

I needed you as a childhood friend. I’m going to tell you why. I had so many different times, we’re at our house out in Naperville.

I was like sketching out different plans and estimating costs for what it would take to excavate our backyard and make an underground bunker.

So you know what the difference between you and me is? You’d be estimating your costs and I’d already be in the backyard with a shovel.

Exactly.

And I’d have dug a hole.

See, that would have been a good duo though, right? Like I’ll architect some stuff and then give you a little more, you know, the vector.

Well, the problem is I would have already had the hole half dug and you would have come out and said, Chris, you’re 20 feet to the left. You need to be over here.

Right. Or you would have discovered that there was a little water main coming through and you would have burst the…

I’ve done that many times, many times. That’s the dig first, pay the price later. That’s what I’m hearing.

Yes, quite a few times. All right. So you’re working at Bay Area here.

What was the first sale you ever did? First sale? Because I’ve heard from this guy that tends to be a very eventful thing in a good way or a very bad way.

I still have mine Xeroxed. I still have the order. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

That’s interesting. I can’t remember my first sale. It just wasn’t that meaningful.

And I think by the time the ink was dry, I was already, where’s the next one?

You know, like… Why does this not surprise me?

Yeah, it’s like, great, where’s the next, what’s going on? I remember I had great success and that just came from, you know, I came into the division that was pretty senior. You know, I was in my late twenties and I think the next salesperson were probably in their forties, which at that time was like, we’re really old.

And I remember I just came in and was going 150 miles an hour with my hair on fire. And these guys were like, who is this young punk? Slow down, you’re making us look bad.

And I did, I had great success. You know, I jump-started a lot. I would say, I don’t remember first sale.

I do remember a significant sale. Two groups in that division. One was the construction and one was the paint and plastic side.

Paint and plastic really floundered for that group in the United States. Hadn’t landed a new account in years. Nothing of any size, just really trying to hang on to a very, very small percent of business.

I targeted a very, very large paint manufacturer in Houston, Texas that did powder coatings and had a relationship with the procurement manager. And I remember being told many times, you’re never gonna sell them. You’ll never sell them.

And so once again- That’s the trigger for it, boom. Tell me no. And what did I do?

I just keep going. And lo and behold, took about a year. And I remember getting a phone call from the manager of that division.

And he was just beside himself as we just got an order for three truckloads. It was pigment I was selling at the time. We just got an order of three truckloads from this powder coating company.

What did you do? Like, I did my job. And so that’s just kind of the tenacity.

Don’t give up, keep pushing.

I mean, what I’m learning here real quick, just as a funny note, right? I was thinking, so when Vicky made that not ultimatum to him, I think really what’s happened is that she’s discovered how to win. Exactly.

I think she’s the mastermind here. Because that question was so perfectly worded, likely. They’d be like, you can do this, but it’d be harder to come to the States.

And do that. And then that’s the challenge. This is already all set in stone.

She’s just been playing him. Yeah, I think you’ve been hustled for how many years now? We celebrated our 28th.

Congratulations. Hustled for 28 years. All right, I need to talk to her.

I have said she’s always been and always will be smarter than me. Yeah. And so you’re probably right.

So I have to, just for the education of our audience, very few people know what powder coatings are. So you have to give us 30 seconds on what a powder coating is.

Yeah, so a powder coating is a type of paint. It’s used, this is probably powder coated. This is kind of metal, but it’s typically put on metal.

And what it is is it’s liquid paint that’s run through a dryer, and then it’s broken up and ground into a powder. And it has a negative charge on it. And then what they do is they’ll run parts through a powder coating booth or oven, and they put the opposite charge on the part and spray the powder coating.

And it’s magnetically attracted to the metal and it sticks. And that’s powder coatings in 15 seconds.

That’s pretty cool. Yeah. I love that stuff.

Yeah. What’d you do as a kid? Oh, I was building forts and digging ditches and making bows and arrows.

And if, you know, building stuff. Yeah, I was just all kinds of playing in the creek and running in the woods and riding my bike and building jumps and never really hurt myself too bad. It was always scratches.

Sports, I tried it. It wasn’t really my thing. You know, I played the sports.

Wasn’t very good at it. But I found my niche in sports in high school when I discovered triathlon. And it was multiple disciplines because I need, you know, I am ADHD.

Big surprise, I know. I was diagnosed at a very young age and I need lots of change and lots of stimulation. And so I found triathlon as the sport just started to evolve in the 80s.

So Bruce Jenner must’ve been your hero then.

Yeah, he was decathlon, but multiple sport. You know, Dave Scott was one of the early guys. Mark Allen, these are the early guys in the sport of triathlon.

But it gave me the three sports. It was hard, which when I’m like hard, I’m doing it, you know, because it’s difficult. I love it.

It was difficult, three disciplines. I had a swimming background because I swam competitively as an early age, probably the first sport I did. And then I love the speed of biking and running.

I just kind of suffer through. It’s never really been my thing. But I found triathlon and it gave me a purpose.

It gave me an outlet. I was pretty good at it. And it mixed up multiple sports, multiple disciplines.

It was difficult and it was unique. It was just kind of something that was, at that time, it was just really the beginning of that sport in North America.

So you’ve got donating a kidney. You changed from being in chemistry to sales. Imagine all these things with sales.

You love taking on challenges. And you reminded me of something you said probably about like an hour ago now when we were talking about the KDA, which was take the next step. And it sounds like from everything you’ve talked about so far, and you say tenacity, to me, it sounds like that phrase might be an even more drilled down version of what you really mean by tenacity, like always taking that next step.

How are you able to do that? There’s a lot of people that, again, advice versus wisdom, right? Just take the next step, take the baby step.

That’s sometimes way too hard. How are you able to do that?

I was part owner in a business for 11 years, and my business partner- What was the business? It was a small manufacturing company in Houston, Texas, selling products in the construction industry. And she told me early on, and we spent a lot of time together because we’re business partners.

We were talking all the time and got to know each other pretty well. At some point, a few years into the relationship, she said, you’re restless. And not just in the moment, but you are a restless person.

And that really resonated with me, and it’s kind of stuck with me in terms of, yeah, she’s right, I am a restless person. I get bored with things quickly. I’m always looking for something else.

It doesn’t mean that I won’t go back and do that, but whatever, but it’s always, yeah, take the next step. What’s next? What’s around the corner?

What am I doing tomorrow? What am I doing in five minutes? To get me to sit here for two hours, commend you guys.

That’s a big deal. I don’t sit still for two hours for just anybody.

I like to think I can get your energy level.

So, restless. So back to your question, it’s, yeah, it’s from a standpoint of, it’s something that’s just, it’s who I am. It’s kind of hard to put a finger on it per se, but that’s just something that I’ve always had is that restlessness, that what’s next?

And I have never, and I think part of that comes from the ADHD. Now, as a child, I suffered with it, and a lot of young people. Now, granted, this was also a time where it wasn’t diagnosed, they didn’t know it.

Now there’s really a lot of good, either medications or non-medication therapies for it. We’ve come to understand it quite a bit. I even saw it, how we handled one of my children who was diagnosed with it.

How different the schools and the education system deal with it. Part of it comes from that, to where that was a curse as a child. But I have learned, and I don’t know when or when that happened, but I learned to manipulate that to my advantage, to use that restlessness and that disorder in terms of attention and the ability to just change directions quickly.

I’ve used that to my benefit. And so that’s a good example of taking something that’s a disorder and switching that around to the benefit of sense of urgency, get things done, move with thrust and vector.

I wanna make a little bit of a right turn and talk about lymphoma. That was something that happened in your family early this year. Can you tell us just a little bit about that?

Because I think to this point, most people are hearing, this guy has had a pretty easy life.

Okay.

Right?

Yeah. Hasn’t been easy. I will say this.

I’ve been blessed. I had two amazing parents who stayed together until my father’s passing. They loved each other.

So it’s just my brother and I, we grew up in a great family unit. And as much as there were many, many years of difficulty for my dad, my parents never had my brother and I in want of anything. They always found a way to provide.

And we both went to college and yeah, we had some student loans, but they always found a way. And even into our adult lives, there was always a way. And so, yeah, I’m not gonna say, I did not grow up in poverty and I did not grow up in difficult situations, but I will say of the things we’ve talked about, I did not grow up in money.

I found a way to make those happen. And that’s something I’ve always done. I did not have the money to afford to ski.

And so what I did is I realized that I loved to ski. So I need to be part of something that’s gonna allow me to ski. So I joined the ski patrol, which was a free ski pass and discounts on equipment and things like that.

So that’s how I did it. And then ski school and teaching and so on and so forth. So I can take my passion and make money doing it.

But everything I did, I earned myself. I was given a great foundation for it, but no, it hasn’t been easy. But at the same time, I know there’s a lot of people who have a lot more difficult stories.

So back to the lymphoma. So just about a year ago at this time, my daughter who was 20 at the time started complaining about trouble breathing and high heart rate. And I’m a CrossFit instructor.

And so my initial response is you’re out of shape. Go to the gym. Typical my answer, quick knee jerk.

And it lasted for a period of weeks and months. And then she went on a hike and wasn’t able to finish it because her heart rate was at 210. I’m like, okay, now that’s not normal.

We need to go see the doctor. And so we saw a doctor, which led to another doctor, which then led to being some scans. And then I remember very clearly getting an email that you are being referred to the Rocky Mountain Cancer Center.

And that was a gut punch. Like what, where did this come from? Southerners don’t get cancer.

And so fast forward, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the age of 20. And we didn’t know anything about it because nobody in our family, it’s not something I’ve ever dealt with and not something I ever thought it would deal with. So my 20 year old daughter has cancer.

It’s even kind of hard to say it. And at the time it was really, it was difficult. The one who handled it like a champ was my 20 year old daughter.

She was amazing, Amelia. She just took it in stride. And I remember being at the appointment with the oncologist to where they tell you, this is an hour long appointment and they’re gonna walk you through everything you need to know about chemotherapy, what it is and what it’s gonna look like for the next six months.

And I can remember sitting in that appointment as the nurse practitioner for 30 minutes, literally tells you all the things that are gonna wreck and ravage my daughter’s body. You’re gonna lose your hair and you’re gonna be sick and you’re gonna vomit and you’re gonna lose sensation in your fingers and you’re gonna have either diarrhea or vomiting. And I mean, it just went on and on.

And I remember on the verge of tears and almost breaking down two or three times. And every time I was about to lose it, I looked across at my 20 year old daughter who’s sitting there and just taking it in. And then at the end, any questions?

Yeah. Can I paint my nails? That was the question she had.

And it just put the whole thing in perspective in terms of she’s the one facing this. Now granted, it’s very curable and they said that. So the threat of death wasn’t necessarily looming over us but it’s still cancer and it’s a serious disease and serious illness.

And there are 10% of the people who get this who do pass away. And so it is kind of scary. And all she could think about was what was important to her.

Can I paint my nails? So it put the whole thing in perspective. Now, I don’t wanna make it sound that she didn’t take it seriously.

She took it very seriously. And then we went into battle mode, like a Navy SEAL. She handled this just, what do I need to do?

Tell me where I need to be and let’s go. So in about a three week period, she had three surgeries. She had a biopsy.

She had the port put in and then she had her eggs frozen because chemotherapy impacts the ovaries of young females at that age. And then the day after she had her eggs frozen which is a pretty invasive procedure, I’m driving her to college because she had made the decision, I’m going to school. I am not going to let cancer dictate to me.

I will dictate to cancer.

I’ve seen like I’ve heard this story earlier in a different version, the male version of this.

And of course, Vicky and I were like, oh, you need to stay home. We need to take care of you. I was staunchly against this idea of her going to school but she convinced us and it actually turned out to be the best thing.

She was surrounded by her sorority, her friends in a place. If she had stayed here, yeah, she would have had mom and dad but all her friends would have been at school. She would have been pretty miserable and pretty alone.

There she was surrounded by that. We went and visited her multiple times and it worked out. So she went through six months of chemo, 12 treatments, lost all her hair, it was pretty miserable but she got through it.

And then at the end, she did get a clean bill of health. So we are still going through some testing here. She’s not completely out of the woods yet, but that was a year of just really, everything kind of went on pause.

As much as we lived our lives and tried to be normal and we control it, if you have cancer, it controls you because you’re on a schedule, whether it’s radiation or chemo and so on and so forth. You still live your life, which is normal. But she did, and she took some classes and tried to engage, but at the same time, you’re feeling pretty crummy.

That’s what chemo does, basically kills the cancer cells and everything along with it. And then through medicine, they keep you alive and then they bring you back.

So what did you learn that wasn’t disclosed to you? What are the videos that you probably watched on YouTube or whatever, what are the things that you learned along the way?

Cancer takes a 20-year-old young lady and turns her into a mature adult in one year. I saw my daughter go from, she’s pretty well put together, but I saw her go from a young college student and at the end of it, a mature, independent woman who probably grew up too fast, but in a year, earned her stripes that I hope nobody ever has to go through, but unfortunately people get diagnosed with cancer every day. She grew up and I am so proud of her in terms of what she went through and what she gained and the person that she became.

It was remarkable. She owned that and she never once, even in the low lows, she never let it dominate her. She always was in charge.

And Vicky and I learned a lot from her in terms of, like I said, we were staunchly against her going and being in Utah by herself, but she taught us. This is what independence looks like. This is what, mom and dad, you did a good job.

You raised me to be independent and she did a great job.

Did she like your haircut?

She did, actually. It’s when Thanksgiving, all the men in the family, so my two sons and myself, we all shaved our head in support of her. So I didn’t shave my head.

I got a full on mohawk because I always wanted a mohawk. You look good. And I got a lot of people tell me I look good, but yeah, I had a mohawk.

It was fun. I really enjoyed it.

I am definitely sensing in the story, you definitely pass along that tenacity.

She’s got tenacity, yeah. It morphs differently in her in terms of she doesn’t quite have the thrust and vector I have. She will be comfortable to binge watch on the couch or whatever, but you give her a mission, something in her own way, she gets it done.

Yeah, yeah. So what’s the advice that you give other parents, especially fathers of daughters? This is a very common lymphoma, is a very, very common and treatable and something that people do survive every day, but there’s hell between, it’s war.

What’s the advice? What are the tips that you need to pass along that aren’t in any books?

That’s interesting. I’ve never really been asked that question. I think support, but support, but don’t smother.

Now, once again, age, granted, it’d be different if it’s a 12-year-old. It’s a 20-year-old, so an adult. Our initial response was just to wanna wrap her up, protect her and wrap her and stay at home and we’ll take care of you and I have visions of, I’m gonna make soup for you every day, which probably would not have happened, but these are the visions, I’m gonna cook you dinner and so on and so forth.

And that was the wrong thing. The right thing was listen to her, support, be there when needed, but don’t smother her. And that’s the advice I would give.

And we were there many times, phone calls, tears, feeling sick, we made many trips out there to be with her, but she was in her world and she went, I guess that’s the other thing, let her battle this on her terms. Don’t dictate it from your terms. Which as a father, it was like, well, I’m paying for it and you’re my baby and you’re gonna do this on my terms and at home.

And my wife was actually really good. She kind of talked me out of it too. So it was these two women against me and I lost.

That happens all the time.

What is it that would make you choose that advice above all the other things? That you think was like, that is what I think you really should be focusing on in situations like this.

I learned it from the outcome. It was a year long process because even after we decided and I drove her to school in Utah and I said goodbye and I came home, there were months after that where there were bumps along the road and I immediately said, see, she should be home. She should be in Colorado.

But then over a period of through the chemo and seeing it and seeing how she controlled it and she was the one winning this war, that was the right decision. So at the end of it, I look back and go, yeah, that was the right decision. Support, but don’t smother.

Let her fight this battle on her terms, how she wanted to. And if she had said, and there were a couple of times near the end where she’s like, I would like to come home and do the next treatment at home. Come on home, these are your terms.

And she did and it worked out well. She’s like, okay, I need to go back to Utah. That’s fine, it’s time for you to go back.

So treat her like an adult, support her and let her fight that battle on her own terms. And that came to me, it wasn’t a snap decision. And like I said, I pushed back on that even months into it but it was the right decision.

So I think most people watching this would say this is a highly skilled, very capable, successful man. What do you think is the most overlooked skill in people like you, other than tenacity, since that’s the one that you’ve latched onto?

Yeah, actually first, before we go there, I wanna hit on the term success that you said, because that has been something that Vicky and I have talked about through my entire adult life. So what is success? If you rate, you said very successful.

And sometimes I struggle with that because I am not financially successful, at least not to where I would like to be and where I see some of my constituents and people. I haven’t struck the big financial deal. I don’t have multimillions in the bank and a nest egg.

I had some hard knocks. I had two jobs, a nine-year stint and an 11-year stint. Both those jobs ended poorly to where I got nothing out of them.

Yeah, I got a paycheck, but there wasn’t a whole lot of retirement. We had some financial issues and things like that. So from a standpoint of success, yeah, successful marriage, successful relationships, successful kids, father, I will say I’ve done a good job.

I’ve got all the stuff we talked about, which I’m very proud of. But in terms of success, I still have some things that I view in myself that I haven’t really been that successful in. So I just wanna make sure we’re clear on that in terms of just, it’s not all roses and unicorns in terms of what’s going on.

And that’s definitely, and I think that’s the part for me internally that I struggle with sometimes is just the way things have turned out in some of these career paths or whatever. Don’t regret any of it, but a couple of them did not turn out the way I wanted them to. But once again, like we’ve talked about, put your shoulder into it, keep working.

You don’t give up. You take the next step. You take the next step, absolutely.

So back to your question, which I totally forgot.

I was thinking, what is the most- The second, it’s tenacity is one of the skills. What is the most overlooked skill? Of a successful person like you?

Oh man. That’s a great question. You guys are asking really good questions that I’ve never really thought of or had asked me about.

So I’m gonna say it probably has something to do with completion, getting it done, following it through. Is that tenacity? Tenacity is kind of sticking it out.

So maybe it’s a bit of the same. I think they all tie together. You know what?

I will say also, have fun. And I learned that late in my career. That came later.

So there were a lot of years early on where I wasn’t having a lot of fun.

That’s because these kidneys were fighting against each other.

Right, exactly. The angry one. Yeah, the angry, exactly.

Yeah, so it’s the happy, fun one that’s left.

That’s right. So that probably does tie into it to where that was a very pivotal point in my life, that whole donation period or whatever. But I definitely would say, enjoy the ride.

And that’s a cliche and you hear people say that. But I think that’s really, and that’s something that I have done in that I have worked hard and put myself in positions where I’ve been in sales positions that has allowed me to travel, not only domestically, I’ve been to every state in the United States. I’ve been to every major city.

I’ve been all over the world. I put myself into that position to be able to experience some of that. And part of what, and I coach some of my younger sales reps that I work with in terms of, if you’re somewhere and there’s something cool, then take a couple hours or take a day or a half a day and go do that cool thing.

Don’t just keep driving on by it. Don’t get so consumed with the job. And that’s something that I found myself, I visit a lot of cool places by myself, but I’m there.

And I’m like, you know what? It’s an hour out of the way, but I wanna go see this, or I wanna go do that. I wanna experience this landmark, this city, this place, this something.

Can you give everyone a little bit of an example of what that means? And having that perspective of enjoying yourself in the moment, enjoy the ride. And the reason, both for some viewers, but also for me too, I have noticed that you’re in the moment, you’re like, man, this kind of stinks, or like, man, I wanna get to the next one.

But then 10 years go by and you look back 10 years in the past, you’re like, man, those were really fun days and I didn’t enjoy it. So how have things changed? What did you change?

What’s an example of you’re like, okay, I’m going to do this because I know I should.

Yeah, so when I was younger, it was always a race to get home. I’d go on a business trip Monday through Thursday, and it was almost like from the time I got to where I was going, I’d be looking at the watch or the calendar, three days to get home, two days to get home. Do you think if I could cram six hours of work into two hours, I can catch an earlier flight and get home earlier?

I would work really hard. I take the last flight home, which means I get home at two o’clock in the morning and telling myself, but at least I’m sleeping in my bed. Great.

Versus now, when I book a trip, I immediately, who’s playing? Have I been to that stadium? What national park is close by?

What area is that? What else is there? What within a short distance haven’t I done or could I do?

I immediately start, I’m like, if I’m gonna go, now granted, different time, young kids, wanna be home, so on and so forth. Now that kids are all out of the house, no offense, Vicky, but it’s not that sense of like, I gotta run home and be there for baseball games and so on and so forth. So I will say some of that, but definitely enjoy the ride, enjoy the moment.

Understand that there’s more to life than the job. Yeah. That’s something my dad and I used to, when I was a teenager, young 20 year old, he and I used to get into it.

And he grew up during the depression and he was of the mindset that you are your job. That is how you are rated success. And I remember having some pretty knock down, drag out arguments with him about, no, it’s not.

Success is the bigger picture. And I still think I’m right.

I think you’re right.

Yeah.

I’ve got only two last things.

Go ahead.

Wrap us up. Yeah. So one, you brought a, we love having our guests here, bring like a memento or something that really means a lot to them.

And so you brought a book called Falling Upward. Can you tell us a little bit about the book?

Yeah. So this was given to me by a friend, really a lifelong friend. And it was one of the first books I remember reading as an adult.

You know, you go through college, at least for me, go through school, kind of forced to read. And then after, didn’t want to read. And there were many years where I just didn’t read anything for pleasure or whatever.

And then in my early thirties, discovered like, hey man, there’s a whole other world out there, some really good books. And this is one of the first books that I read. And Falling Upward is about using the, your stumbling and your roadblocks and your falls in life and how to twist those around and use them to your advantage.

And so it spoke to me at that time, which was probably in my early thirties, about how don’t look at those as bumps and, well, they’re bumps and bruises, but don’t look at them as negative, spin those around to its experiences. You know, sometimes you learn more from your mistakes than you do if everything goes smooth.

I wish that wasn’t the case. But the good Lord has it set that way for some reason. Right.

Because we don’t learn any other way.

We don’t either. Exactly, exactly. So happiness is, it’s a combination of being fulfilled, but it’s also a, of when things aren’t going well, understanding that that’s part of life.

Life is not perfect and it’s not always going to be happy, but understanding that fulfillment is a part of life. And that fulfillment comes from being able to switch that around and getting yourself into the right frame of mind.

So I’ve got the last one. Okay. Okay.

Last question. I thought about this one for a little bit. I was like, this is fun.

All right. I need you to do two things. Okay.

One, we’re going to imagine you could step outside of this door right now and you could go to any time period in your life. Okay. And I want to know what time period would that be?

And what advice would you give that version of Chris Sullivan so that he could change a trajectory or gain a vector or just what would you tell him?

Did you talk to my wife about this question?

No, but it sounds like I really ought to get to know her.

Yeah, because this is something that she actually has a phrase for me that I was born in the wrong era, that we talk about this. So if I could walk out the door anywhere, it would probably be the 1700s.

Okay.

North America, the mountains of Colorado, mountain man living off the land or a rancher, having to build and fix and do stuff like that. That just energizes me. Every day I’ve got to kind of survive by milking the cow and hunting and fishing and building and build my own cabin.

Yeah. I think I could get really into that hard work. Once again, tenacity, tenacity just to live.

Yeah. Yeah, I’m seeing you on a Palomino right now. I’m seeing, as soon as he said that, you know what I thought of?

The third Back to the Future movie. Oh yeah. He goes back, he needed that friend.

Yes. You need that friend. Right, right.

So, but yeah, I think that’s thought about that not a lot, but from time to time and Vicki and I, every time I do something or build something or whatever, she’s like, yeah, you’re born in the wrong era.

And what advice would you give a younger version of yourself if you could?

What advice would I give myself?

Or wisdom, sorry. We don’t like advice, we like wisdom. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so don’t wait until you donate a kidney, you know, to just slow down and don’t sweat the small stuff.

Yeah. Then we found our episode title. There we go.

Don’t wait to donate a kidney, slow down and don’t sweat the small stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, hey, this has been super fun.

Oh, yeah.

It’s been really enjoyable. Thanks. Coming on the show, is there anything you wanna shout out to anyone?

You wanna talk about or anything? You got free full range of the cameras for as long as you want.

Yeah, I won’t burn too much, you know, digital megabytes, but I just, I wanna thank David and John. This has been fantastic. And, you know, everyone, we’ve gone through a little bit of the history of my life, which has been really fun, but I wanna thank Vicki and Connor, Brady and Amelia for being there through the whole way.

And then also my mom, who is my first mentor and who I really owe my life to from the beginning, but she’s always been there and she’s been one of my biggest supporters. So thank you to Barbara and I love you guys all. And I really appreciate you guys for giving me the opportunity.

Thank you. You bet.