12: Double Tragedy to President & Civic Leader // The Story of Zane Novak

A financially disastrous divorce.

Couple that with your family going from.

Five to two when the RCMP knocks.

On your door at eight in the morning.

So I chose to not be like my father, or at least not like his poor qualities. I chose to learn from it. Most people are raised in a cycle and they become the cycle. I think they're really shrewd and wise. Learn from their cycle and change.

Welcome to From Rock Bottom to Rockin It. I'm your host, Eric Gilbert Williams, and this is the podcast where we explore personal stories of people who hit absolute rock bottom, then got back up, wiped off the dust, kicked failure to the curb, and now they're rocking it like you'd never believe if you didn't hear it. Live right here we cover subjects in business, sports and life in general. If you like this podcast, please share it. These interviews are intended to inspire, to motivate, to give hope and vision. So please share this episode with someone who needs it. Use your Instagram account, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, hand signals, trained pigeon sent smoke signals.

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Love today's interview, so let's get started with us here today on From Rock Bottom to Rockin it is Zane Novak, coming all the way from what was my hometown for over a dozen years, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Now Zane is all too familiar with the concept of rock bottom. He's been there on a personal level, financially and in the business realm as well. I'm going to let him share his own stories in his own words. It's also important to note that he's done some very important work with the Mavericks and with the Kirby center, which he's also going to share with us a bit about Zain. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Eric. Thank you very much for asking me to join you. And I also want to thank Amanda.

For setting this up and connecting the both of us.

Yeah, I'm so glad we're able to connect here. When I was little, I got in a lot of trouble and I had my own rock bottom moments. And for me it was really important to hear success stories and hear people who I Could relate to who also had rock bottom moments. And that was a big part of my source of motivation and inspiration to keep moving forward and come out. So I'm glad we're able to connect. So if you could share with us here what is your story, what happened here in your own words. I think that when you were around 20 years old, you had a ready mix plant, is that right?

Well, a lot of things happened early.

On in my life.

I grew up in rural Saskatchewan, which you'd think would be the most boring place to grow up. And in some ways it was, I didn't say was also a good learning experience. My family owned a road construction company in Saskatchewan. And so I literally started living in road camps, building highways when I was 14 years old. And it's small family and we had a personal tragedy. If you want to talk about rock bottom moments. We were coming back from southern Utah where our family owned a home and I was 18 years old. It was January 8th of 1982 and.

We hit black ice and my mom.

Was driving and it was my vehicle anyways, hit the ditch and rolled and my mom died in that tragedy. And for me, that was probably one of my first real rock bottom moments was dealing with that I was always very close to my mom, not as close to my father and my older sister. So that really was point in my.

Life where I learned a lot of.

Things quickly, harshly, but also lessons that were very positive, very negative situation that I carried forward through my whole life and helped pattern my entire life.

And then with that, yeah, you know.

Worked on the family business and then bought a ready mix plant, which in itself was a tragedy to success story, and bought a ready mixed concrete plant in Prince George, British Columbia.

Went out there with a couple of.

Semi trucks to load it up and haul it back to Saskatchewan. Because even though I knew nothing about concrete, I thought it was a good idea. And I had landed the contract to supply all the concrete to the new hospital and nursing home in our little rural Saskatchewan town. A cutting edge Saskatchewan, even though I never mixed a single cubic yard or.

Meter of concrete in my life.

Got out to Prince George. Pardon me, I think I said Prince George. It was Prince George, not Prince Rupert.

Anyway, got out there, went out to load it up, hired limer cranes and the guy didn't put his outrigger down, Lifted it up and flipped the whole.

Crane and the entire plant just smashed and demolished it all in front of my eyes.

Oh, wow.

So we had to salvage that and drag that back, took it to Lake Minster Alberta Universal Industries and they tried to pound some of the dents out, fixed what we could tell you. I knew every nut, bolt, screw, conveyor.

Belt switch, engage and solenoid in that plant by the time we rebuilt it from the ground up, just in time to start delivering concrete to the hospital. So that was definitely a learning curve. I did sue the crane operator owner. I eventually, three years later got just enough money to cover my legal bills. So you know, that was a hard lesson in business you need to, if you're going to go into a business, you know, expect the worst and have contingency plans and make sure. Too many times I've invested my last penny into something and not have enough left for a contingency plan. Fortunately there's still had a bit of cash reserve for the repairs and I still had a full time job so that supplemented it. But yeah, out of that I learned a lot. I learned a lot about concrete and ended up working for La Farge, became a general manager for La Farge, went to places like all over northern Alberta, Edmonton, Cold Lake, Fort, Saskatchewan, Hinton. Just learned so much and made such a network and became involved in the larger corporate world which was such an important educational program for myself. I came out of Saskatchewan with grade 12 education and I sit in boardrooms.

All the time with VPs, CEOs, presidents of corporations.

And I never feel intimidated. And it's not because I don't have, you know, it's not, not about having the MBA or anything, which I highly recommend. I'm not saying not to get an education. I'm just saying that if you learn to think on your feet and you learn to observe your environment and be educated by your environment and read, self educate, you don't need to be intimidated by anyone else in the room. It's how you conduct yourself and it's how you choose to self educate and what you learn is what you bring to the game.

I totally believe that.

Yeah, that was some of my first stuff, you know, from losing my mom when I was 18, who I was very close to and she was savant, genius, brilliant, brilliant lady. I learned so much from her in that short period of time. But you know, the other thing I guess I could say is I grew up kind of that typical redneck Saskatchewan boy living in road camps with road construction guys when I was 14. You don't particularly spend time getting close to your mom.

Fair enough.

But I wish I would have more. The lesson that I learned out of that, out of my mom's tragic death was I was very, very fortunate that just the way circumstance happened. It's a very personal story. Tuesday afternoon we had gone hiking in southern Utah, a bunch of us. And Wednesday morning, I don't sleep.

I sleep very little, a couple hours a night. My mom was similar.

So we're up at like 5:30, 6 in the morning making breakfast for a whole host full of people. And my mom turns to me in the kitchen that Wednesday morning and says, you know, had a great hike yesterday. I go, yeah, we did, Mom. She goes, yes, hiking with so and so and who was a friend of mine. And I go, yeah, super nice person. She goes, yeah. My mom turns to me, she says, you know, Zane, she told me everything you say about me and everything I've ever said about my mom has always been good. I've never said a single negative word. And I remember looking at my mom in the kitchen and I'm just kind of like shrugging. She goes, I know you always feel that way and treat me that way, but it was so nice to hear that from someone else. That's what you say, you know. Then Saturday morning, I'm in the ditch holding my mom and she's passed away. Right. Thing that I learned from that is take the opportunity to say things. You never know when the moment may come again. You don't know what lies ahead. I mean, I could walk out of this building and slip on the steps and bump my head.

Yeah, simple as that.

Just don't have the regrets of not saying a kind word. It can make such a difference. I mean, out of that whole thing, you know, I'd had that really heartfelt conversation with mom Wednesday and Saturday. She's dead. But that gave me more solace than most other people ever have in a tragic situation. And I've always tried to live my life that way. I've always tried to be very forward in paying a compliment where there's an opportunity to give a sincere compliment and doing it in a moment of sincerity, not just to try to gain an agenda item. So that's right there.

I'm really glad that you had that moment of connection. If there's anything to be grateful for in there, it's that you had that connection, that you had that memory, and that's one of your big takeaways. It's such a tragedy. And I'm just happy to hear that you had that connection, moment, memory.

Yeah.

And it's served me well. I learned that lesson early in life. And I also learned that no one knows what your grief is. It's ironic this morning, of course, not sleeping at 3:30 in the morning. I a friend of mine, her husband was killed three weeks ago coming home from work up in Fort Saskatchewan. Truck driver, we think the driver had.

A medical incident and drove through a.

Red light and hit my friend's husband and killed him.

He was like 34 years old coming home.

And so 3:30 this morning I'm messaging her and just talking about grief. And everybody's grief is their own and they have to take ownership for it. It's up to them to figure it out. Everybody will give words and advice, but everybody's experience is so unique and I.

Think that the most you can really do for someone when they're grieving is just be there.

On that note, everyone's experience is so different. I mean it could be the same tragedy for two people but be felt and experienced and internalized in very different ways. And you're an example of someone who experienced tragedy and you kept going because this, there was more than this than happening later on in your life. And with both of them you're a person who has kept first grounded and then also you kept moving forward. You've done some amazing things that we're going to talk about as well here pretty soon. What's the difference? How do you keep going when tragedy strikes? And for listeners right now who are not aware, Zain, I'd ask if you could share with us about the car accident that happened, that tragedy that affected your family obviously again.

Sure.

So you know, following my life line a little bit, then I started the ready mix plant, then went to work for Lafarge, then ended up coming back to the family business again and then left that. But we were living. I went through a divorce in the meantime, but I had two children. I have a 28 year old daughter, Carmia, who's just brilliant and amazing and my son, 22 months younger than Carmia, Cole Novak. And Cole was a gifted savant, genius, brilliant personality, the most gifted athlete I ever met. In fact, the last four years his life I never paid for a lift ticket on any mountain in Alberta. Cold show up and they go, you can snowboard for free, man. And he would go to the train park and he'd put on a clinic for everyone. But it was really cool. Whenever he landed a jump or something.

He never stuck his arms up in the air and yelled.

He just went to the tow bar and grabbed someone else to take them along to show him how it was done. So in 06 I went through a difficult phase in our Marriage. My wife became addicted to prescription and non prescription pain meds that affected the quality of our home life, affected our children. So in the fall of 06, my daughter Carmea and my son Cole and I, we moved out of the house on the golf course with the clothes we could carry in black garbage bags and started all over again. Left everything, left the Lincoln Navigator, left a five bedroom home, the whole deal. Moved into a little duplex and just had a great life. It was financially restricted, but it was definitely an amazing life. And unfortunately, when Cole was 18 in.

2011, the year that he graduated high school, he and his best friend Bradley, who'd started kindergarten with and sat at.

The same grad table with in 2011, and Bradley lived with us for the.

Last year or so of his life.

Both of them, along with my daughter's.

Boyfriend Thaddeus, were coming home and a.

Drunk driver struck their vehicle and killed.

All three of them about a half mile from my place in Beaumont.

So that was November 26th of 2011. So our little family went basically from five people to two just to my daughter and I. And so you put it on. Tough divorce, a financially disastrous divorce.

Couple that with your family going from.

Five to two when the RCMP knocks.

On your door at eight in the morning.

I thought losing my mom, I thought seeing that ditch, holding my mom in.

Lander, Wyoming was tough. Losing my son was a thousand times more difficult.

Cole was a fantastically brilliant individual, loved, liked by everyone.

I think there were 1200 people at his memorial service.

And though many years ago I'd been.

A religious person, I no longer am. I very spiritual and very faithful and.

Very open and cognizant that way.

But as far as organized religion, that's not my forte anymore. So there was no minister or bishop or priest or clergy class to look after the funeral for us. So actually my daughter and I did my son's entire funeral, and that was in Beaumont.

So there weren't a lot of big venues in Beaumont.

We had to actually use the high school itself type thing.

You can either succumb to the situation or you can try to rise above it. And for me, what kept me sane.

During that time period was the fact.

That my daughter, for all rights and intents and purposes, should have been in that vehicle with the three boys. 99 times out of 10 she would have been, but she wasn't. Just due to weird circumstances, she ended up not going with the boys that evening. And if she would have been in that vehicle and I would have lost.

Them all well, I'm not sure I'd be here today.

But she wasn't. She was there and her and I rallied together and her and I put a lot of time into the community. Not so much Beaumont.

We were already in the process of.

Moving to Calgary by then. In fact, that was the weekend that.

My daughter Kermia and Cole were packing.

Their rooms up to move to Calgary.

In fact, that's why Kermia didn't move.

Didn'T go with him that night because she was packing her room. Cole's room was entirely boxed up. So the sad thing was I couldn't.

Even go sit in his room and reflect on him because everything was already in boxes.

But we became very involved in the.

Charitable community here in Calgary and that.

Was a distraction and a focus and a lot of solace to me. So I was part of that at that time.

There's a group in town here called the Mavericks.

Just 25 random individuals who love the Chuck Wagons. Kind of love the western style of life, but also love paying back. And so probably in the last 20. I was a Maverick for 18 years.

They've been around for about 21. I retired from the group about a year and a half ago.

Probably raised about 8 or 10 million.

Net for local children charity.

So my daughter and I put a lot of effort into that and that was good because it gave me something I could be proud to do and it supplemented my time, filled up my time and gave me a lot of.

Connections to a lot of wonderful, great people.

Right now I am still involved. Though I've retired from the Mavericks, I'm.

Still involved in the charitable community. I am currently present to the board.

Of the Kirby center here in Calgary. And it is a drop in facility. We offer programming for aging adults and we also have a crisis shelter that we own and that was the first crisis shelter for non gender specific. So male or female. And it was open in 1999 and I was the first one in North.

America to open with that mandate.

So it's a pretty cool organization. We do a lot of great things and we have about 30,000 different individuals.

A year that come through the doors.

Oh, I didn't realize there was that many. That's a big impact.

Yeah, and we're well noted throughout the province. But we get guests from all over the world that come and tour the Kirby to see how we do it. Because we have a good reputation of.

Doing it very well.

A very good name, very good reputation. Gone through a lot of transitions.

And under my mandate as president, we've changed our CEO. We have a new CEO in there.

Now, Larry Matheson, a dynamic individual who is CEO actually of Ronald McDonald House here in Alberta for 11 years. And we partner with government both municipally and provincially. So I'm regularly meeting with MLAs and other individuals and trying to figure out where our future lies in these very challenging times. So it has been incredible for me opening doors, getting involved in the community. My daughter and I did a rough calculation here a while ago and I think in the last 19 years or so I've put about 23,000 volunteer hours into the community, Calgary community. So yeah, my heart's pretty close to Calgary.

I got a lot of passion for it.

Didn't grow up that way. I grew up as a northern Saskatchewan Edmonton motors boy. So they doing business down here in 2002 and I started going back up.

To Edmonton going, oh wow, you guys.

Got to come to Calgary. I became the biggest ambassador and advocate of Calgary ever. Like oh, Edmonton's a pothill. You guys got to come to Calgary. We got this, we got that, we got the mountains, we got. It's an opportunity laden city. It's a little more challenging now.

It is a little more challenging.

I haven't lost my love of the city. I just want to do more for.

It, just in different ways.

Often when I bring a guest on the show here, usually I do a pretty detailed introduction which I didn't really.

Do this time because to me, your.

Story, I just felt inspired to stop and let you explain in your own words. And I'm glad that I did. And I can't even imagine what it would be like to lose my mom. I'm very fortunate. She's in great health right now. I'm an only child and I have no siblings either. So the amount of loss that exists in my potential future is a lot lower. And so I can't relate to what you went through there. But I would imagine that people listening to this right here, right now, they can relate and they do relate. And as soon as we come back from this short little break, I want to ask you a question. And specifically, I mean right now you're the president of your own company, Zko Industries. You have been the president of the Mavericks and you're now president. President with the Kirby Center. You have a keen interest in politics which we're going to talk about. If you were to see yourself way back then, say 10 years ago or roughly 10 years ago anyways, what would you say to yourself? Because I'd imagine back Then in those rock bottom moments you're having, you know, maybe you didn't see this far ahead. Maybe you didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel and you didn't see that you were going to turn out great and that things were going to end up well in the future. So as soon as we come back from this short break, Zane, I, I'd like to hear and ask you what would you say to yourself if you were to be looking at in your own eyes 10 years back? Imagine there's a time travel machine and you're giving yourself advice 10 years ago. What would you say? That's my question as soon as we come back from this short break.

Hey everyone. Eric Here on from rock bottom, the rockin it.

And on this episode I decided to support the Kirby center located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

I'm supporting them because I think it's a great organization focused on helping seniors. There's a bunch of programs that they.

Do like a grocery delivery program and.

Information resources by phone volunteer department, elder abuse resource line.

There's a shelter for elderly that are.

Fleeing from elder abuse. You can check out the website@kirbycenter.com that's Kirby with a K so www.kirbycenter.com and.

My mom is doing some volunteering at a senior center as well and working.

With seniors and it's, it's such a great initiative. You know, sometimes we forget about people.

That aren't in our day to day everyday life if they're not at work or not at home.

You know, it is right. It's just out of sight, out of mind. And the Kirby center is an organization that helps to reconnect seniors back into.

The community and engage them in many different ways. So I encourage you to check out the website, pass the website along to someone that you might know even if.

You'Re not in Calgary. It's a great resource.

It's a great place for people to learn and grow.

Also please donate whenever you can or how much you can.

It's really easy to donate on the website. Just click the button, check it out.

And now back to the show.

And we're back now here on from rock bottom to rockin it. Zane, thank you again for joining us. And the question that we left off with was if we had a time travel machine and we went back 10 years and you're looking at yourself 10 years ago, what kind of advice would you give to yourself?

I'm not sure. You know, I often ponder that very question. I am at a different place in my life than what I thought I would be when I was 20 years.

Old or 30 or 40.

I thought I'd be retired and sitting on an acreage with my shop, building whatever, having horses, riding, quads, going fishing and lifetime situation, circumstance has really changed all of that. One thing I didn't mention is that I grew up in rural Saskatchewan. Tiny little. I mentioned that tiny little town. But I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, which was a very unique dynamic and it was very challenging and it was not an easy way to grow up. You could imagine maybe going to a.

School that when you graduate there's only.

28 kids in your grad class, but yet on weekends you're expected to go knock on those same doors and try.

To convert individuals into your religion.

So I got out of that.

Thank goodness. My perspective is it's not a healthy organization to be in.

Right on that subject before we move on now, I'm curious. When I had my construction company back in Calgary, and by the way, you don't know this, but I had a company fail basically in Ontario and I moved out to Calgary on my last dollar to build the dream in the Wild West. That's what it was back then, right now I remember the best salespeople I ever brought on or worked with, the ones that had the most grit and mental stamina. They were people who had come from a background of either being a Jehovah Witness or from being Mormon. And it just so happened that they ended up being some of the most resilient minds when it came to handling rejection and keeping moving forward that had.

Ever been on my team.

I have to inject that fact here into this conversation because, Zane, you have this, this extraordinary resilience as well. Is that coincidence you think?

I think that. Speak specifically to that, yes. I think there's a lot of truth in what you say. I think that anybody needs to sit down in front of a mirror and.

Figure out what their strengths are and go with them.

So if you're going to go with your strengths and figure out what enhances your strengths and take the best from that. So being raised as Jehovah's Witness afforded me a lot of trials and tribulations, but I also didn't focus on what it did give me. And what it gave me was the resilience. Just like you mentioned, people to talk to people. Jehovah's Witnesses have a very good program for training you how to speak, how to deal with opposition, how not to let it get you down I remember one time a few years back I had. Who's still one of my very best friends. Chris Kinnear was working for me and.

We were trying out a new and.

Innovative pump into the oil industry that would reduce fugitive emissions back before it was popular to capture greenhouse gas. Well, now it is.

Back then. It was before we realized.

Yeah, we started doing this in 2003, 2004. And I remember one time he was in old. Sitting on his back deck having a beer. Oh, what a tough day, man. It's been a tough week. And he just kept saying, I've had a tougher sales gig than you. He goes, no, no, no, Zane, you don't get it. Like, I was trying to sell chemical injection pumps to these guys out in, you know, wherever. And there's. He just keeps going. And I just kept calmly saying, yeah.

I get it, Chris, I get it.

But I've had a tougher sales job than you. And finally at the end of his, you know, rant, he goes, okay, so what was your tough sales job? I look at him and I go, chris, I was Jehovah's Witness. I knocked on your door. And he goes, oh, you win. You win, Zane. And so, you know, it was true. Like, I gained a lot from that, the ability. Like they even had things in that program where, like question stoppers. Like when somebody throws something at you, how do you overcome that? Like, what do you do to create the conversation flowing again? All those types of things. And I just feel that I have a little bit of a natural affinity.

To speak in front of people and.

To be comfortable around a microphone. They taught you such basic things as trying to eliminate word whiskers, don't do the ums and the uhs and the this and the that. So a lot of benefit came from that program. And instead of looking at all the negative stuff, and let me tell you.

There'S lots of negative stuff because when.

I left the organization of my best friend at the time left, at the same time, I did and supported me right through it. We were about three months different in age. We're best buddies. He roomed with me actually for a while, helped me with my kids a.

Little bit because I was already a single parent, solo parent by then.

Unfortunately, tragically, three years ago in October, he took his own life. And I would say that 99% of.

That was because of the trauma from that religion.

Those things can really get to you. And I think of my friend Lorne.

Ortwine, and I could just about just.

Thinking about what he went through. And I always say it was death.

By a thousand cuts because there's just.

So many things that are negative. I guess what I've always tried to do through all of those things that are dark moments and dark periods of my life, go, okay, how did we get here?

How do we get out of here?

And how do we make sure we.

Don'T get back here again?

Even raising my children, I'm very close.

To calling Carmea Crimea now, but I.

Always had a rule like, you know, didn't matter how bad, bad one of my kids messed up. I wanted to make sure that they could call me first, that it was the first number in their brain to call was me. And then when I answered that call, no matter how whatever was they done, that I wouldn't flip out. I go, okay, calm down.

Are you safe?

How do we get out of that? And then once we got out of it, then we would sit down and we would have our little meeting and figure out how we ended up in that situation and how we can be.

Sure we never got back into it.

And I think that that applies in most things in life. I relate to relationships. Everything in life is a relationship, right? It's a relationship you have, whether it's with your spouse, your children, your job.

Your co workers, your family, everything's relationship.

If you can figure out how to work with relationships, you could probably have a pretty good chance about figuring out.

Yourself and figuring out where life is taking you.

So, you know, to get way back to that question you asked so long ago. Yeah, I'm absolutely not where I thought.

I would ever be.

There was a point in time I thought I'd long since be retired at this point and relaxing. If you would have told me that, I would be, you know, looking at municipal politics and my involvement with them to the degree that I want to become involved with them, even five years ago, I would have said, no, no, politics aren't for me. But once again, you have those moments, you have those days where you sit back and you look at yourself in the mirror and you figure out, okay, here I am, where do I want to go and how will I get there? And what is the first step? Because the most important step is, you know, the next step and all that. Yeah, it's led me down some pretty amazing roads for being just the most average, normal guy you'll ever meet in the street. I have had some amazing life experiences. I have met incredible people and learned so much. And that's what I look forward to every day, is Being challenged. I am the type of individual who.

Gets bored if I'm not challenged.

I like to try new things, and I like to do new things. It's what keeps me alert.

And so looking back here, where in your darkest moment, if you could go back to that person and give that version of yourself a little bit of advice, what would you say?

Well, just to not succumb to. To the pressures of life.

Okay.

I remember there's a line that I often use from that movie Shawshank Redemption, where it's like, you know, get busy living or get busy dying. It's up to you. It's not up to anyone else. At the end of the day, it's up to us, an individual, with what.

We will do with what we have.

And I'll tell you, man, my bank account's been empty more often than it's been full. And I've lost so many of the people who are absolutely closest to me. I could have succumbed. I could have done whatever. Instead, I just tried to find a way to focus on something other than just myself. And for me, that was a therapy. I always feel way better if I can be helping the community, helping an individual, helping a friend, helping my family, than just focusing too much myself. That is my therapy now. That isn't the therapy for everybody.

And I'm not a psychologist, and I'm.

Not a psychologist either. There are some similarities that I get to see when I bring people onto the show here and have these difficult conversations. One of the similarities is about reaching out to people and to the community. And it sounds like that's what you did, whether intentionally or not, through the Mavericks and through Kirby and working with your daughter on charitable causes. Is that fair to say?

Absolutely. I remember at my son's memorial service, I mean, they called Celebration Life called a memorial.

It's a funeral.

There's just no sugar coating for it. And I was there in front of that auditorium full of about 12, 1300 people in Beaumont, and there were 25 Mavericks, right? 25 in the group at any given time, and me being one of them. And I was standing there, I looked at the back of the hall, and there were 23 Mavericks with their Mavericks coats and their black cowboy hats all standing there. Right. There was only one individual. Sorry, I get a little emotional on this, but there was only one individual who couldn't be there because he was off continent. There was actually a couple of individuals who'd been in business meetings in the US and they flew back into Edmonton, in Calgary, to get to My son's funeral. So it's really important to stay connected and to have those connections with. It doesn't have to. For me, at the time, it was the Mavericks. Now I have a lot of great connections in the Kirby center and other networks. I've been very fortunate to have strong networks. But strong networks come with strong effort. You can't expect a good network if.

You don't put some effort into it.

And I look at the situation we're in right now, and I think that.

It'S never been more important to, you know, with the COVID 19 and how we're on lockdown, or I think we're.

Going to become way more locked down very soon. Networks will save lives. Absolutely.

Without strong networks, we're just going to see some very, very horrific things play out in front of our very eyes.

I moved to Calgary in 2006 and I've been traveling a lot over the last couple years after I sold my last company. And when I sold that company Back in 2018, Calgary was, for lack of a better word, it was starting to struggle. You know, the oil prices were down historically a bit, and the recession was happening a bit, and it was difficult. And since that time, now we're in lockdown and the impacts on every city across the globe are noticeable. I mean, every city's affected, and I'm not going to say that Calgary is more or less affected than others, but it was a struggling time before all of this happened. And over the next who knows how long, you know, 6, 12, 24 months, the economical impacts of COVID 19 are going to be felt everywhere. And we're going to see this type of rock bottom moments popping up all over the place. So what more appropriate timing to have a nonprofit podcast that talks about from rock bottom to rocking it and getting through those tough times. So you're totally right. In this situation that we have right now, we need to have this community, this network, this reaching out, and let's keep each other afloat, let's support each other in moving forward to a positive future. I know that you're getting more and more involved in politics and this is a big passion for you and. And obviously we can't avoid the subjects of COVID 19 right now at all. What do you think that we should all be focusing on at a personal level in order to get through this, generically speaking, rock bottom moment that society's going through?

That's an interesting question and very timely because of my networking connections and people knowing what I've gone through and Other tragedies that I've seemed to somehow survive. I've had a lot of people reach out to me. And the first things that I say to anybody is, number one, try not to worry about it. Try not to stress. Because it doesn't matter how much anxiety, worry, stress I have about the situation at hand. I am not going to move the needle one millionth of one millimeter. What is going to happen is what is going to happen. It's going to play out. So look after your own home first. I would say metaphorically, make sure that you're safe. Make sure those you love are safe, and cook your meals, stay healthy, stay clean, stay organized. Make a duty task of the things you want to do while you're in your home. And be sure every day to connect with multiple friends. So one thing that's really become clear to me through my life tragedies and also, particularly now being president of the Kirby organization where we're dealing with aging adults, isolation is a killer. Now, we've been working with this, with the Kirby with aging adults for years. It's been one of our mandates to make sure that we prevent isolation so that aging adults can age well, safely, healthy in their own community. Well, that's everybody. That applies to everybody right now. Isolation is huge, and a lot of people don't understand what isolation is because we live in such a social world. We're out all the time. We're shopping, we're work, we're bars, we're entertainment events. You know, it's just nobody knows how to live with themselves, let alone live with their families anymore, it seems. So this is a real challenge. So what I say is, number one, don't rent your brain out to this. You can't change it. So instead, look after yourself, look after those you love, and break up your isolation by breaking up other people's isolation, which is not going to visit them, but calling them, texting them, Skyping them, zoom, meeting them, anything. Just keep in contact with as many as you can and don't be consumed by the news media on social media. News can drive people insane.

Okay, and as soon as we come back from this short break, before we wrap up, I want to talk about.

The subjects that are closest to your.

Heart right now, Zane. So whatever you're focusing on right now in your life, and it's gonna help put some perspective too, what's your priority right now? I mean, you've come such a long way and achieved so much.

So right when we come back from.

This short break, I wanna Hear what you're up to right now. I wanna hear about it.

And it's that time again. It's time for me to talk about an organization that I believe in and that I donated to right now while recording this for the show. Now Zane is currently at the time of this recording anyways the president of.

The current derby center which is a.

Center all across Canada for the 55 year old and plus group to assist. The mission is to assist older people.

To live as well as possible for.

As long as possible as residents within the community. Now as I'm recording this right now for real, I just went online to their website, I clicked the donate now button, I put in my donation amount, I click donate and finished. I did finish that donation online. I do that because I want to lead by example. I want to just say to you guys to check out what organization you believe in. Find a cause that's important to you and do what you can to help it out. Whether that's financially or it's in person as a volunteer or even just morally and giving them some support and a shout out. If you're in a position of power or strength, say in an organization or in a group of people and you can spread the word, do whatever you can to help out organizations in your community. And I use this sponsor spot to lead by example and try and help others. This was for the Kirby Center. And now back to the show. We're back now here on from rock.

Bottom to rockin it with Zane Novak. Thanks again for joining. And Zane, where we left off before the break, I was asking you what are you focused on right now? What kind of projects are you working on today? I know that you are the president of the Kirby center and that that's probably got you really busy and you're also running a company called ZKO Industries. If you want to tell me about that, please do. But generally what's happening in your world, what are you doing right now?

Company is an oil field service company. So we do specific things. We do pipeline insulation, mechanical insulation in facilities and we also do lightning prevention, static mitigation. So we'll go anywhere and protect facilities so it's never struck by lightning. Now you can imagine with oil trading on the Canadian market about $7.93, there isn't a lot of work coming up.

Especially when you're in forced isolation where.

You really can't organize a big crew to go to field to do anything even if there was work. But what has really consumed me is in conjunction with a few Things the last municipal election, you know, there's lots of talk about who would be running municipally and this and that and change we needed. And that was interesting how our last municipal election played out here in Calgary and then also have a lot of interaction because of being involved in charities.

With city hall and city administration and the frustrations I feel there.

But I think that the real wake up epiphany moment for me was five years ago when Rachel Notley and the NDP were elected. My little business, Zedco Oilfield Industries was doing really well. We had a bunch of POs on the table. Things were starting to come around. I used to hang out and party with all the Flames boys, Joe Colburn and Johnny Goudreau. We'd go to Cowboys every night after they're winning a hockey game and we had a great thing going on. So my daughter and I, it's Tuesday evening, we're at the Flames game and by the third period my phone's blowing up with the fact that the NDP were elected. And I went home in wonderment and amazement and by 10 in the morning, the next morning had about three and.

A half million dollars of POS taken off my desk, none of which have returned.

So my business, we lost 90% of.

Our revenue within 15, 16 hours of the election.

That's never come back. And I sat there and it was very disheartening. I believe I'm an honest person, I believe I'm a hard working person, I.

Believe I'm an ethical person.

It didn't matter because circumstances and situation of politics changed the course of my future dramatically. And I started to realize I need.

To pay more attention to this. I need to pay more attention to this.

So then an individual I mentioned earlier about a year and a half ago came to me, Chris Kinnear and he says, Zane, he's, he has a little ranch north of pound, about an hour and three kids and he does business development here in Calgary for a survey company. And obviously, you know, not a lot going on the oil field, not a lot of surveying to do. And we're sitting visiting, he goes like I don't know what my future holds. I don't know what the future holds for my kids. Like politics is killing me. You know, people are creating agendas and doing things that are impacting myself, my family, other, my neighbors, other Albertans. Like we got to do something. So we started a little group called Saen Sustain, the Alberta Energy Network. S A E N and he's been out, the guy out there gripping and grinning. And I'm the individual kind of in the background. I write all the newsletters and do all that. And what our goal was to be nonpartisan, to reach out to like minded individuals, to get them to before the provincial election, just about a year and a half ago, to get people to meet the individuals who. Candidates who are running in their constituency, find out what their values were, what their standards were, what their goals were, what they brought to the game and to find like minded candidates and support them, get to know them, support them, help them win in their riding. And then once they've won, you already have that friendship, that relationship now you can go and you can talk to them, say, hey, this is what's affecting myself, this is what's affecting my family, this is what's affecting my neighbors. This is how I think we need to, you know, change things, change policy, create opportunity, create growth, bring the Alberta advantage back, all those things. So our goal was, you know, to hook up with a few friends and help a couple of candidates. In the end we ended up networking several hundred people and we were able to get boots on the ground for about 15 different MLA ridings and help with about 15 different MLAs get elected. So that's been a unique experience, very interesting. A whole different road. Like you say. You asked a question of 10 years ago, what would you think of where you are now? I would have never thought I'd have.

This involvement in politics.

But I now see that, you know.

We need to take ownership of these things as individuals.

I think that, you know, Alberta is an amazing place. I've lived all over the world. Well, not all over, a lot of different places. I travel a lot of different places and I've always like come back to Canada and particularly Alberta. But one of the problems we have as Albertans, we're hard working. We just, you know, when things don't go right, it's kind of our mantra is just, well, we'll just work harder, just work harder and it'll be okay. That's not really the way to view it anymore. We need to work smarter. And working smarter is taking control of.

Our future and our destiny, getting involved.

Helping to shape the narrative, helping to educate in a way that people understand what Alberta stands for, what Albertans stand for, what we do, how well we do it. I mean, I've worked in the oil patch and I no people in the oil patch all over the world and there is no oil hydrocarbon area in the world that is as ethical, as moral and as environmentally sustainable as What Alberta does it. We always talk about the Alberta Advantage, but the Alberta Advantage was built of the Alberta solution. We're about individuals who get out there and we see a problem, we figure out how to solve it. And, and because we're problem solvers, we create an advantage and that's what created the Alberta advantage. And we need to do that again. We need to get out there, we need to be solving things, we need to explain and educate to people what Alberta does for this country. I mean, We've paid in 661 billion in transfer payments and that has funded so much of the infrastructure for this entire amazing nation. Whether it's hospitals, roads, schools, whatever, ui, unemployment insurance, cpp, you name it, Alberta's always carried their bucket of water and more. And we've done it from day one. And we've never felt the need to tell how well we do it. We just thought by doing it people would appreciate us. But that hasn't played out well. When you see our pipelines being blockaded, we see rails blockading our natural resources. We see all of these things that are impediments, but they're really impediments to the progression of this entire country. So I think that where we as Albertans have really fallen short is narrative. You know, we've never explained to people, we've never educated people about the benefits of what we bring and how it advantages all of Canada. There's just. I could talk on this topic for hours because it's my passion. I think that, you know, it's so important that are, you know, all of us guys, you know, myself like civil, civil background, road construction, concrete. Then got into oil and gas. And I don't care. Like, you know, I have CEOs of major, major companies. There's some of my best friends, scratch any of us. And we're blue underneath. And I don't mean that in a political sense. I mean that in the blue collar sense. I mean, you got to be slightly crazy to finance your home and drill a hole in the ground hoping to get some gas made by a dead dinosaur. And that's what the hydrocarbons is. And you're out there and it's 20 below and you're doing this, it's 30 below and this is freezing. That's breaking. And you're figuring out solutions on the go and you're making it happen. And you know, while we were all out there working so hard creating wealth and prosperity for so many people, we were never advocating for ourselves. And our politicians didn't either. And now here we find ourselves in this province where, you know, we're vilified for being in a resource based province. And that's wrong. I mean, it brings wealth to all of Canada and I hope that people would see that and understand how if you do something right, it's beneficial to everyone. I'm not about raping and pilgin land, but I'm about doing it properly.

And you said earlier we were talking about the subject of circumstance. When policies changed, you lost 90% of your revenue and you needed to just keep moving forward. You needed to find a way out. You've faced this circumstance a few times now where things don't go in your favor. There's a theory that I have here and I love to talk about it on the show. It's this concept of what's more powerful between these two options. What's more powerful between circumstance or choice. You, you know, the way I like to word it and I think this might actually be a quote by someone. So I'll have to figure out who originated this quote. But the wording is you can't change what happens to you, right? I can't change what happens to me, what events in my surroundings happen to me, but I can choose exactly what I'm going to do about it. And that leads me as a segue into the question that I have for you, Zane. What's more powerful here? The circumstance that we find ourselves in or that happens to us or. Or the choice that we have, the power of the choice that we have to decide what we're going to do in response and how we're going to respond to that circumstance. Which one do you think is stronger?

I always think it's the power of choice. And I'll use an example. When I went to school, small school.

Two individuals, classmates of mine, both had fathers who were prone to alcoholism. Both were nice dads, both were nice boys. One was an alcoholic before we graduated high school and the other one never drank hardly. I think that a person is 50% environment, you know, 50% heredity. So you take like I'm going to.

Be my height, I'm not going to.

Be 2 inches taller, 2 inches shorter, hopefully not 2 inches shorter, got brown eyes.

And I am what I am, right?

But I chose to not be the individual who I wasn't very close to. My father chose not to be that. I chose to instead learn from that. I think that many times people become their environment, people don't break cycles. So I chose to not be like my father. Or at least not like his poor qualities. I chose to learn from it. Most people are raised in a cycle and they become the cycle. I think they're really shrewd and wise, learn from their cycle and change. So that's why I say choice. We all have a choice. I mean, I have had choices my entire life. I could have succumbed to the tragedy of my mother, my son, my divorce, whatever it was, and I chose to instead take things away from it. I have had so many of my strongest moments have come out of my most tragic events.

And I think that, you know, to be a good leader, whether it's in.

Your family, whether it's in your business.

Whether it's in the political realm, whether it's in the not for profit world, you have to have the ability to make those choices even under the most extenuating circumstances.

Remain positive, remain calm, think about what.

You say before you say it, which I sometimes lack because I tend to talk off the cuff quite a bit.

But you know, be reasoned and measured.

But be determined and don't allow your circumstances to dictate your future. Take control of what you want to.

Do and where you want to go. No one else can do that for you.

You have to do it yourself.

If you're not going to do it.

You'Re not going to move forward and.

You'Re going to succumb to your circumstances. And I refuse to.

Powerful words and I think I'm going to put them on repeat here in the final notes of this episode. Calgary really holds a special place in my heart. I said to you before that I moved out there and early in the construction days. I was a roofer and I was up there myself swinging the hammer -35 or whatever it was in the crazy Calgary winters and generally just trying to keep up with the pace of the work and the construction that was happening at the time. When you said there that Albertans have this tendency to just work harder, that was the life. I mean that was 100% my experience in at least the bubble that I lived in anyways. And Calgary really holds that special place in my heart there I started swinging a hammer at nighttime with a headlamp just to squeeze out a few extra hours in a day in the middle of winter, right? Because I was broke, I had no money, I was in debt and needed the extra few dollars every day to. To ultimately growing a company to have 60 people and doing several million dollars of annual revenue, not to mention the long standing friendships that I developed inside that company and with my customers. And with people that I met throughout. In between this experience and these people really helped to shape how I view the world today. I'm glad that the Calgary's got the type of leadership that resonates with you and that you bring to the table as well. I would love to keep in touch with you, Zane, and hear about where you end up going in the future and what's happening with you in the political sphere and where that might be going. I'd love to hear about what exciting stuff is happening in your life and maybe we can even have you back on the show at some point to do an update because I mean by then it'll be sort of the aftermath of COVID 19 and we'll see where your community involvement is going to be at that time. I have a sense that you're going to be in a leadership role here in the community and in the city of Calgary and you're going to be helping the city as a whole to get through this to your capacity and that that leadership is going to be particularly valuable in such a unique moment like we're having right now.

I thank you very much for that. And yes, I'm very excited for what I hope my role will be in the future of Calgary. I always think that I've never done enough. I think that's one of the things that gets me out of bed every morning, even on the darkest days is I just have so much more I want to do. I have so much more Runway I want to cover. And whenever I get discouraged that I haven't done enough. Many years ago I was a pallbearer.

For a very dear friend of mine.

And when she passed away, she was 107 and a half years old and living on her own at home on the farm until she was 105 and a half. And I think, oh, I still got some Runway ahead of me. I still have enough room to get done what I want to do. And I have some goals. I have some very, I think, lofty goals, but I think they're absolutely achievable and attainable. I surround myself with a fantastic team of people who keep me focused and who are not yes people. They're people who challenge me every moment of the day and I'm grateful for that. But I am looking forward to the future. We will conquer COVID 19. We will come out of this very.

Very different on the other side.

And we're going to have to deal with that new reality. But to do that you need strong leadership, focused leadership. And that's where we hope to be. We hope to be in that playing field on the other side of this.

And we will get through this. Thank you, Zane, for your perspective. I really appreciate the courage that it.

Takes to really share the story, to.

Share your story in the way that you have. And I hope that listeners right now listening to our voices and listening to your voice right now can recognize the courage that it takes to speak and share and get it out of your system, get it out open so that people can hear and collapse, collaborate and be a supportive community for you. I hope that you find that courage to be vulnerable and speak and reach out so that your community, the people around you can help. You guys aren't alone out there. No one's alone in any and all of this. We all have people around us that want to help. Right? I want to help. Zane wants to help. And if we let people help instead of pushing them away or being too scared to ask. So I encourage you to find and dig down deep inside to find the courage to to reach out and be honest to your community. Zane, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate your time. I hope we stay in touch and.

We'Ll talk to you again soon.

Thank you very much, Eric. It has been my privilege to be invited and to share in this dialogue and I'm sure we will talk more in the future.

And that's it, my friends.

For this episode.

We will see you next time. Please send me an email, say hello.

Give me some feedback, let me know.

What you think, give me some tips and suggestions. I'd love to hear from you. Also, please share this episode with whoever.

You think needs to hear it.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, doesn't matter. Just get it out there. I really appreciate it. And we'll see you next time on from rock Bottom to Rockin it.

Have a rockin it day.