99 Words of Wisdom: Curt Linville

This is the Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today, author, entrepreneur, dad, Curt Linville. Curt, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Christian. It's nice to be here.

So let's give some groundwork here. You're a self-professed entrepreneur, which tells me something about your state of mind. Um, tell us briefly what your entrepreneurial experience has been.

Oh goodness, um, it started in kindergarten actually, Christian, when my mom asked my kindergarten teacher why I came home with pennies in my pockets because she would find them in the laundry. And come to find out, I had been selling paper airplanes to my classmates and I was using my teacher's paper to make the paper airplanes. Of course, of course. So, uh, later I started selling newspapers when I was 9 or 10 years old.

And then that was also other people's paper, just—

that was also other people's paper. I'm, I'm good at selling other people's paper.

Yes.

Um, that continues on until I started a sign-making business in high school that put me through high school and most of college. And again, I was selling paper. And but I don't sell paper anymore. That's— well, I guess I do. I have a book that I'm selling now, so I'm still selling paper.

Yes, yes. But you paid for this paper, so that's different.

That's different. Yeah, that's different. So, uh, I've— I don't know how many different businesses that I've had over the years, and most of them have been side hustles, side projects. My main breadwinner right now is I'm an RF engineer. and I own RF engineering consulting company. So I do contract work in the wireless industry.

RF stands for radio frequency.

You got it. You nailed it.

Okay. Yeah, I had a, I had a friend. I still have a friend. And he was in the tower business and he would help these broadcasters move their towers and re-engineer them to get more bandwidth, more coverage, whatever, to increase their reach. Sure. And that was like a whole thing. And I'm like, I— that just is bizarre to me that I've been doing that for 30 years. Well, you might know him. John McGuire.

Sounds familiar, but I'm not going to say I do.

Yeah, he's, he's from Oklahoma as well.

Okay.

Okay. So you have written a book. What, what is that book and what is it about?

Well, the title of the book is 99 Words and Building a Better Life is the subtitle. And the book is— I like to think of it as a book of hope. And it is an entrepreneurial-minded book. In the sense that it, it shares entrepreneurial ideas and stories, and, and it has a whole chapter dedicated to starting your own business and a lot of things like that. But what the book's really about is about sorting out a belief system for yourself that you can build a life on, that can provide a rewarding, meaningful life where you can experience joy and make a difference in the world. And I guess I realized, Christian, that there are a lot of younger adults who seem to be struggling these days with, where do I start? How do I get going in life, especially during college and post-college and early in their careers? And I think a lot of that is because they've been raised in a very, very interesting time in history where a lot of the— I'm going to say foundational systems of thinking that we had in years past have kind of been taken off the table, so to speak. And then in place of that, they've been given social media where people vote on how much they like them or not. Mm-hmm. And they've been fed a constant diet of screen time instead of interpersonal, you know, experiences where they can, I don't know, find their place, so to speak. And When I— my own kids, they have all graduated from college except for one who graduates this year. So, yes, but yeah, 4 kids, mission accomplished. But I noticed as I met their acquaintances, there are just an awful lot of young adults now who really were never given a place to stand. You know, if you don't have a foundation to stand on, you get knocked over very easily, or If you try to cross a slippery river full of, you know, mossy boulders and things, and the current is strong, you really can't get across it without getting knocked down. But if you have a firm place to stand, then you can weather the storms of life. And that's really what my book is about. And it's funny because we started with my entrepreneurial background. I also am the host of the Adventure Sports Podcast, and I've done that off and on for 10 years. And my goal there is to encourage people to find something that they love to do that will help them to live a more enriching, community-focused, outdoors-focused lifestyle by accepting the adventure, choosing an adventure, but also accepting the adventures that we find in life. And life itself is the greatest adventure of all. So that's also in this book, and it's also in my heart that I believe that we all people have a path in front of us where we can live adventurous, rewarding, exciting lives, where we help other people, and where we, we feel like life has true meaning.

I love that. So when did you publish the book?

A year ago.

Okay.

Yeah, a year ago this month.

And, and was there something specific that inspired it? I mean, like, had you, had you written a book before?

Well, I'd never published a book before. Okay, this is fair enough. I, I think this is my third or fourth book, but this one I decided to go ahead and complete and publish. Others were experiments and, and writing and, and things like that. Um, no, this is my first book to publish, and really the inspiration was that my own kids graduating from college— I have a 2 of my kids are married now and another one engaged to be married next year. And so I thought, you know what, my father duties aren't as pressing as they once were. And I, I don't mind telling you, the best thing I ever did in my entire life is raising my 4 kids. It was the greatest experience. I loved it. But there's a vacuum now because they're going out and building their own lives. And I thought, I have a little bit of time. I should give back in a different way. And when I saw younger adults struggling. I said, maybe, maybe there's someone out there who will read this book and it'll make a difference.

So I love that. I had— and I know, you know, as someone with adult children, you know, in a similar space where you're kind of looking backwards, I can see some of the things that you're talking about. Where the angst and the nihilism have really been magnified in this younger generation. Not that it didn't exist. I mean, I don't know how old you are. I'm 55. I was part of the generation with the original emo kids. So I mean, anxiety is part of youth, right? Sure. Anxiety is part of the human condition. I mean, that does not leave you. And so it's a human characteristic, but I think it's been amplified. And to an extent, I would also say that I don't think it's just been amplified for young people. I think it's been amplified for all of us. Yes. But more to your point, like, they didn't have the foundations maybe that we had. To deal with it.

Yeah. And I want to point out this book is not preaching traditional foundations, trying to pull people back to something that once was. Rather, it's a, it's a toolkit that tries to empower people so that they can develop their own firm foundations, their own belief systems. And I have my own. I feel very, very strongly about— I'm not trying to force people to believe what I believe. But I want to make sure that they have the ability to come up with wise, useful, effective foundational belief systems. And the reason is, in my mind, is pretty simple. Your beliefs determine your decisions.

100%.

And you make 1,000 decisions a day, even if you only think you're making one. You know, we make so many small decisions and we default to our belief system to answer those questions very, very quickly. So our beliefs determine our decisions, and our decisions determine our outcomes, and our outcomes determine the life we experience. It's really that simple. So for people that don't have a belief system, wow. How does that work for them?

Well, so let me ask you this. Do you think that people don't have a belief system, or is it that they just believe the wrong things?

It can be all of the above.

I'm kind of one of these people that at this point in my life, my perception is that everybody has beliefs. Everybody believes in something consciously or unconsciously.

I was going to say whether they know it or not.

Right. And everybody has faith in something. Sure. Right. And, you know, I think for those that don't have— they don't want to acknowledge a faith in a higher power, it defaults to a faith in themselves, right? Or a faith in the human condition, in their own mind, in their own ability to reason. And I'm curious if you in your book, you know, it's agnostic as to beliefs, but what is necessary to have a healthy belief system?

Well, I'm not going to claim it's purely agnostic. I am going to say there— well, one concept that's in the book is that there's a, there's a way of life which is life-giving and light-giving and truth-bringing. There's also a way that leads to death, and that's a a path of usually deception, misunderstanding, untruth. Um, life-giving things are generous. Death-bringing things are selfish. I think that people can see that sort of a pattern, and we see it around us every day. You know, if we put our trust in, in things that ultimately don't satisfy, then, you know, it leads to that idea of nihilism. And sometimes it starts with nihilism as well. Um, there are a couple of philosophies out there that I really do speak against, and one of them is nihilism, because nihilism teaches that we're just one big cosmic accident and nothing matters. And I argue in my book that you matter very, very much because of the potential that is inside each and every one of us to do amazing things. We all make a difference in this life. Every one of us does. We're here in the space-time continuum. We are using energy. We're creating waste. We're interacting with people and things in our environment, and we're all making a difference. It's our choice whether we want to make a positive difference or a negative difference. And I believe that a life pursuing making positive differences is, is the kind of life that it leads to meaning and joy. And so You know, when the philosophies of modernism came out, everything was very, very structured, and there was a foundation for everything, and there was a schemata for it, and it was kind of based on the empiricism that, you know, the scientific method and all that sort of thing. And then the postmodernists came along and they said, that's too structured and it feels like a straitjacket. I don't want to wear that. And so they came up with a philosophy that said, more or less, you can believe anything you want to believe, and it's true for you. And if our beliefs disagree, we're both right anyway. Mm-hmm. Well, that's a form of mental illness. It's not true. Right. To two belief systems that don't agree cannot both be correct. And now I will go this far, and this is not going to be popular, Christian Brim, but I'm going to say it anyway because I believe it to be true. Okay. I believe there is one truth. Mm-hmm. And I believe that no one has it.

Yes.

But when we're in pursuit of the one overarching truth, you know, it stands alone against all others. And when we're in pursuit of that, our lives do improve. Because when we make decisions based on things that are true, then we're more likely to have good outcomes. I mean, let me be obvious about it. You believe that driving your car down the highway and keeping it between the lines is a safer path than just veering off the road into the forest. We all believe this. If we ignore that belief, one way leads to death and the other leads to making it on down the highway. I mean, that's a crazy example, but most beliefs fundamentally fall into either a positive or a negative camp that either harm or help us.

So Yes.

So that's where I am.

Why do you say that having— that there, that there is a truth, why do you think that's unpopular? Why, why would you, uh, predicate your statement by that?

I see an aw— I mean, it's just a personal interpretation of the world around us, Christian Brim, but I see an awful lot of people that they want to believe in, uh 'Your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth, and all truth is our own truth, and if we disagree, well, we're both still right.' And I see that a lot, and my approach is different than that. My approach is, yeah, of course we disagree. That means that neither of us really have figured this out yet. We should have a conversation about this and grow together, encourage each other along the way. But what I find a lot of people doing is mixing in a little bit of nihilism and a lot of hedonism so that it ends up in a world of My truth is anything I want to do.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. And then when you do anything you want to do, you're going to end up in some trouble sometimes.

Oh, 100%. Yes, I, I was. So I volunteer with Youth for Christ at a middle school here in Oklahoma City. And on Tuesdays at lunch, We bring pizza and we do a Bible study for, you know, 20 minutes, 15-20 minutes. And I was in the hallways in between 7th and 8th grade. We were in between those lunches and I was waiting. And I saw this poster on the wall that one of the students had drawn. And it was some, it looked like some kind of Japanese figure. And it said, you know, Oogie, or whatever his name was, is love. And something just crystallized with me yesterday, and that the modern, at least what I see in America, the modern concept of love is radical acceptance. It's this idea, it's like the absence of conflict. It's, you know, you can do what you want, believe what you want, as long as it doesn't harm anybody else, it's okay. But the worst thing is to be in conflict with somebody, because that crosses that harm barrier, right? Like, if I tell you something that you don't want to hear, like you predicated by, like, some people aren't going to want to hear this. That that somehow is loving that I don't say it to you because you don't want to hear it. Right. So this idea that our modern interpretation of love is just radical acceptance. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, first of all, that's a great insight. I think you're right. That's one of the modern definitions of love. It's like it's almost like just aversion to conflict at all and let me do whatever I want and you can't criticize me because if you criticize me, you're not loving me. Not true. It's a lie.

100%.

It's a lie because sometimes we need help. We need someone to grab us when we're about to swerve off the road and say, hey, let's— let me help you keep the car between the lines, so to speak, a little bit. Let me encourage you on your path and on your journey. Um, so there are two prerequisites for living a great life, two prerequisites for understanding truth, and at least two, but these are my favorite two, Christian, and I think you'll agree with these: love and honesty.

And they absolutely go together.

And they go together. You can't really have one without the other.

No, you, you, you— to lie to someone is, is not love, right?

Correct. So now we're back to postmodernism. Right. Because the postmodernist allows lies to proliferate because they believe that two things that, you know, can't both be simultaneously true are true because they don't want to create conflict by disagreeing with someone else's beliefs. But almost guaranteed, some of those belief systems cause great harm. Even if they think they're not harming someone else, you might be harming yourself. And so I like to reach a little bit deeper when it comes to the subject of love because I think it's the most powerful thing in the universe. And I don't mind saying, you know, it says in John, God is love. So yes, our Creator created because of love. We are here because of love to learn to love. It's the motivation for everything that's out there. And that's also in the book, even for the atheist. I have an argument in the book. As atheist, you don't believe in God. Guess what? You're still here because of love. But that's true. What people in our modern, uh, our modern Western mindset, we don't have good words for love. I mean, for instance, I'll say I love that apple pie or that ice cream, and then I say, dear, I'm going to love you forever and always. And it's like, wait a minute, you ate the apple pie. What does that mean you're going to do with your girlfriend, your wife? I mean, we don't, we don't have good words for it. So I have to reach back into the Greek. And there are at least 7 words in Greek for love. Yes. And when you go over those words, you start realizing, wait a minute, they're different things. And if we could use these words, we might understand what real love is a little bit better. But do you mind if I list the 7 just so people get an idea? Um, philaosia is self-love, which is very important. We do need to love ourselves. Otherwise, how can we love our neighbor? Um, there's one called ludus, or ludus, I don't know exactly how they pronounce it, but that's flirtatious love. And I kind of throw it off the list. I include it just because it's one of the words, but I don't think that flirting is love. It's just more of a game, right? There's eros, which is sexual love, and of course that's the prominent expression of love in our modern media, and the one that I think can very easily lead people astray because Eros without other forms of love is one of those pathways to death, to the death culture. It can also be a very fulfilling, wonderful pathway for celebrating real love between, between people, love and commitment. So I'm not against it. I'm just saying that we have the wrong expressions. There is philia, like Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, and that is literally loving your brothers and your sisters, you know, friendship, love. And it's very important. I think that if Men especially in our culture would be so much better off if they could say "I love you" to each other and it mean what philia means. Everyone understood, "You're my brother.

I love you that way." My wife found it strange because I've recently been telling the men and the women, but the men, that are my friends in my life, that I love them. Yeah. And she, she was, she was like kind of surprised by it, but she's actually, you know, that, that should be more normal. Like, you, you should be— a man should be able to tell another man that I love you and it not be weird.

Well, it's because love has become so confused, right? That's what makes it weird. And I have to, I have to point out something, and we're almost through the list already, but If love is the most powerful force in the universe, and love, it requires accountability and honesty, that makes a lot of people very, very uncomfortable. So they have to twist the meaning of love. Love has to become something besides what love really is so that they can deal with it in their lives because it is too strong of a challenge for a lot of people. And so love in our Western society has become Well, a counterfeit. And so when you say, "I love you," to a brother, they have this counterfeit, confused image of what love is that Hollywood and others have been selling us for decades. And they're like, "Uh, that doesn't feel good. I don't know. I don't like to associate that with what we got going on here." Right? That's why it might be nice if we could say, "I feel ya, you." Right, that might be awkward.

That didn't work either.

Well, let's— I only have 3 more left here. There's pragma, which is the long-lasting love of devotion, and this is what a mature marriage relationship develops into over the decades. It's, it's the, it's the love that people have for each other when they're truly never going to let the other person down beyond their human, you know, frailties and mistakes and what have you. But pragma is that long-term devotion. Storge is familial love. That means, you know, the love that parents have for children and that sort of thing. And of course, that's a very, very powerful love. And then there is the pinnacle of all loves, the one that humans are called to emulate and to pursue, and we will never perfectly achieve it in this life, and that is agape. And agape is divine love. It's the perfect love that we're all supposed to be working toward. And as we, as we reach for the reachable goal. It benefits us and others incredibly by pursuing agape in our lives.

Thank you for sharing that list. I knew some, didn't know all of them, uh, so I've learned something. Um, let's cite— let's circle that, that back to your, your experience as an entrepreneur, because not the love part necessarily, but the purpose part. Because I don't know if you're like me, but I didn't start my business for some type of self-fulfillment, right? I did it to fill a vocational need, a material need, a financial need, right? Sure. Um, but over time, that journey of entrepreneurship, uh, forces you to— not everybody, but, but a lot of people reach some level of success and then they're left with this, this hole. Like they look around and like, is this it? Right, right. Because they've achieved what they wanted to achieve or thought they should achieve, but they still are empty, right? There's, there's not really a driving purpose behind it. So what did, what did that journey for you look like as an entrepreneur?

Well, I'll start by saying in my book, I call that climbing the right mountain versus the wrong one.

Yes.

If we climb the wrong mountain, we get to the top and say, well, what was that all about? Right. If you're climbing the right mountain, then you're pursuing things that benefit your life and the lives of others around you. Ongoing and ongoing and ongoing. And some entrepreneurs say this is— it's finding the right why.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. If, if, if your motivation is to pay the bills, well, that's noble, that's good, you know, pay your bills. Sure. If your motivation is to be rich because you think that riches will make your life perfect, you'll be happy if you're rich, um, then you're probably on the wrong mountain. Now, if you want to make a lot of money because you realize that money is a tool and a way that you can bless others, something that can be used to affect broad-reaching positive change in the world, then that's different. Then you're climbing a good mountain that can actually bring fulfillment to you and help to many, many other people. So it's a matter of understanding your why and making sure you're climbing the right mountains. Um, that's really what 99 Words is about. It's about sorting out what the right mountains are for your life. And in my own life This is, well, I could talk about this for far too long and it would probably get really personal, but—

I'm here for it.

Okay. Well, when I started in the business world, it was at a time when there was a strong emphasis on political correctness, not hurting anybody's feelings, accepting everything and everybody, and not speaking your truth. In the workplace because the workplace was about money and earning money and about doing business and not about speaking your truth or interacting with people on a meaningful level. And of course, someone like myself doesn't do very well in that setting. I got into all kinds of trouble because speaking my truth is important to me. I wrote a book about it, right? You know, so I realized that a career path under those constraints would never be fulfilling for me. And I was very thankful for the blessing of paying the bills, right? Being able to feed the family. It's important. Working hard at something is one of the building blocks of life for sure. But that's why I always had side projects going on. I was always pursuing another business. I was always working toward another goal, one that I thought would have a more positive outcome. So The Adventure Sports Podcast was one of those things. It was like, hey, people are not healthy, and if we can get them connecting with nature in the creation, they can move, they can begin to have a healthier lifestyle that, uh, they can pass on to their families. They can play together instead of watching TV or watching screens separately. You know, they can actually go out and do things together that everyone can get really jazzed about, well, that benefits families, that benefits individual health, and it could become multi-generational, and we can make a really big impact in the world by just encouraging people to know more about adventurous things and to live life's great adventures. So we started the podcast. I wrote the book for the same reason, right? Mm-hmm. To try to have a positive impact in the world, and it's not a Pollyanna thing. I just believe that what I said before is true. We all make a difference. Might as well make a positive impact. And so, yeah, it's been— it's actually been kind of a dichotomy in my life. It's like I do the work that has fed my family and housed us, and it's a great blessing that I've been able to do that work. But I've also always had to reach in other directions to try to find the work that matters more, the meaning.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, for me, I didn't— I started my business when I was 27, so I had no clue what I was doing and a lot of things. And I never saw the business, you know, for a decade as having any purpose. Right. And I kind of backed into it in the sense of like I had to— it started with Simon Sinek's why. When, when from a business standpoint, I started asking the question of myself and the team, like, okay, why are we doing this? What's the purpose behind this?

Good question. Right question.

Right, right. And that actually led on, on a very interesting journey of self-discovery of like why I had started the business. One of my colleagues and guests on the show, Dr. Pish Patel, we've had this discussion that Entrepreneurship is an amazing self-growth, self-understanding, self-healing, uh, vehicle. If, if you'll, if you'll stick to it, because it puts you in situations where you have to do self-discovery, you know. You, you have to figure out what, what really is, is motivating you, um, and You know, on the surface, when I came up with my why, it was to help other people, right? And I— and it still is. And it was a true passion, right? My, my family had a family business. We experienced bankruptcy when I was a teenager. Family dispersed all over the country. And I didn't really understand, but I knew that it didn't have to be that way. Like, there had to be an alternative way to deal with your finances that didn't end up in bankruptcy. And so, that was what drove me into the profession of accounting and helping small business owners with their money. But the interesting thing was after I figured that why out, because I didn't have that understanding really when I started. I mean, like, I might have said that, but I didn't really understand the origin story behind it. Like, I didn't understand that the emotions behind that and the desire to keep it from happening again for myself were my motivations. But as I dug deeper into it, what— and this is the thing that really just blew me away. And I'm going to tell you, I was probably— I was in my late 40s before I figured this out. I had started the business to fix myself— not fix myself, to control the things that I didn't want to have happen to me again.

Right. Okay.

Yeah. And I think a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs are in a similar situation. Like Dr. Patel, his motivation was that his 4th grade teacher said he needed to be held back because he couldn't read. Right. And that fueled him to basically say, I'll prove you wrong, right? Yeah. Um, and so like there are these layers to the, to the why, right? Like it's not just a purpose statement, there's also a motivation statement. Like what, what, what experience, uh, caused you to, to do this? You know, a lot of entrepreneurs come from an, uh, financial insecurity or, or, you know, being, being broke broken homes, whatever. And they're like, I'm not going to experience that. So I'm going to control those things. Sure. But what you find out is you can't control them, right? You think control is an illusion, as I so love to say to my family. The things you think you can control are very, very small, right? In the world, it's basically contained in here. And, and, and so as you say, well, I'm going to keep myself, I'm going to start this business to keep these things from happening. And then you realize you don't have any control. Then you've got to deal with the underlying thing, like, okay, so why are you doing this?

Right? The underlying thing, the deeper why. Yes. You know, some of my early motivation was that my parents fought about money all the time. Mm-hmm. And, you know, there was always a lot of, well, there's not enough. To make ends meet and we're having to, you know, rob Peter to pay Paul. And, you know, we pay one credit card by charging up another one. And, you know, all the things that just juggling debt and frustration. And it was such a, such a negative thing in my life as a, as a kid.

Mm-hmm.

I was like, I don't want that in my life anymore. So I want to make sure that whatever I do, I'm able to take care of my family. They don't have to worry about that. And yeah, sometimes I actually looked at that Christian and I was like, Is that really a good motivator? Running from something is not really advisable in my book. It's running towards something that has the most success. So, but sometimes, well, fear, negative outcomes can be a fantastic short-term motivator, but I don't think it leads to healthy living. You need to find that underlying why that's bigger than that, like you were just saying.

Right. Yeah. It's— I love your statement. You can't just run away from something. You have to run towards something.

Yes.

Right. It's like that Social Distortion song from the '80s. The line is, you can run all your life and go nowhere and not go anywhere.

Right. Yeah.

Like, yeah. And if you're just running away from the pain, then you're, you're just going to end up in more pain because you're not dealing with the thing and you're not replacing it with the opposite. And I— fear is the opposite of love, in my opinion. Like, and love drives out fear, right? Yep. So if, if, if your motivation is I'm afraid of the situation I'm in, I don't want to be in this situation again, and I'm running away from it, ultimately you're going to have to figure out what you're running towards.

Yeah, I really think that's the right distinction. And that is a lot of the motivation for my book. Again, I just saw so many people there. I— the word I use is bewildered. Mm-hmm. You know, they're running from things that are unpleasant that they have in their lives that they experienced or witnessed and but they don't know what to run to.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. And at the same time that they don't know what to run to, they have a media that's, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars a year industry, trillions of dollars a year industry that's trying to sell solutions to the bewilderment.

Oh, yeah.

You know, if you—

our whole society is this.

Absolutely. Do this, have this, look this way, behave like this, have these sorts of friends, drive this kind of car. If you could just do that, then you'd be okay. Yeah. You know, and it's bewildering. It really is, because it's all lies. Nothing's wrong with having nice things. That's a beautiful thing. But if you think that the nice thing is going to fix you, yeah, that's—

No, I read a fascinating book earlier this year called What Happy People Know by Dr. Baker, and he was a psychologist. He was one of the founders of the Canyon Ranch in Arizona. And he designed their mental health area thing. And it's a really great book. It really is agnostic. I mean, but what I found interesting was his statement. And I knew this to be true, but, you know, to hear it, read it the way it was written, it was just like, yeah, he said money cannot give you happiness. It just cannot. To your point, it solves some problems, right? It does. And I'm, I'm not saying that you shouldn't want money, but you can't want money to, to be the pinnacle of your motivation, that, that you, you will ultimately end up dissatisfied. And if I might quote our rabbi, you know, you can't serve two masters. You'll either love one and hate the other. You know, that's, that's the truth. And it, you know, it's, it's not that you can't pursue money. It's not that you shouldn't have money. And a lot of people struggle with that, like they don't feel like they're worth it, or they don't feel like they should be you know, comfortable or whatever. But you can't love God and money at the same time. You can't. I mean, you have to love God. If you love money, you're going to end up unhappy.

I think a lot of people try to use money as a scorecard or as a thermometer to measure their success. And it's— that's a— that's a misleading way to live life. And when you realize that money is a tool like so many other tools, it can do wonderful things, and that's what its purpose is, and that it's not a thermometer or a scorecard, but rather it's a, it's, it's a problem to solve, might be a way to look at it.

Yeah, you know, it's like, yes, you know, and, and I there's always going to be somebody that has more money than you, right? So if it's a scorecard, you're always in second place. It doesn't— I mean, you know, if you're lucky, you're in second place. You're, you know, I, I, I, I, I as an entrepreneur struggled with that for a long time because I, I compared myself to others and, and it was like, well, if they've reached this level of success, why, why haven't I? What, like there was something flawed in me or my business if I didn't achieve that success. That, that, that's, that's setting yourself up for disaster because you're never— it, it's a wheel you never get off of.

Well, and the funny thing about that game, and it is a game that people play, it's a big game, it's a very popular game. I think it was Dave Ramsey that I heard this one from, but he says, you know, if I see a guy going down the road in a, in a Lamborghini, I only know one thing about him. He's at least $250,000 more poor than he was before he got that car. Yes, that's all I know. He may have borrowed the money to get the car. It may not be his car. He might— he might have his heart in all the wrong places. He could be a billionaire. I have no idea. But it doesn't actually tell me anything except that he's at least $250,000 less wealthy than he was before.

Yeah. And like my neighbor, he's a neurosurgeon and he's an immigrant from, I think, Kenya. And his thing is, I mean, he literally had to build an extra garage. His 3-car garage was not big enough. And he has lifts in it. He's got like 8 cars. And these are all like McLarens and Lamborghinis and Porsches, right? And that's his thing, right? Like, that's— and to me, because I've never been a car guy, like, that's not something that I ever really— except when I was like 16 or 17. I'm sitting there and I'm just fascinated. Like, because I'll see him out, you know, he'll take them out and wash them and he'll drive a different one every day. And it's like, wow. Like, I can't imagine fixating on something like that the way he does. But, you know, taking the plank out of my own eye, what is it that I want more? Right? Like, maybe it might— right, it might not be cars, it could be something else, right? And it probably is somebody, something else. And I know for one, one of them is, is how I stack up against my peers. Like, you know, and, and it's, you know, I don't know if that's ingrained from school where, you know, they ranked you in class and, you know, everybody compared grades and, and all that. And so I, I'm like looking at other entrepreneurs and I'm like, well, golly, they've made a lot of money and a lot more money than I have. Something must be wrong.

I'd like to share an anecdote that I heard this weekend, which actually is a true story, and I think it illustrates what we're talking about a little bit. The guy sharing the story said that a man came bursting into their house and said, "Hey, my wife is on a cliff. She's going to fall. She's going to die. I need help." And so they grabbed ropes and took off up this trail. And it was, it was a longer trail, like a mile. She'd been on this, this cliff for a long time, and she had reached a place of pure panic where the only thing that she knew was hang on to the cliff. Well, this guy telling the story was a young man at the time, and the two older gentlemen that were with him lowered him down on ropes to this lady, and he got behind her and he, he put his arms around her so that she couldn't fall. And he goes, okay, you can turn loose now. We're going to go back up to the top. And she couldn't turn loose. Mm-hmm. She could not turn loose. And he had to pry her fingers off the rock physically so that he could save her life because she was clinging to something that could not save. Mm-hmm. And didn't have the trust to do the right thing, to take the chance to get off the cliff. And so the, the moral of the story, as he shared it, was what are we clinging to that isn't really going to get us there? Mm-hmm. Right. And we all have that thing or things in our lives. You know, they're misleading, often misguided. We don't always know that. It's not a criticism. It's like, you think you're doing something that's going to make a difference, but it might be that you're climbing the wrong mountain. You're clinging to the wrong thing. Maybe you need to let go of that.

Which is why, you know, loving peers are so important because, you know, they can see the blind spots. They can tell you, hey dude, you don't need to be holding on to that cliff anymore, right? Like, right, you know, doesn't mean we'll always listen to them, but But having them in our lives that they can speak into it, and we hear it. And we know that they're saying it from a place of love, at least gives us the chance to see it in ourselves.

Right? Sure.

But I think you're absolutely right. And I think when we're motivated by fear, we close all the doors that can save us. Or the door that can save us, right? Like, yeah, you, you, your anecdote was perfect. If you don't let go, you can't have this thing. You can't, you, you can't let— I can't save you.

Yes. Right. Yes. And I— a confession. One thing you said really resonated with me.

Let me get my priest hat on.

The confession is that as an entrepreneur, I always wanted to do it all myself. I don't think I was ever a micromanager, but Christian, I always thought, well, I can do it, therefore I should do it. Why should I pay someone else to be involved in this? And if I share this, then later on, and you know, all the profits get split and I may not, you know, and I was a fool for not realizing how important it is to have that group of friends, the accountability group, the idea group, the help group, the people that can say, You know, I know that you could do that, but there are more important things. Why, why don't I take that one? Or, you know, the one that can point out that I'm chasing after rabbits instead of the thing that matters. You know, that's been an issue as I look back at my life, at all my different entrepreneurial ventures. I would have done much better if I could have focused on the right friendships and the right team.

Yes, and I've said this very recently on my other podcast, is that you're a real entrepreneur when you shift from the mindset of what can I make money doing to what can I make money off others doing.

Sure. Yeah, well, otherwise you're limited by your own abilities.

100%.

You have a ceiling of your head you'll never get through. Um, that's, that's— yeah, but let me take it one more step, Christian. Let's say that someone gave you $10 million and you think, well, I want to do the most good I can with $10 million because that's what my focus is right now. So if you take that $10 million and you give it to people that are starving on the streets and, and they have a few meals and then the money is spent, well, you did some good and that's great. But if you take that $10 million and you start a company and you hire people, you equip them for success so that they have skills and they can participate in the economy in a way that benefits them, and, and then they gain the ability to feed themselves for a lifetime. The company can grow and become a $100 million company, and now you're helping more people, and you're not helping them just once, you're helping them for the rest of their lives. You're, you're training people, you're advancing them, you're helping them to be equipped for real life. Okay, which did the most good? Starting a company for profit or throwing the money toward feeding people that need food? Yeah, I mean, both are good things to do when you want to feed people, but ultimately sometimes people don't realize that being an entrepreneur It— people like to blame entrepreneurs for being evil capitalists or something, but being an entrepreneur can be the best way that you can have the most positive impact on the most number of people.

I absolutely— and, and I've seen that, you know, my focus was always on, uh, helping others, as in like clients, other business owners. But what I, I realized equally powerful is the impact that I can have on the lives of my team.

Hmm.

Yes. And the ways I can help them grow and take on more responsibilities and grow as people and as leaders. I mean, like, that's something that never crossed my mind, but it's, it's hugely impactful.

It is. When I started working in my early 20s, a lot of companies had mottos that were similar to this. It was hire and develop great people. Hire and develop. It's like, hit your wagon to us. You know, we are going to take you places. And over the years, I finally realized that they were into hiring great people. Of course, developing great people is a whole other thing. Because— and this is just a mathematical formula, and I don't want to sound too negative about it, but, you know, maybe a manager has 10 reports, and that manager reports to a director that has 10 reports, and that director reports to a VP that has 10 reports. And by the time you start getting to the upper levels of management, there might be 1,000 people trying to get your job. Um, you're right, that's just 3 layers up. Right. And so developing great people, it's like, well, we'll develop you as long as you can be more productive for us. Don't try to take my job away. Now that sounds, that sounds pretty negative, but that can—

that's reality.

Yeah, that can become a corporate culture. But you can also start a company where your goal is to equip people, to train them, and then say, you know what, You should move on. You should take this next level in my company, or you should go to another company where you can use these skills and benefit yourself and your family and others. Because what our company does is we hire and develop great people.

Yes. And part of that baked into the equation is that they are going to leave. And that's, that's to be expected, right?

That should be part of the business plan.

Yeah. Absolutely. Curt, I wish we had more time, but we don't. Uh, how do we find, uh, your book if we want to buy it, and your podcast?

Oh, um, Amazon, of course, the easiest way to find the book. 99 Words: Building a Better Life. It's a yellow book with some kind of rust-colored stuff and a lighthouse on it, and the COVID is full of words because the idea behind 99 Words is that we can use words to find areas where we can grow in life and make life much better. And so anyway, Amazon, 99 Words, and the podcast is the Adventure Sports Podcast. And the easiest way to find that is to go to whatever your favorite podcast app is because we're there. And the Adventure Sports Podcast really is about interviewing adventurous people from around the globe who do amazing adventures. Some people are like your next door neighbor who just loves a sport that's really benefited him or her. But a lot of people have done mind-blowing feats, like just interviewed a fellow who is the first man to go around the earth by human power only, which means he had to row across the oceans.

Lord have mercy.

So he biked, he hiked, and he rode all the way around the planet.

I hope he crossed in Alaska because that sounds like the only thing—

he, he ended up in Southeast Asia rowing away. So, wow. Yeah, he did the Atlantic, he did the Pacific, he did the Indian Ocean. So, the point is there are amazing stories there that I hope are inspirational for people. Not that you have to, you know, row across an ocean, but they're inspirational. Find out what people are actually capable of doing with the right team when they put their mind to it and they have the right reason, the right why. Great things can be accomplished. And so, we share a lot of those stories on the Adventure Sports Podcast.

Perfect. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, ta-ta for now.

Thanks.