Hiding from the School Bus: Calvin Bagley

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, Calvin Bagley of Nuvo Health. Welcome to the show, Calvin.

Thank you for having me, Christopher. I think it's really important what you're doing here, and I'm anxious to have this conversation.

Well, I'm eager to hear what you have to say. So because you kind of teased me up there in the green room and now you got to put up. So, um, you, you are a self-proclaimed serial entrepreneur, multiple companies under your belt. Um, what, what has that journey been like?

You know, it's a journey that started when I was very young. I always wanted to, always wanted to do my own thing. I remember, for those who are old enough, if you remember Boys' Life, the magazine.

Oh yeah.

And you'd get the Boys' Life every month.

I remember things like Airplane, where the nun is reading Boy's Life.

So I mean, that's a great, that's a great movie. If you haven't seen Airplane and you want to laugh at some real slapstick comedy, I mean, real slapstick comedy. Yeah. So Boy's Life, you know, because my family was really into Boy Scouts. And so we had the Boy's Life and in the back, it always had all these things that you could do to make money, like sell greeting cards and whatever else. I tried all of that when I was a kid.

Was that Olympia? Olympia greeting cards? Because I sold Olympia greeting cards. They were Christmas cards back when, and I don't know where I found them. And it may have been through Boys' Life. I don't know. Was it Christmas Cards?

You know, there was like a whole army of 8 to 13-year-old boys out there selling greeting cards at the time. I don't remember the name of it. But that does sound familiar.

Yeah. Yes. Yes. So that nascent experience drove you into Health?

Well, not exactly. You know, I mean, I recently wrote my life's story in a memoir called Hiding from the School Bus, and it was an Amazon bestseller. And so, you know, just from the title, you can infer a few things. I was raised out in the sticks in the middle of nowhere in Utah with a very, I would say, fundamentalist Mormon family, although my father was not a polygamist. He was a fundamentalist, and we were denied an education. And so I spent my childhood literally hiding from the school bus. My parents said, "Hide from the school bus because if it sees you—" We lived out on this country farm, you know. "If they see you, they'll realize there are kids here that aren't going to school, and then CPS will be called or whatever." And so we had no education. And so my journey goes through all of this, and it's quite a journey. It's quite a story to get from there to where I am.

Okay, we're gonna unravel this here for a second. So you weren't homeschooled, you were just sans education. Sans education, I call it no schooled. Okay, interesting. So did you want to go to school?

Yes, I did. I wanted to go to school from a very young age, but by the time that I could maybe demand it of my parents, I had realized that I was lacking so much that I would— I would just didn't even know where I would start and would make a fool of myself showing up at school. I didn't learn to read till I was 7 years old after inadvertently memorizing the alphabet backwards.

So how did you catch up your education? Because clearly you appear to be educated.

Yes, well, I do. I have a bachelor's in business administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or UNLV. But I didn't achieve that until I was in my 30s. Go Rebs! Runnin' Rebs, that's right. We miss our Tark the Shark.

I went to one game. It was back when it was like the late '80s, early '90s. And it was OU-UNLV. And I'd never been to a venue like UNLV's. And my family lived in Las Vegas at that time. It was during college. But Man, they don't make college basketball like they did back then at all.

Oh, it was something else. And the glory days. So I agree with you there. But to get into UNLV was a long journey. Because I was raised Mormon, and I still practice my religion, although not in the fundamentalist way that my parents did, I served a mission for the church and went to Brazil and was called to, you know, you don't know where you're going. They send you a paper and says where you're going. And so at 19 years old, I learned Portuguese, and that was my first actual education. I went to the training center in Provo, Utah, and we studied Portuguese every day, and through Portuguese, I learned English. I learned what a noun was and a verb was and how the sentence structure worked, and when I returned from Brazil at 21, I decided that I wanted to get an education. Didn't know where to start, but I started with getting my GED, and I got my GED the month before I turned 22. And then I took the ACT exam thinking, hey, I succeeded at GED, I'll take the college, you know, college entrance exam and just bombed that. But was fortunate to find a school counselor, admissions counselor at the UNLV because my brother was living in Las Vegas. I moved down here, which I still live in Las Vegas. And this college admissions counselor said, I'll give you 2 semesters as a non-admitted student auditing classes, and if you get passing grades, we will admit you. And that is how I worked my way into college eventually. Was college a challenge? Uh, you know, I was successful at it. I— my first 2 semesters I had a 4.0, but what was difficult was the structure of it. I ended up quitting and coming back years later because I had never sat in a classroom, I'd never sat through a lecture, I'd never taken a test, and all these things were difficult. The structure of showing up at school every day, was hard for me, and that was harder than the learning. I was, I was actually a very good learner, even though I had a lot to catch up on, and it took a lot of work to catch up. I was, I was intelligent and could learn, but I had a hard time with the structure.

Yeah, so did I. Uh, it— I, I don't sit well, and I, I don't think even when I was in school, uh, the way they teach school is, is very good for the male brain, especially the young male brain. But if you're neurodivergent I am. It was awful. I love to learn, but I absolutely detested school. I hated sitting and listening to somebody. Like, that just made me nuts.

Exactly. And I love to learn too. And so this is the seed, I think, of entrepreneurship here is that entrepreneurs, true entrepreneurs, not people who had, you know, from the E-Myth, the book, The E-Myth, there's the phrase that some people have an entrepreneurial seizure and they're technicians, maybe, And when I say technician, you could be a doctor, but you're doing a technical thing. So you're a technician and then you say, oh, I could do this on my own and you go into business accidentally. And so there's that type of entrepreneur, which isn't what I consider to be someone who was like truly born with entrepreneurial spirit, you know, and is an entrepreneur. True entrepreneurs, they are different from others. And we are, we do love to, I have never met a true entrepreneur that doesn't love to learn. And loves to learn things but struggles in the classroom. So beyond just male brain, I think entrepreneur brain is another level where it's just— we're not made to fit into a mold, and so we break out of it, and that's eventually what I did.

Yeah, because most education is around convergent thinking, you know, especially— I mean, it's evolved even worse than when we were in school, and now, you know, it's reduced to multiple choice. And it's like we don't see the world that way. Like, but there's another option that's not listed. Why can't we do that? Right. Okay.

So one of my, one of my friends, Dave— sorry to interrupt you. One of my friends, Dave Brackmann, he wrote the book Driven, and he has a test. If you go to, you know, to look up Dave Brackmann and the book Driven, that to kind of determine through answering questions, are you an entrepreneur? And it's true, you know, for me, I see the world 360 degrees. And sometimes I'm not bragging about that because it can be really difficult. It can be debilitating. I'm confused. I'm debilitated by my own mind because everything's happening all at once— the past, the future, the present, everything. And it was really cool to take his test and read the book and say, oh man, there are other people like me who see the world differently, not multiple choice like you said, and are trying to figure out how to put different things together and can connect things that other people maybe can't connect.

Yeah. And what is a gift is also a curse. I mean, it is. I think I had this— I don't say it wasn't— it didn't rise to the level of an epiphany, but it was a pivoting point last year where I decided that what I was doing was not working the way I wanted. And I'd made some decisions about some changes in the business that we were going to make. And I finally went back and put a number to it, uh, just yesterday. And I, I got done, and it was over the last 6 years, because I was fixated on this vision of what I thought I wanted, thought was possible, and was bent on making happen. I had pissed off $1 million. Like, I have nothing to show for it. Nothing. And, you know, old me would have beat myself up about that. Like, how are you so stupid? You know, what were you thinking? And, you know, I'm not much on rumination anymore. It's, it's, it's more around, okay, what, what, what led you to those decisions? What would you do differently in the current, in the now, and potentially the future? Because I knew it intuitively, but I— putting a number to it just made it more real. But that, that to me, that what I perceived was the problem was that I got fixated on the thing. And, you know, I've known entrepreneurs that have got fixated on the thing and, you know, lost everything. And that's not necessarily— I'm not saying that's good or bad, but like, that's the double-edged sword. Is as the visionary, you can see what's possible, um, and ignore reality. And it's, it's, it's just a balance there.

Yeah. And if you're not willing to make a million-dollar mistake and lose everything, then you're not ready to do full entrepreneurship. At the same time, you— I know what you're talking about with the stubborn entrepreneur that sees something that others don't but is wrong. And so you, you have to have checks and balances, you know, in your life. And, you know, we were talking about the Chris Project and how important it is, what you're teaching here about entrepreneurship. And Chris, who you knew, made a mistake that cost him everything and eventually his own life. And it's tragic. And as you share that story with me, I think of an experience that I had where I was at Strategic Coach and I was doing my quarterly, you know, meetings there and doing my quarterly planning. And I've always been a really big fan of Dan Sullivan, and I love his books that he wrote with Ben Hardy and all of his other books as well. And just, it's just, I love his thinking and I've admired him for a very long time and have been a strategic coach for 4 years at this point. And I was sitting there and I was, and I was thinking about doing like a SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and doing it about my business and what am I concerned about and what are the threats to my business. And I had something that I would call an epiphany, which was the greatest threat to my business threat was me. I was the greatest threat to my business. If I got too tired, if I got too burnt out, like, like Chris, then I would make mistakes that would cost everything. It would cost the business, all the people who work here, all the people who rely on my companies to make a living in addition to my own. And just because I have that, that I always want to be doing something new and different, and I'm running around and doing all these things, wearing my people out. And I am the biggest threat to my business. And that was a really, really big realization. And if I get— if I get bored, I will destroy this beautiful thing that I've built.

Yeah. No, I mean, and that's— I will tell you, part of the realization that I had over the last 12 months was I came to the conclusion— and I'm saying, it wasn't that I just knew it intellectually, I felt it in my heart— that I was no longer emotionally tied to the business in the sense that success or the failure of the business was not my identity. And That allowed me to shift my thinking to objectively as an investor of like, OK, if you're putting money into this as an investment, what's your expectation? And it boiled down to, well, I'd been wanting it to be a star company as defined by Richard Koch. Koch. It's not the Koch brothers, it's Koch. I think he's English. Anyway, which he defines— he's an investor. That's all he does. And he looks for companies that are growing at least 10% per year and have 10% market share in whatever that market is that they've defined. And so that was what I'd been trying to do for the last few years. And I came to the realization, like, well, maybe it can't be. And it's just a cash cow, which is totally fine, you know. But to your point, the cash cow is boring, right? Like, it doesn't challenge you intellectually.

Yeah, there are no new problems to solve. Yeah. You say we could butcher this cow and imagine what we could do.

Yeah. And that's what I also found over the last few years is that In addition to the money that I wasted, I wasted a lot of time and energy of my team because I was trying to fix things that weren't broken. It's like, just leave it alone. But as an entrepreneur, that's like, I don't want— but so having that emotional distance from the business and being able to objectively look at it and then say, OK, well, if it isn't going to be a star company and it's just going to be a cash cow, cow, well, then I'm going to have to go find something else to do to scratch that itch. And that's fine, too. Yeah, I agree with that.

And that's, that's almost exactly what my realization was, is that if, if, if I always wanted to be creating, then it was okay to have creative outlets that weren't my business because constant, constant iteration and creation in a cash cow business or whatever you want to call it, can destroy it. And not to say that you can't— there aren't times to transform your business. And there are some incredible stories and you read about them every, every business book. If I open another business book and read about Apple, I'm just going to burn it. Like, because that's not every scenario. And you have to be, you have to be willing to accept your scenario like you're talking about. And I've done the same thing. I, just trying to create technology for my business at one point. I blew well over $1 million one year trying to create all this technology and everything. And then I realized there were other people creating the technology I needed that I could have— and I looked at the price tag and said, wow, that's really expensive. I'm going to spend, you know, $12,000, $15,000 a month for this software. Instead, I blew $1 million and ended up with nothing.

Right, right, right. Yes, yes. Well, good, then you can commiserate with me. But I'm not commiserating. I'm not ruminating. I'm learning a lesson. And I find that there are themes where there are some lessons that I have to relearn. And then to your point, I think it really is about the structure, you know, what structure you give yourself. And for me, that required— for me, for me to, to be able to let go of the business and go find something else required me to emotionally detach from it. And that's— that was a real challenge for me.

I understand what you're saying, and I can, and I can relate to that. And what I've seen with with some of my friends who are entrepreneurs as well, is that they don't let go until they're burnt out. And so when they let go, they don't just let go, they drop it. And so, you know, you've, you've needed someone to, maybe you needed a personal assistant or you needed a sales manager or you needed whatever it was, and you've needed them for a long time and you've been doing everything yourself., and then you get to a point where you say, I just have to have this person. You bring them in and you say, here it is, take over. Well, if you're lucky and you happen to get someone incredible, an incredible implementer or whatever, then maybe it'll work out. But 9 times out of 10, you hand it off too fast and you drop it. And so one of the things that I, that I feel very strongly that I'm trying to be better at is handing things off and training and teaching and doing things before I'm burnt out so that I don't drop them because I know myself and I know my type. And it's very easy to get to the point where you just can't do it anymore and give it to someone and just disappear. And that is a recipe for disaster most times. Yeah.

And I, I still am uncomfortable admitting this, that this has been a long time ago. I actually said out loud to other people, yeah, I can do everything in the business better than anybody else here. And that level of ego and hubris, even though it might have been technically true at the time, is like, well, then you don't have the right people. Like, you should have the best. People that do it better than you. But, but that idea that we have to control the variables, that we, you know, again, have to be important. I think the theme I've seen through the years that the common element is the ego, like, and, and, and I think that ego and being comfortable with my own identity was what allowed me to emotionally detach. Right. So it's all ego. It's been— that's, that's been what has caused me 95% of my problems in entrepreneurship. Oh, yeah.

If you, if you can say that I do everything here better than everyone else, you don't have a company. You have a really, really difficult job that you've created for yourself. And I've been there for— I was there for many, many, many years, and it took a long time to, to find the right people. And I've made many mistakes in hiring, and some were not my fault, that to find the right people to be able to say that there are many people here who do things better than me. And a few years ago, I met Dan Martell, and then I read his book Buy Back Your Time. And he says something that I have, that I have really tried to live over the last, you know, 4 or 5 years, which is, yeah, you do things really, really well, but 80% done by someone else is 100% freaking awesome. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I can accept 80%. I know that in some things I could do, I could do a higher level and maybe I could do 100% on this thing and someone else would do 80%. But 80% done by someone else is 100% freaking awesome. And that has helped me to realize that I can't— you can't always expect that everyone is going to do it better than you would do it. But if you— but the cumulative effect of many people doing it at a level that's 80% as good as what you could do it is exponential.

Yes. And the Like I said, the statement I made may have been true. And maybe I couldn't find somebody to do it, quote, "as well as I could." But a lot of times what I find in those situations is that "as good as I would do it" is a myth that we've created, that your way is the best way, or your way is superior to others. Because oftentimes it's not. That's just a figment of our imagination, especially when it comes to— Good point. Like, like actually producing something, a good or a service. It's like, you know, maybe you are quote unquote better, but does it really make any difference to the customer? Do they even perceive any difference in value? Like, you could be overproducing. Like, why are you doing it that way, right? Because they don't need it, they don't want it, they're not paying for it.

Yeah, yeah, that's really good point. And what it makes— and you're right about ego— what it makes me think is you might be able to do it really, really well. Maybe you could do it better than the other person. But how often do you finish stuff? If you're a real entrepreneur, if you've got somebody that gets it over the finish line and you're like, I could have done better, could have, But the reality is, you get everything started, but you don't actually finish anything, then you don't do it better, you don't actually do it. You've created this myth in your mind.

Yes, yes, 100%. You mentioned that book, Buy Back Your Time. That's the second time I've heard that in the last 2 weeks. So I guess I've got to go read it. The other person that recommended it said that he thought that the author was kind of an asshole, but he really liked what he wrote. I'm curious now.

I think Dan Martell has an image that he maintains, kind of that tough, you know, a little bit Alex Hormozi, a little bit Grant Cardone. But I've met Dan Martell and I actually think he's a fantastic person, but he has an image that he maintains. There's a shtick. The book is good. Yeah, yeah. The book is good. And he's not, I'm not, you know, I say Grant Cardone softly because I'm not a Grant Cardone fan. And so, you know, I think Dan Martell— I say a little Grant Cardone, but I don't mean that to be an insult to Dan because I think Dan's actually a really good guy. But I don't necessarily feel the same way about Grant Cardone. But it is a good book, and it teaches something that is taught in so many other places, but in ways that are memorable, like the phrase that I shared with you.

Yeah, I've also found that to be true as an entrepreneur, that you can hear the same thing differently or at a different point in your life where you're willing to accept it. But the truth was always there and you knew it. You just didn't act on it. Um, kind of like the Chinese proverb of this: the teacher will appear when the student is ready, you know. And, and there, there's a lot of truth that as an entrepreneur that— and again, that goes back to ego— like, are you, are you going to get out of your own way and listen to what people are telling you? Um, or are you going to continue to be the limitation, as you said? Are you going to be the problem?

Yeah, it's a really important point because the ego— I think about, you know, from spiritual teachings, the ego is very negative. It's battling with everyone else and it's trying to prove itself and be the most important person in the room and If you listening to this, you hear any of that and you realize, wait a minute, there's a little bit of that ego coming out in me, it's very dangerous. And so what I have come to, you know, with my book Hiding from the School Bus, it's a culmination of many years of me becoming more and more and more vulnerable to actually open up and share my vulnerabilities, to share my weaknesses, to share the things that I feared. You know, if you hide from something, you hide from it because you fear it. Or if you hide something from the world, you hide it because you fear how people will react to it. And that was me. And I started out hiding and not having an education, but then spent so much of my life trying to overcompensate and try to prove that I was intelligent or that I was normal, that I was, that I fit. And with, you know, massive imposter syndrome and all of these things, and to finally reach a point where I say, where I began to be open and vulnerable and realize that Through vulnerability, instead of through ego, through vulnerability, you begin to have real connection with people and you begin to have real connection, not just in business or personal, but, but just not, I mean, not just in, in business, but in personal as well. And not just in personal, but also in business. And these connections go deeper and deeper and people see you differently and you are letting the ego go. And so I think you do that through being vulnerable and opening yourself.

Yes. One of my favorite interviews that I've done is Michael Brody-Waite, author of Great Leaders Live Like Drug Addicts. And we had our company retreat last week and we went through one of his exercises with the team. And the premise of his book is that the things he learned in recovery were the things that allowed him to be successful as a leader. And I think that is often true that our failures if we allow them, can define our future success, if we will allow them to. But the other thing that I realized in teaching this to my team and having reflective conversations with them about it is— so his three pillars are radical authenticity. So not wearing a mask, not not trying to pretend that you're not afraid. Knowing what you can control and can't control. And then releasing the outcomes and doing the hard work. You know, the basic stuff you learn in recovery. But the reality is, he only got to the point where he learned those things when his life was on the line. We all struggle with those things. We all struggle with— you said imposter syndrome, wearing a mask, hiding our fears, not being open and honest with people, not trying to control the things that we can't control and ignoring the things that we can control, not doing that hard work. But most of us don't rise to the level of it's going to kill us or not. But he's to the point where, like, if he doesn't do those things, he's, he's going to die. So, you know, it turns that into a different perspective of that thing that would, you know, yeah, I mean, it just, he tells the story of when he got out of, he got to the halfway house, the host of the house said, you got 5 business days to get a job. And first question was, well, what's a business day? I don't even know what that is. And I haven't had a job in 5 years. And he goes to Sam Goody, the old retail music store, and applies for a job. And when he's going through the interview, and they're asking about this gap in the resume, he said, well, I was in treatment. And he got the job. But His point in that was, that was his test. And his test that he had, you know, the rest of his life is, are you going to be honest about who you are? Are you going to be vulnerable and share your fear? Like, your fear is you're going to hear this and you're not going to hire me. But I have to be radically transparent and be honest. And so what I think happens is exactly what you said, is that when you are radically vulnerable, people understand that they can trust you because you've shown them your belly. You said, look, I'm XYZ, I don't have the answer, I am broke. Whatever it is that you're afraid of sharing, you know, yeah, there are people that would take advantage of it. Sure. But there's also a lot of people that are going to connect with you because you're real and you're, and you're, you're being honest. And that, that's something that, you know, you, you're never going to get trying to pretend to be somebody else.

Yeah, that's really, really good. I love that. For me, you know, I talk about imposter syndrome. I just didn't feel like I was the more that I achieved, it didn't feel like I had reached a destination. And then, you know, it's like the book The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy. You know, the horizon will keep moving and you have to look back and say, I've come a long way. But I had the opportunity at one point to meet Gino Wickman, who wrote the book Traction and started the EOS system. And the Entrepreneur Operating System. And I was sitting in a room with him and I thought, this is going to be amazing because I respect this man so much. And I look up to him in business and I can't wait for him to teach me how to do things in business. And he said, um, can I just be honest with you? I want to talk about something that's not business. I want to tell you about how I was at this conference and there was a speaker and they had us go through this meditation. And he's like, "Let me do it with you." And he's like, "Oh, close your eyes." And we went through this meditation where we open and look inside of our heart, and he said, "Open your heart, and what do you see inside your heart?" And he described exactly what happened in the room that I was in, where people were seeing light and happiness and butterflies and rainbows and whatever else people see inside their hearts. But he described that he just felt like there was something dark inside, something black, and he didn't understand how he didn't love himself. And we're talking about this guy I'm sharing his personal story, which he has shared, so I feel it's okay to do it. But this guy who's accomplished so much in business, I mean, the largest— the Entrepreneurial Operating System is used in more small businesses than any other operating system, any other way to manage your business. And he's an amazing mind and successful in business. And then he went on this journey, which he has since— he actually sold EOS as part of this journey that he went on to to try and heal inside and understand what was broken inside of him. And as I sat there listening to this, I felt the same thing. And I didn't, you know, I didn't wanna say to everyone around me, I'm feeling the same thing, but why don't I feel love for myself? Or why am I feeling this blackness? And that took me on my journey to discover why I was broken inside and why I had these feelings of inferiority, which, you know, follows my story all the way back to hiding. And part of, for me, part of overcoming was to open up and to stop hiding and to let the light into those dark places, to shine a light in that corner of myself and to say, wait a minute, I can love myself. I can be happy with what I've accomplished in life, no matter how big or small it is. And appreciate who I am and understand who I am, which is sometimes why we fear our own self, is we don't understand ourselves. But that was part of my journey to, to let that light in.

I love that. I also am a huge fan of Gina Wickman. My brother is an EOS implementer and we use EOS and I had not heard that that story about him, but it totally tracks because I think on some level, it depends on their history, but a lot of entrepreneurs, if not all of them, at some level are trying to fix themselves vis-à-vis the business, even though they may not understand that. And I think what you said about looking in your heart, you know, for me last year where my, my value was so still tied to was I successful in the business or not, doing that hard work of looking inside It was still that I felt like I was somehow insufficient, or incomplete, or not as good as, right? And in my faith, which I think is very similar to yours, Understanding that you are fully known and fully loved by your Creator is life-changing. Like, I know that I am a child of God and that I have a good Father. And do I understand that situationally from time to time? No. Like, why am I in this situation? Why am I suffering this way? It doesn't seem fair, blah, blah, blah. But I can tell you, looking backwards, every difficult situation that I was in, whether I created the situation or not, there was great good that came from it. Like, there's a certain amount of refining that has to be done. The dross has to be separated from the gold. And that requires heat. And most people don't want the heat. No, they don't want to do the hard work.

Yeah. Right. And even though I want the refinement, I don't necessarily want the heat either. Right. Because we know it, we know it's painful. Right. But we want the refinement and we get it through the heat. Like what you're sharing about the business, making mistakes. That's part of the refinement if we learn from it. Right.

Well, yeah, but I mean, who— I mean, do you have children? I do. Yeah. So, so who— when we're explaining it to our children, it makes perfect sense. Like, no, you have to do this hard thing if you want this outcome, right? We have no problem for others explaining it intellectually. Like, yeah, I mean that. And but, but when we have to submit to it, let go of the outcome, the thing that we can't control. You know, that's, that's a harder thing.

That's— yeah, it's a harder thing. I love this because it, it coincides so closely with the core values of my company, Nouveau Health. Nouveau Health is a, is a, um, it's a parent company of multiple financial services companies in insurance. And what we mostly do is serve seniors who have Medicare and need to get Medicare insurance. And we've helped at this point, somewhere around 70,000 or 75,000 people with their Medicare and health insurance across the country through different brands like the Medicare Store, myplanfit.com, which is— these are agencies that help people with their Medicare and some other things. So, um, man, I just lost my train of thought.

What were we talking about? You were talking about the core values and how it lined up.

Oh, the core values. Thank you. You're welcome. So I was listening. So you were amazing. Thank you, Christopher. Christopher. Christian.

I answer to anything as long as you're calling me for dinner.

Yeah, I'm Calvin, but I got called Christopher once, so I know how that feels.

I don't know, how do you get Christopher out of Calvin? Sorry, I don't know.

Yeah, it's okay. You can edit all this out if you want. So the core values at Nuvo Health, the first core value, what we did is since most of the people who work here are insurance agents and there are several hundred of them, we took the word agent and we turned it into things that matter. And we did this together as a team. It was a big exercise. I live in Las Vegas and Las Vegas, Tony Hsieh, who founded Zappos and who has since passed away tragically, there was so much in business that I admired about Tony Hsieh and the way that— and so I read his book Delivering Happiness, and we were all about this. We were going to create the core values the way that he did at Zappos. And so we involved the whole team and we came up with all these things. And then this moment of just like, of just connection with God or with intelligence or something more just came all at once and rushed in. And sort of hit me with this word, with agents. And we took everything that we had created as a team and we turned it into Agents of Change. And each letter has a meaning. And we love this and live by this at my companies. A is absolutely positively gritty. And that's the foundation of everything, is this grit. And, you know, for me, it's been a part of my life, is to be gritty enough to start to start from almost nothing and no education to achieve education and other things in my life. And I just realized that grit was such an important part of this. But we made grit the very first core value in our company. And it's not just any grit though, because grit, gritty, you hear that, you're like, I got to push through no matter what. But that can be abrasive. It can be abrasive. And this is absolutely Positively gritty. It's not abrasive grit. It's like we stick through and we get it done. Then everything else has meanings. E, enjoying work. A, absolutely positively gritty. G, good people doing good things. E, enjoying work and life. N, noticeably professional. T, team and family. And then they have subcategories which each of these have meaning, but grit is the foundation for everything we do, but positive grit.

Yeah, sometimes things do need to be abrased. Yes, as we said. So, you wrote a book. Where do people find that besides Amazon? Do you have a website that you sell it directly or?

It can be found on hidingfromtheschoolbus.com, which gives you links to all the places where it can be purchased, which includes Barnes Noble, Amazon, you know, Walmart everywhere, or Audible if you like listening to the Audible version. Did you record it? I did not. I tried. I started, I should say, and I realized that that's a real talent. It's a voice actor, so I'm very proud of the job that our voice actor did on the reading of it through audible.com. It was an Amazon bestseller this past year and has received several awards. I'll tell you that it's a very creative piece. It's not a linear storytelling of someone's life because that's not how I see the world. Like I said, the world is all around, 360 degrees, and so it bounces around. For some who are more linear thinkers, they say, "Oh wow, this was hard to follow." For others, they say, "This was an incredible journey and I was on the edge of my seat the whole time." So it's not for everybody, but it has received very good reviews. And was an Amazon bestseller this past year.

Well, I look forward to reading it. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, remember, you are not alone.