Open Handed Wealth: Nick Garofalo

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 is Nick Garofalo. I said it correctly before. Garofalo with Open Handed Wealth. Nick, welcome to the show.

I am honored to be here, Christian. Thanks for having me.

We're not going to edit that mistake out, by the way.

We even practiced ahead of time.

Yeah, I know. This is raw.

So, you know, if all of us were blessed with a last name like Brim, we wouldn't have this, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. But some of us have a greater weight to bear.

I guess you could mispronounce Brim. I mean, but it'd be hard. Brime? Maybe. English. I thank God that I did not have to learn English as a second language, because it makes no sense. Amen. It makes no sense. So, Nick, tell us about— I love the name Open Handed, Open Hand Wealth. What— how'd you come up with a name like that?

So, uh, naming a company is kind of hard, and I'm the type to get hung up in details that really don't matter. So I spent way too long trying to pick a name, going back and forth, and, uh, and it was actually came from a song my wife, uh, found one night. But, you know, I think it really embodies, uh, the— how should I say this— The only way to have a healthy relationship with money. Hmm.

I love that. Okay. So you help anybody with financial planning or is your, is your business geared towards business owners?

So yes and no. I will help anyone that I think I can help that where I can deliver value far in excess of what I'm charging. That's kind of my prereq. Now I have a couple non-business owner clients, but not many. Most of my, most of my clients do own a business and that's mainly because there's so much, so many more fun things you can do when you own your own business. You have so much more control over your, your income, over your expenses and taxes and all that kind of stuff that you just don't have if you're what I'll call more like a traditional financial planning wage earner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And nothing wrong with it. I mean, there's certainly lots of fun you can do there and, and great, but just with my, especially my experience too. So I grew up the son of an entrepreneur. My dad started two businesses and I worked for him. At his second business with my mom, my brother, my sister, my sister-in-law. So it was a family operation. And so I have a lot of fondness and nostalgia, but also just a love and a passion for small businesses and helping them to thrive and grow. And I see so many people hit the same point that my dad hit, which is like a lot of entrepreneurs can get to the million-dollar mark, the million-dollar sales mark. It may come at costs, right? Great personal costs. But a lot of folks can grind to that point. And then to get from 1 to 2 is so different. It takes a very different skill level, different personality type. And then to get from 2 to 5 is like a, that's a whole other kind of person. Sometimes it's not common that you find one person that can start a company, get it all the way through. But even if you do, that person's still gonna have financial headaches, questions, stresses, pain points, because you start to get out of the business of doing the thing that you got into business to do. Say cutting grass, making wedding cakes, taking pictures, do whatever, and you're getting into the business of business. Yes. You know, accounting and books, which nobody, nobody has any experience with. No. And so I loved getting to sit in the— I was basically CFO for my dad's company, but then also we were acquired and I was put over like 3 different companies. It was a super fun, like strategic, dynamic kind of role. And I thought, man, I bet I could help a lot of people doing this because the problems are very similar.

So did, did your, did your dad have financial difficulties at that level, or, or was it— I mean, like, what was the— you— what was the, uh, impetus that, yeah, I could do this, I, I could solve this problem, I could do this better? Like, what—

well, maybe I should tell you, like, what it was that I thought I could help solve.

Okay.

Um, there's just a general sense of, I don't know what I don't know here. I find, I find clients usually fall into one of two buckets when it comes specifically to like reading and interpreting financial statements. There are those that have no idea what they mean, but they get the report from their accountant and they're like, I don't know, I guess that number right there, net income, is positive. It's black. That's a good thing, right?

Right.

And not to say, not to dumb it down that much, I mean, I think generally when you look at your financial, you can kind of piece together what's going on. Um, but then there are the other people that say, well, no, I understand it and I know how to read it and it makes sense, but I don't really know what to do with it. I don't know what strategically I can kind of— how do I use this as a building block in my business strategy or my planning goals? How do I actually take this and go do something with it? How am I trending or forecasting or like, yeah, interpreting the data beyond just the face value?

So that was where your, your, your father was, was like he, he understood the, the mechanics of the business and that he was making money, but right, very limited understanding of what to do with that information beyond.

Yeah, my, my dad was like the quintessential bank balance business owner. It's like there's money in the bank, great, good. There's no money in the bank, bad, you know, and like he would, he would self-deprecate all the time and talk about like, he's not a numbers guy. He doesn't know, you know, he's, he's not like one of those accountant kind of people. And like that aside, because I think there are a lot of people who are very financially literate. Uh, there's been a huge focus on financial literacy for the last 10 years. And I think there's still so much more work to be done, but a lot of people now, I mean, good gracious. Like, I mean, you can just YouTube and learn just about anything these days. Right. So like there's a lot better literacy.

I'm working on brain surgery right now. So on YouTube, I'm looking for my first patient.

Your first patient. Yes. Okay. That does highlight the importance of certainly having and hiring a skilled professional. Yes. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, with my dad, I saw, um, they're just, you know, again, like that big balance accounting got him he got through the grind of the first few years and got $2 million in revenue. But then to get to the next level of actually establishing a business with like a forward-looking projection and looking for like, you know, what's, what's going well, what's not within the business, operational inefficiencies, things like that, rising and falling stars in your client base, stuff like that was, was a lot trickier and required a bit of a deeper look.

And so, so I, I asked that question because like my, my story, uh, we also had a family business. We were in the transportation business in, uh, the oil, uh, and gas space, um, back in the '70s and '80s in, in Oklahoma. And, uh, it was, it was one of those deals where nobody in my family had any financial acumen, and they had really bad values around money, um, and the deadly combination. Yeah. And, and ended up going bankrupt whenever the, uh oil, oil, oil, oil, as they say, crashed in mid-'80s. And so that impact on me was my origin story of why I do what I do, because I didn't want other families to experience what my family did. And the reality was it wasn't the loss of the things that impacted me. It was because when the fam— when everybody went bankrupt, they scattered. We all lived in a small town. We were, you know, living life together. Um, my cousins were just like my brothers. I mean, like, it was, it was this intimate relationship, and then it was gone. And, uh, that was my motivation. Um, so it's interesting that there— it doesn't sound like there was a, a similar bad story in yours, but you still saw the need. Yeah.

Yeah, I definitely saw the need. I saw places where, man, if there had just been somebody with some financial strategy, even just, you know, honestly, Christian Brim, too, it's just like a second set of eyes to say like, no, you're doing great. You're right on track. This is good. Yeah. If you have no one telling you that, then you have no permission to stop worrying about it.

True.

Yes. And that sucks the energy and the wind out of the rest of your business, right? Because if you're so focused— again, like I was saying, you, you know, if your business of oil and gas transportation has grown to the point that now you're— you have to become better at the business of business, uh, that's not what got you into business in the first place, right? You're not an accountant, you're not an HR person, you're not a small business operator. That's not what you do to make money, you're really good at, you know, oil and gas transportation. Like I said, making wedding cakes or taking pictures, right? You know, selling goods and services. That's, that's your thing. So one of my clients told me, he was like, I was finally able to like take off the pack from my shoulders of financial and, you know, account tax finance related stuff. Put that on somebody else, on me, someone who is more used to carrying that burden. And, uh, and get back up to what made me successful in the first place. And I was like, that is awesome. Can I use that? So he's now a testimonial on my website. But yeah, I mean, it's just like the problem, the need is there and I want to help free people up to get back to what made them successful.

Yeah, because, because what you said, and this is, this is true. I've experienced it. I've seen it in my colleagues. Uh, what, what got you from point A to point B will not get you to point C. As an entrepreneur. Uh, my friend Drew Goodmanson calls those things entrepreneurial inflection points. And, and it's, you know, businesses grow until they plateau, and the, the plateau usually is the limitation of the owner. It's not market conditions, it's not customers, it's not employees, it's the, the, the owner has reached their limit of being able to manage, grow the business. And that certainly was the case with me. And, you know, when we hit those inflection points, we got a choice to make. Um, we can, we can— I think the first thing is you have to make a decision, like, are you going to learn what you need to do, or are you going to get out of the way? Now, I'm more of the stubborn type that wants to learn it myself, although I'm getting better, um, because it's much more efficient to have someone else, um, learn— that already knows those skills, enjoys those skills— to, to come in and, and do those things. But it's not even just the skills, it's the mindset, it's the beliefs, the self-limiting beliefs that we put on ourselves. It's all the baggage that we bring in around money. So, in my case, we didn't have— I've had a lot of entrepreneurs talk about like they grew up in a scarcity household and like everything was always about, well, we can't do that because we can't afford it. Um, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs pursue entrepreneurship to overcome that and have financial freedom, right? I had the exact opposite problem. We never talked about money because it was always there. And my, my family did real stupid shit, like by helicopters and planes and limousines. And, you know, it was insane. But so I never had a scarcity mindset. I had the exact opposite problem. I— and the way it manifested in my business was, well, there will always be money. We'll always figure out a way to make more money, right? Until we didn't. And then— and it's like I did not have any financial discipline myself of, you know, and probably some poor impulse control too. But like the idea that you can't just spend money whenever you want it without, you know, having some accountability around it. And this is coming from a financial professional. I know better. Like, it's not like I don't know the problem. But I think that's the problem is that Yeah, there's a skill set, and you can learn it or you can hire it. But then there's also your beliefs around money and what habits you learned. I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, the business and the business success is their identity. And if the business is not successful, they're not successful. I find this with men. Specifically.

Is that true with you too, though? I mean, goodness, like, I—

yeah, yeah. No, I mean, so true. It, it's, it— and, you know, that's not, that's not healthy because, um, you're more than your business. And yeah, um, it, it, it's, it's like, what, what's the most important job you have as a, as a person? It's not— it is not accumulating wealth. It is not. I, I, I, it, it does not bring you— it does not bring you happiness. Um, and ultimately, the money itself brings you no fulfillment. I mean, yeah, you can do more things, but that's not why you're here, is to just do things. It's not hedonism. It's not about like, you know, So in any case, that's my opinion.

Well, so, and I see this too with, with business exit planning, right? Because if you've successfully built a business and you've gotten it to a point where it's attracted the attention of other investors or potential buyers, it's profitable enough that you could realistically sell it and live off the proceeds, which that's, that's another problem, right? Because if you're taking— I love to run through this quick math equation. Let's say your business is worth $5 million and you're taking $500,000 a year out of it for income, which that math shouldn't be too crazy, right? Well, if you sell for $5 million, you're going to net $3 million after taxes on a 4% withdrawal rate. That's about $120,000 a year of income. And you're accustomed to living on half a million, right? So I love helping people just think through that future train ride.

And that's—

and that— yes. How do we prepare for that?

Well, and that's why most businesses don't sell because they're worth more— They can't afford to. Exactly. They're worth more to the owner than they are on the open market. Absolutely. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, like, you know, if you've got a well-run business and it's making you money and you don't have to sell it, why would you? Like, I mean, it's more about getting to that point because Again, I feel like you can't be somebody different in business than you are outside of business. I think men especially like to think they can compartmentalize things, and they do a good job of it. Like, I think we're kind of— our brains are hardwired for it. Like, we can, we can laser focus on one thing to the exclusion of everything else, and that's, you know, what we need, uh, in certain circumstances— hunting or, you know, defending or, you know, any of those things. But the, the, the reality is that, uh, you're the same person. Um, I, I, I found this out when I, I started working with the business coach 3 years ago. Um, and for the first 6 months we talked about my marriage and What I didn't realize was my problems were the same. They looked different in the business and in at home, but what, what was the problem in me, uh, was what's called— was what was presenting in both places. Um, but I could— I couldn't see that. Right. I didn't— they looked different. They sound different. They felt different.

So what did you do? How did you work through that?

I did a lot of work. I did a lot of work and it was painful work. And, you know, I made the comment that it was the hardest thing I've done. It was harder than starting the business. It was harder than having financial difficulties in the business. It was harder than being married for 32 years. It was harder than raising 3 kids. And I guess that's probably why I avoided it as long as I did, because it sucked. But, you know, I wouldn't trade it for anything, like, because I'm not the same person and real change, uh, only, only happens with pain. You, you can't— I— this is my experience and my opinion. Like, you, you, if, if something needs to be fixed, you've got to be willing to, uh, do the work, and it doesn't come cheap. Now, maybe a lot of people weren't as screwed up as I was, but You know, I don't know.

I mean, there's, there's something— I was just having a conversation with somebody, um, it's a conversation I've actually had now, I guess, with 2 or 3 people. It's been a train of thought for me, uh, on the topic of getting healthy, on the topic of getting strong, um, leading yourself first. Um, I'm at a phase right now in my business where there's a lot depending on me. I've got a lot of kids. I've got a wonderful, incredible wife whom I love with my whole heart, and I need to be strong for them and to lead myself well for them. And honestly, Christian, I have struggled to do that and to prioritize that as being as important as sitting right here at my desk doing work. It's as important to go out for a jog, go to, you know, join a gym and go, get a good night's rest, those things are easy to just kind of deprioritize as not maybe as important as being in the business, working here, trying to provide for my family, and then going home and helping my wife with the cares and duties of, you know, being a good husband, right? But the reality is that— well, first off, the reality is it's not true. That just like you said, I am one connected person. A friend of mine, Danny, was just telling me this this morning. He's like, I had to reckon with the reality that I'm not some compartmentalized creature with like different personas that I put on.

Different hats. Yeah, I'm just going to change my hat and I'm somebody different.

Exactly. Like, you know, changing the hat doesn't obviously change who you are. And so realizing that a bad night's sleep will affect your anxiety and your stress in your business, which you will then carry into client meetings or prospect meetings or operations or team meetings that you will then, of course, carry home to your wife and children. On the contrary, a good night's rest and getting up and getting a workout, you already started the day ahead because you're rested and you've already had a win. You know, you already went to the gym and you lifted something heavy. You feel good, you feel strong. You walk into your day very different. And but yes, the reality is that getting to that point of being healthier, being stronger, it costs. It's going to cost something.

You're going to pay one way or the other. That's the reality. There's this, there's this false choice that I can avoid it and not pay the cost. You're going to pay the cost. It's just you're going to have to choose when you're going to pay it. And, and, and, and not making a decision, you've made it.

What's the cost of not— and what's the cost of not doing it? What's it— what's not doing it costing you exactly now?

Yeah, exactly. So there are no— it's like I told my son the other night, I said, there are no free choices. You know, economics does not allow it. There, you know, you— even if it is opportunity cost of like, if you make choice to do something, you've said no to all these other things. Like, so there's a cost to every decision.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a great investment principle too, right? Or, or business principle just generally.

And so like, well, that's kind of what I want to dive in. So you, you work with entrepreneurs with their money. Um, what, what kind of common symptoms or issues, problems do they present with? If you're, if you're a physician, Nick, what, what, uh, what do the patients present with?

Um, I'm sorry, I still laugh about your brain surgery comment.

I'm gonna get there. I just— now whether I'm going to find a willing patient, I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, physician Nick here, so A couple of things. Mingling business and personal expenses. Horrible idea. Finances. It's, it's so inefficient. It— most of the time I see it just as like, you know, treating your business like an ATM because we think that we can just kind of write everything off. Reality is your accountant is probably adding back most of that stuff anyway at the end of the year because they know, or, you know, worst case, if you're actually close potentially to an exit event, you're really muddying the waters of your valuation.

You've depressed your value.

Absolutely. Horribly so. And even though there's that whole— you know, so my job when we were acquired and with a couple of entities was to put together the settlement statement. Right. So when you buy a business, you look at the financials and at some point on the seller's side, they're going to say, well, you know, Mr. and Mrs. Buyer, not all of these expenses on the P&L are, you know, wink wink, real business expenses. There's obviously some personal stuff in here. And so you do what's called add-backs where you throw back in, well, this and that and the other, these were personal expenses, flow down on the— and that can include even stuff like owner-paid legitimate business expenses that will go away post-acquisition, assuming you're a, you know, an S corp or, you know, just a partnership or LLC. But anyway, the, the actual pain of going through that settlement statement process and trying to— because the buyer is going to be like, no, none of it's None of it needs to be added back. These are all legitimate business expenses. And then the seller has to prove the true legitimacy of adding back those expenses in to boost the valuation. It's painful. You're losing. There's no way you're going to remember everything. And then if you're being paid on a multiple of EBITDA or of net income or even whatever, as long as it's not multiple sales, you're actually costing yourself potentially a 4 to 5x. So for every dollar that you're passing through personally, you're saving 25 cents in taxes, but you're costing yourself $3, $4, $5, $6 in EBIT evaluation. So it can be a very shoot yourself in the foot kind of experience. And all of that comes from just not having clear bifurcation between business and personal.

And I would 100% agree with all of that. And I think a lot of business owners have, have trouble from a money standpoint treating their business like a business instead of a piggy bank. Um, I, I had this conversation with my, one of my, uh, EO forum mates, and he was laboring over this decision to take money out of the company. And we had a conversation around it. It was like, well, do you not feel like the business would survive? Like, he had the exact opposite problem. Like, he didn't want to take money out of the business because he, he was afraid that something would happen that they would need that money, right? And as we, as we talked through it, it just made it very clear, like, okay, let me ask you this. If this were not you and your business and you had bought a share of Apple, and you were a shareholder in it, how would you approach the conversation? And it goes back to that identity thing. It's like, they can't see the business as separate from themselves. It's them. But as soon as you shift that from it being you, which is an extension of you, which is your personal money in a piggy bank, to a, a, a company I invested money into where you're the investor, it changes the whole paradigm.

Something that actually helps with that can be, uh, the entity selection. So obviously neither one of us are attorneys or accountants, so we're not going to give—

I am an accountant, but I don't like to tell people that. Yeah.

Oh.

I'm a brain surgeon, Nick. There we go.

I was inspiring brain surgeons. So, but entity selection can make a huge, uh, well, it can be a very helpful, I don't know, process adjustment because if you're operating, you know, an LLC operating as a sole prop, it feels like a piggy bank, right? But if you're an S corp and now you're on payroll and you're getting a paycheck and then you get quarterly distributions, that can feel a lot more like a legitimate business.

It's, it's, And it may— it sounds like it wouldn't make a difference, but it absolutely does make a difference. Like if you say, well, I've got to have this much in working capital in the business and okay, there's money there to take a distribution this quarter. There isn't money in there to take a distribution. And it's not discretionary. It's not like, well, you know, I know the money's not there, but I still need to take— I still want it. I still, you know, I'm going to take it. Right.

Yeah. So I also see, and it's funny, even just hearing us talk and banter about this, um, there's like a reluctance, I think, for especially for like pre-growth phase businesses, like in the, I don't know, the up to maybe $1.5, $2 million in sales phase. There's this reluctance to bring in advisors or outside folks. Sure, you have a CPA. And you probably have a bookkeeper, but to bring in true professional advisors, financially minded CFO, strategy-oriented voices to the table, it can either feel illegitimizing, like, well, wait, I thought I was the one running this business, which I don't— maybe we talk about that one in a minute. But I think there's also, again, going back to that scarcity mindset, like, oh, I can't afford coaching or advising or fractionals or whatever because they're, they're too expensive. It's like, okay, well, hold on a second. Going back to the cost question of like, what's it costing you to not have that voice sitting at the table? It could be costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales growth over the next 2, 3, 5 years, millions of dollars potentially, versus, you know, you're going to pay them what, $10 grand a year, $20 grand a year?

Yeah.

Right.

And I've done work as a fractional CFO, and it's fascinating to me because these are people that don't have a CFO. They certainly don't have a full-time one, but their expectation of what a CFO is about, right? They don't even really understand, which is fine because they haven't experienced it. But that person is a part of the leadership team that has the same voice as the head of operations and the head of HR and whoever else sits at that executive level and makes those decisions. And, you know, I'd have these conversations of like, well, this is what I'm going to do. And I'm like, well, and, and this is a particularly bad engagement that I had that I shouldn't have taken, but this, this guy was in a high, high growth industry. I mean, they, they— it was just, it was one of those unicorns, and it was just the timing of it. And, um, but had no financial acumen and absolutely no self-control. And, uh, he, he said, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, uh, take money out and I'm going to go buy this piece of property for the business. And I'm like, um, we, we don't— we're, uh, functionally bankrupt as it is. Like, on paper we're bankrupt. You, you can't do that, you know. I mean, every bit of money we make has got to go back into liquidity and working capital. We're growing too fast, right? Um, and he goes, you know, I mean, he cussed me out. He's like, you write a damn check. And I'm like, I'm not writing the check. First of all, I wasn't a signer on the check. But I didn't— I never take that responsibility. But I told the bookkeeper, I said, I'm not ordering the bookkeeper to issue the check. You can go get the check. I'm not going to. And he never had any kind of pushback like that. But that's— I mean, in a lot of ways, that's what you're looking for in that, is because you want someone that is got the experience and the understanding and, and the perspective to say, is this a good financial decision?

Like, you know, I've been in the room with—

that's what you're paying for.

Yeah, I've been in the room with conversations like that. And honestly, I think those people may be scared to hire an advisor because they don't want to—

they don't want to be told no, right?

They don't want to be told no. Obviously, like you said, that was an engagement you shouldn't have taken. Those are really difficult, like lose-lose kind of scenarios. He still needed your advice whether you should have taken that engagement or not. It's a good thing you were there. Hopefully he took it or at least reflected back on it.

Maybe. No, I was about 9 months into that engagement and the last words I said to him was, lose my number. I don't ever want to hear from you again. But it taught me a lot about myself, because I, I was never that bad. But I had never worked for a true visionary like myself. And I had a perspective that I had never had. And I I was repentant. I went back to my team and I said, I know I've acted this way in the past and I'm sorry. Like, that's, that's not okay. Like, and it's not like I was acting like him, like belittling or berating or anything like that, but just the energy that I brought. It's, it is a lot about ego and it is a lot about being told no. Like, if you want to be a great business owner, you have to be willing to pay people, whether it's an employee or an advisor. You have to pay people to tell you no and hold you accountable. And that was very hard for me to do.

And again, going back, it's like, well, what is it costing you to not have that right now? In your, in your business or in your, in your life. The business coach that sits down with you and spends 6 months talking about your marriage, because guess what? Your wife knows the problems you're having in your business because she's known you for 30 years. Correct. She already— we could interview her and she would solve your problems in about 2 hours, right?

Correct. If I'd listened to her.

But if we listened, right? That's so, so hard to listen to the voice of your wife sometimes.

Well, you know, it's funny. My wife and I had one of those conversations this morning. Where she has a business that she started, and she was complaining about it. And I'm like, you sound like a broken record, right? Like, I love you, I support you, I want you to be successful. But I keep hearing the same things out of your mouth. And I had— we had just had— we have home church and Sunday night, we just had the conversation about how, you know, you can share the gospel with your family, but because they know you so well and they have that experience with you, they discount it. And, you know, even Jesus was talking about, you know, a prophet has no honor in his home or something to that effect. Like, you know, He, he had to leave town to become the expert, right? I mean, like, hanging out in, in, uh, Nazareth, uh, and, and, uh, yes, in Nazareth, he, he was just Jesus, the, you know, son of Joseph, right? So there's still that element of it, right? That very human element, like the people that you're closest to that know you the best oftentimes can't tell you what you need to hear. And they're the ones we should be listening to, because they're the ones that actually care about us and are equally yoked with us. Like, you know, my wife doesn't want me to fail because then she fails. Like, you know, that's not right. But how hard that is sometimes to hear that from the people closest to us.

I'm curious how that conversation ended with, with you and your wife this morning.

It actually ended up very well. I gave her a big hug and she said like, oh, you're going to be nice to me? And I'm like, I was never not nice. I mean, like, I'm not— I, I, I think that's the problem. Having been married 32 years is because you know each other so well, you skip things. It's like you fill in the gaps and you're like— and, and you can't do that. You've got to go through the steps. You— because I make a lot of assumptions. She makes a lot of assumptions. Like, I know what he's going to say. I know what she's going to say. And, and that may be true based on your experience. But even if it is true, that doesn't make you feel very good if people are just like, yeah, yeah, I know what you're going to say. You know, I know what you're going to do. But no, it was a good conversation. And it was a conversation that honestly, 3 years ago, we couldn't have had. Like, that would not have been a conversation. Wouldn't have even gone there. I wouldn't have gone there, because I knew it would have ended in conflict. And I was not willing to do that.

What do you credit the most for the change in the last 3 years? It's brought you to the place of being able to have that conversation now.

It's interesting. I think the, probably the most interesting thing about the work I've done is my business coach asked me a question very early on. When we were talking about the problems in our marriage. And he said, well, what do you want? Like, what? So like, what do you want from your wife? What do you need from your wife? Like, and I'm like, I don't know, I've never thought about it, you know. And I think one of my hangups in that was, My understanding of marriage was self-sacrifice. You know, it was, it was like her before me. And although I definitely did not always act that way, that was, that was a core belief. And so, you know, what I wanted was not important. At least in my mind. But what, what, what it shifted me to do was it made me clarify, like, really, what it— like, what behavior, what different behavior did I want from my wife? Like, what's the ideal? Because for me, and I think for a lot of people, it's, it's way too easy in any kind of relationship, marriage being the, you know, the most obvious, but it's— if things aren't the way you'd like them, or you want them, it's way too easy to focus on the other person and try to change their behavior, affect their behavior, convince them that there's something they need to do different, instead of looking at yourself and changing your behavior, because at the end of the day, that's all you can do. And so, you know, once he asked that question, and I got clarity on what I want, he's like, okay, now go tell your wife that. And I'm like, okay. And so I laid it out. I said, this is what I need from you. You know, I need to feel heard. I need to feel respected. I need to feel connected, like, you know, intimate. I need these things. And I said, what do you need? And she had the same deer-in-the-headlights looks, like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm interested in. Yeah. And, and, you know, over time, she figured out what she needed and was able to communicate that to me. But we're talking about— we got pregnant on our honeymoon. And then we had no— both of us had our own sets of trauma. And so we come together as injured individuals. And we immediately start a family. And then, you know, 28 years later, it's like, huh. Okay, we got to deal with all this shit that we didn't deal with, like, is what the reality was. And we had a lot— my wife specifically had a lot of external pressures, which I believe God gave us. I mean, I'm not saying that— well, let me rephrase that. I don't think God caused those things to happen. I believe that he allowed us to take something from it that was worthwhile. Beauty from Pain, right? Like, it was, it was a shitty situation that she was in, and by proxy I was in, and it was all health-related. And, uh, you know, we, we had a choice of, okay, are we going to split or are we going to fix? And neither one of us wanted to split, but we had no idea how to fix it. Like, we, we just But at the end of the day, the fixing is fixing yourself. I mean, because you can't fix someone else. You just can't. Hmm. So I can see that it has resonated with you. So tell me what you're thinking.

Yeah, I mean, it has very deeply. I mean, that's, um, and we all come from places of pain, right? There's no way to go through life without incurring pain and experiencing it. We accumulate it like Velcro and fuzz, right? Like it just finds its way to us and attaches and sticks. Um, you know, my wife, uh, has walked through a pretty painful situation for the last two 2 years now, or has it been 3? Um, she has scarring on her vocal cords. Um, now she— you have to know about my wife— she has one of the most beautiful voices, um, truly. And the scarring on her vocal cords is all but taking that away, right? Uh, there is no healing for scarred vocal cords, right? And in the process of this long health journey that we've been on The best that we have found to live with it now is just monthly manual laryngeal therapy, massage, a handful of voice exercises, and that's just kind of part of our life now. And her voice therapist said something to her that I'm not sure she realized was as profound as it is, but she said, "To work through your scars, you must open them daily." Mm.

Mm. And she meant that from a physical sense, from an actual physical, right?

Sense. Yeah. But it's deeply true. It's profound. And I think that that's a, that's a gosh, I mean, there's so many ways we could connect this again back to business, but I think the real core, the beautiful truth here that, that I think is the thread kind of through our whole conversation is, um, you can't escape yourself, right? You can't escape your past self either., and the 12-year-old you that had, you know, a painful memory or an embarrassing moment or a traumatic experience is still there, needing to be encouraged and cared for deeply and kindly with compassion, and that there is healing available, and that you probably need someone to help you do that, to help you go there together, you with Jesus, to go back to that place and find healing and peace there and to finally to be able to let wounds become scars that can then be opened daily for good, for healing, and not just for deeper pain, right? But like, and you said at the start of the conversation, you know, in money, in business, there's so much baggage. That's so true, right? And whether, you know, you can't escape your past experiences and accumulated accumulated story. No matter how much money you make, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much success you attain, you're still you at the end of the day, laying your head down and looking in the mirror. And until you can find peace with that and find healing, you know, there's— well, I don't know. Yeah, just to say that until you can find peace, right, and find healing there, those old, old things will continue to rear their heads.

But, and, and what you said about, like, you, you, you, you're going to pay the price. So, so you can either go back and do that work and heal and do the work and work through your scars on a daily basis, or it's going to come back and your marriage is going to end. Your business is going to fail. Your health is going to fail. Your relationship with your family and your children is going to fail because you didn't. Like, there's no escaping it.

And if, right, even 29 years in, 28 years in, you're willing to press in and have those hard conversations and then do the work and put in the time and effort to be healthy and to do your best and not to do your best, but to find that healing and wholeness, right? There is great hope and there is great peace and relational connectedness that can be found there.

Too. Yeah, I'm a Christian.

I love that story of you and your wife. That's— that's— it made me laugh just thinking about conversations I've had with my wife that have gone similarly.

And it's not about— for me, I avoided conflict with my wife, because I was afraid because of my trauma, that she would leave me. And so the reality was, for years, I acted out of fear. And if you're acting out of fear in any capacity, you're, you're coming from a negative energy, you're not going to have optimal and usually not even good results. Acting out of fear, I believe, is the opposite of acting out of love. I think fear and love are opposite, polar opposites. And either you live in fear or you live in love. And you overcome fear with love. You can't overcome fear without love. And I, you know, You asked the question, but the reality is, what saved my marriage, what saved me was only the grace of God. I— this is me speaking. I can't speak for anybody else. But it— if it were not for the grace of God, I would not be where I am. I would not have had that healing. And I wouldn't still be married. Amen. Listeners, if you've liked what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Until next time, remember, you are not alone.