WHY NOT Wednesday! with Rob Nelson

These last few years have made us question everything.

Our relationships.

Our jobs.

What constitutes an.

Office.

And who we are.

In a.

World filled with chaos, confusion, and uncertainty. It's time for some clarity. It's time to start understanding one another.

It's time to start understanding ourselves.

We envision a world where everyone knows their why. But even more, we envision a world where everyone knows their why. O s. Their why, their how, and their what.

The operating system that drives you, that lets the world know where you stand.

What your unique gift is, and most importantly, who you are.

Yos.

Are you ready?

Hey. Hello, everyone, and welcome to why Not Wednesday. We are live today with Rob Nelson. And I cannot wait to introduce you guys to Rob. He is an amazing human being. As. As I said earlier, earlier in my post today, inexpo. Inexpressibly. I think I want to make sure I say. I say the words right. Right. I. I can't tell you the impact that it's had on me to get to know Rob, so I. I want to get to introduce him. So let me tell you a little bit about Rob. Rob's purpose is to help people choose better, always looking to improve, and coaching others to perform in God's calling at the highest level. His guide post is Romans 12:8, giving encouragement, living generously, leading enthusiastically, and helping others cheerfully. So, man. Rob, welcome to the show. How are you?

I'm doing really good. You know, it's so exciting. I'm thinking about, as you share those nice words, some of our previous conversations and for those that have joined us, our conversations have felt like water skiing behind a boat, just with excitement and enthusiasm and, oh, gosh, we can talk about this. And what about this? And here's this experience. So super excited with that kind of enthusiasm.

Inexpressibly enthusiastic. Is that the. Is that the phrase?

Inexpressibly Dynamic.

Dynamic. That's the one I was looking for the post. I should have put it in the. In the show notes, but. Rob, man, what. What a great story you have. So Gary Sanchez met you and he said, dan, you gotta meet Rob. And. And now after having had a couple of conversations with you, I know exactly why he said I needed to meet you. So let's start with what we always do. Rob. By the way, Watson, thank you for joining. I got. We got Jerry Fletcher from Portland, Oregon, and T.J. davidson from Texas. So we got the whole country covered. And guys, put your comments in the chat. If you've got questions for Rob, we want to hear from you. And let's get started. So let's get started with what we always do. Rob is his why is to challenge the status quo. His how is to find a better way and is what is to build trust. So what we know about Rob and those of you who are. Who are coaches. Carl Ponto, great. Thank you for joining us. And Jeff Pottinger is joining us too. So, guys, thank you. What we know about Rob, right, as, as coaches, you, those of you that are coaches, you know, he's somebody who likes to think outside the box, do things differently, bring us fresh perspectives. And the way he does that is by finding better ways and sharing them with others. And ultimately, what you can count on from Rob is he's. You can trust him. If he says he's going to do something, you can consider it done. So, Rob, man, did we get, did we get that right? How does that feel to you? Challenging the status quo, finding better ways and building trust?

Well, and it really is that mantra. What I love about that most of all is the better way. And I frame that out of just being better. When I'm dealing with athletes or business people, whether the locker room or the boardroom, I like that idea of just reaching, having a stretch component to what you're doing. And that mindset of I can just be better. And I, I like that so much more than being the best.

Yes.

Or being better than somebody else.

Right.

Where the focus is on your improvement as opposed to out distancing somebody else. And it just frames it out perfectly. And I find that no matter what I'm doing in, in my coaching, people have different levels of, of what their best is.

I love that. Rob, you know, if Jim Packard and he made. He may jump on. If Jim Packard was on. He's all about be. Be a little bit better every day. Right. If you improve 1% every day. Right. That's, that's, that's constant improvement. He's all about consistency. Jackie Joy, Hugh Hornsby. Hey, by the way, he's a fellow challenger, Rob. So he's, he's one of our coaches. He's out on the east coast. And I know Jackie Joy is here, so Bruce Kirk from Pennsylvania is here. We, we got a good crew of fellow yos coaches joining us today to hear your story. You know, I posted this morning about why people should tune in to listen to your story. And what touched me in, in the. We've talked for a couple hours now, Rob, was the way you dealt with one of the most devastating news that, that, that a parent could have, and that is to lose one of your children. So Haley is your daughter. And one of the things I love is you talk about the fact that she is your daughter. You talk about her as if she's still here. So she's been gone now 17 years, I believe.

13 years.

Yeah, 13 years. She was 17 years old. And I want you to tell the story about finding that note in your phone, because that was an amazing, amazing story.

Yeah. Well. And it. The story has its tragic component, for sure, in losing a child is.

I won't call it a sentence, but it is, in my experience, the most graphic thing that you can possibly go through. And it's been that way for us, my wife and I. There's great stories that follow tragedy, however, and I call them what they are, victories that rise out of the ashes of tragedy.

Right.

And one of those. This was May of 2009, is when we lost her daughter. And we speak about our daughter not only in a. In a live way, but not in a mystical way, like, she's still with us. She's with us in spirit. When people ask, how many kids do we have? I say, we have two children, one ahead of us in heaven, and then our son, who's alive and vibrant and kicking down doors of life kind of experience. But. But we. We lost Hayley in. In 2009. And one of the crazy elements. There's so many crazy stories that come out of this experience, but one of those was just being on my smartphone. And this was 63 days after she passed. And when. When you lose a child, life goes numb. Life, the stair goes blank. And there's much of those early moments where you're. You're just gasping for air.

Yeah.

And. And so, Dan, I was on my smartphone and I was looking through the notes section, and just randomly, I don't. I don't know where my mind was, but I came across a note from Haley from. Her nickname is Teaspoon, but a. A note from Teaspoon that she wrote to me. And I didn't know when she wrote it and how I missed it, but I'm reading this note, and I'd always talk about my aspiration to write and to write books and whatnot. And so she wrote me a note, and she said, pops, you're going to write a total of five books. Here's the five titles. And then she enclosed the message or ended the message with, you've got this.

Love, Teaspoon. And so how that came about 63 days after passing, I have no explanation for. But, you know, when you look for an influencer of your. Why, that's certainly one of them.

Yeah. So. So Rob, that, you know, and I talked about that. You know, there's. There's one message, there's five stories. She gave you the titles of the books. Right. So how is that going? What's. What's. What's the. What have you done to make that a reality? I know you've got a couple of books you're working on, so tell me about that.

Yeah, so the first two titles. The first is the Armor, and that's right out of Ephesians 6, where it talks about the armor of God. And that's where, as you read that passage, it frames out what our world is. Our world is. Is. You know, there's no. There's no uncertain terms. Satan's mission is to distract, destroy, disrupt everything in our lives In. In Ephesians talks about putting on that armor of God. So the first book called the Armor is about our journey since we lost Haley and how we, you know, went from what I've described as being cast out into the middle of the ocean and just gulping for air, and you're just trying to keep, you know, you. Your head above water and a period of time goes by where at some point your. Your feet brush sand and you go, oh, gosh, I'm going to survive. And. And so the story is really told from my wife's. Through my wife's eyes, through my son's eyes, and through my eyes as we've gone through different experiences, but done so together in. Through that process, I believe we've grieved in a healthy way.

You know, great testimonies to that. My. My son, he knows who his pops is.

Yeah. And.

And so there was never a disconnect on him feeling abandoned or lost in. In a life moment. My wife and I have been married for 33 years. You lose a juvenile child, there's an unfortunate statistic, an 86% divorce rate. It just implodes families. And so somehow, some way, we're surviving in our marriage. I'm still sleeping indoors, as I like.

To say, not in the doghouse.

Yeah, exactly. And so we have that testimony.

And then there's so many other victories that, like I said, rise out of the ashes. So the armor is that storyline. And then the second book is called God Just Wins, and it's that the ultimate affirmation, the one absolute. The one thing that. That never changes, never blanks. There's never this oops component to any of the things that we experience in life. And, and so, and that all. That all started with it. If I could share the story.

Yes.

Started when my. Our son in. In.

Deborah and I are very close and literally going through this whole process. Tate and I talk every day. And his path after college led to him going into the service. He entered the Navy. As all Navy.

Military folk go, it starts with boot camp. And boot camp is six months north of Chicago, and it's a six month window where you have no contact with your. With your child. And that was such an odd experience for us. And So I started February 18, 2019, writing him a message. And a message was a daily message, and it was just of an encouragement and hope and enthusiasm and excitement and things to focus on and how to pivot from any rough spot where it can be productive instead of destructive.

Right, right.

So I started writing this message and a lot of people that enter the military, or a fair amount, I should say, don't have any contact with their family members, don't receive any letters. And so his teammates started to ask Tate to read what I wrote to him as a message of encouragement to his teammates. He went in with 250 SEAL team candidates. And so they had a daily debrief, if you will, where they would read this message. And that was what gave birth to launching by title, God just wins. And I did this on Facebook. Wasn't any intention to be an influencer or anything of the like. It was simply to have something face forward. And.

And what I discovered very quickly was how thirsty the world is for hope and encouragement and to stare at something that's positive instead of negative. And so here these postings launched some of the early writings. Rough for sure, but it grew to reaching 1.8 million people around the world. And, and I can only attribute that to just how thirsty the world is for something positive. And so that's been the focus point I've written every day since. And, and it just centers in on just that. Hope, encouragement, enthusiasm, and how to lean into life where there's that sense of excitement instead of trudging forward in life one small step after another with head down, shoulders slumped and going, okay, I'm just enduring. And that's the last thing that we want to do, is as my son, my wife and I, we don't want to just endure life. We want to, we want to be excited for it and celebrate it and look forward to it, knowing that we have a graphic past that we come from.

Man, there's a lot to unpack there.

But I love the whole story One of the things we talk about all the time is consistency. You've done this now for how many straight days, Rob?

Yeah, it's been 1483 days, I think. How do you like that?

1483 days. And guys, I know that we put the Instagram hashtag or the Instagram is at right so at God just wins is the Instagram handle and for Facebook is hashtag God just wins. If you get a chance, go, go. Look at that. There's some amazing posts. And you, you talked about it. You know why Institute we talk about and I'm going to use some salty language here, the shitty first draft. Sometimes you just have to get started. You talk about that early writings a little bit rough, but guess what? You've gotten better because you do it every single day. Consistency has led to those amazing posts. And, and I do want to recognize our Navy guys. Jeff Pottinger, Raymond Chi, Former Fleet Master Chief of the Navy. Jeff Pottinger, who works and I want to get into, get you introduced to him, Rob. Jeff is. Your son's nowhere near there. Tate's. Tate's kicking butt in the Navy Seals right now. But when, when, when it's time for him to transition out, that's who Jeff works with Special operations forces, soldiers who are transitioning out of the military. So he's an amazing resource for our military and for our, for our coaching community. As a matter of fact, he's going to be on our coaches call tomorrow. So, so Jeff, thanks for being on and, and for cheering on Tate. You know, the other thing that, that, that struck me about what you, what you said is you talk about the evil one trying to distract us. So my word for 20, 23 is traction. Everybody thinks the opposite of distraction is focus. No, the opposite of distraction is traction. So the evil one tries to distract you, right? There's traction takes you in a positive manner going to the right distraction takes you left away from your goals. Traction is gaining traction towards what you want. So I love that. The other thing that man, congratulations on 33 years of marriage. And, and I have seen there's, I think there's a Will Smith movie where he, he, he talks about that, that very statistic. 86% of marriages that have, that lose a child, end up in, end up in divorce. So, so congratulations on that. Really appreciate you sharing that and giving all of us hope. You know, I, I like to joke my wife has started Talking about our 30 year coming up and so that, that gives me hopes and we're a year and a half away from you're in a month away, actually a couple of months. We're in April. So the fact that she's Planning for the 30th is good. That gives. That gives me hope. So, Rob, tell me a little bit about what else do people need to know about? Rob, tell me about overcoming impossible. What is that?

Well, my testimony has been riddled with hearing no a lot of times.

Yeah.

And it's also become a trigger word because in the things that I've aspired for, they've usually been met with a no of some sort. No, you're not good enough, you're not strong enough, you're not big enough, you're too tall, you're too short, you're this, you're that. People love to extend the reasons on why not something.

Right.

And so parallel with your vision and Gary's vision of, gosh, breaking those barriers and approaching life through, why it's the perfect thing. And I think about even the early years when I fell in love with tennis, I was a latecomer. You have all these young tennis bucks that start the sport, age 6, age 7, age 8. I got introduced to tennis right before my 16th birthday. Wow. And so I had in some cases, a decade to catch up on.

Right.

And because of that, I was told, rob, you're not going to be able to play even high school tennis. You're too late. You're not going to certainly be able to play college tennis. Rob, your vision to be a professional tennis player, it's not possible. And so the more I heard that, the more I leaned into it, the more it became the stimulus. Even jokingly with pursuing my wife, I. With a lot of no's early on in that. And you know, as the, as it goes, you hear enough nose and you go, okay, I'm. I'm warming up, I'm getting someplace.

But that's what it. It led to. Professional tennis in that be better. My story was not I didn't become top 10 in the world. I didn't knock down a Grand Slam championship. But I think every bit as important, I had my chance, right? And I got to play on the world stage. I got to travel the world. I got to be introduced and step out onto the courts at Wimbledon and have my shot. And so, okay, yeah, I guess in one regret, if there's any, I didn't win enough. Boy, did I have a lifetime of experience. I feel like it gave me a PhD in life, having that international audience and, and just all the trials and tribulations of pursuing something without limits, you.

Know, and you said it, you know, you hear enough no's you got to say, and you, the world can tell you no, but you said yes, you said, why not? Right, right. Why not me? The kid who doesn't start tennis at 16 and still makes it to the pro ranks. Right? You, so you went on and played in college, you played in the pros, you made some amazing connections and these are people that you're still connected to that help you with what you do now. You're, you're into something completely different now. A guy who, who played professional tennis is going to be a tennis coach, right, when, when he gets older. But now you're doing cycle killy. Tell us about cycle Killy, Rob, because this is really cool.

There's where all the naysayers came out.

So, yeah, tell us about it.

We developed over time a relationship with this children's home down in Moshi, Tanzania called Treasures of Africa. And the story that I love behind it is the story of their founder, Rita Langland. She went to, she traveled to Moshi on a missions trip and I don't know literally, but very close to perhaps the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, when AIDS first came into everyone's reality. And she saw this unbelievable dynamic as moms and dads literally were dying off, the children were being raised on the streets of Moshi and you'd have an 11 year old sibling raising her nine, seven and five year old siblings on the streets. And so she saw that graphic image and she goes, you know what? I'm going to do something about it. And so here's what she did. She didn't solve poverty, she didn't solve homelessness, she didn't solve the AIDS pandemic. But what she did was put together this children's home and is now raising 110 kids under this banner of raising future leaders. And so she's not just a relief organization. She's developing up these kids with those same aspirations and those same convictions of replacing no with yes. And so as a fundraiser, fast forward to Cycle Kelly. We put together this campaign to draw some headlines and it was to, to do the unthinkable, to mountain bike Mount Kilimanjaro 19,341ft uphill. And hadn't been done before, it'd been attempted before, but there hadn't been any full ascent, full descent. And so I put together three athletes myself. You know, an old broken down tennis player, my son, prior to his entry into the military, he was a senior At Alabama.

Right.

It was an MMA fighter at the time. So you have a broken down tennis player, an MMA fighter, and then our third writer is an alien, a fellow by the name of nickname of the iron cowboy. Executed 50 full Ironmans, you know, a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride, and a marathon because you're bored. 50 full marathon.

I mean, Ironmans, wow.

In 50 consecutive days in all 50 states.

Wow.

So he's, you know, he's not human.

He is an alien. Right. I was wondering where you were going with that. Yeah. He is not human.

Yeah. So we took this eclectic group and sure enough, we, we mountain biked to the summit and had all of its perils and trials and who would have thunks along the way? But it was one of those things. As we rolled up, we have the video on the Facebook on Cycle Killy. And so it's just, I still look at that and not in a personal accomplishment, but just, you know, that who would have thunk? Because there wasn't a roadmap. Here's the 50 people that have successfully climbed Kilimanjaro on a mountain bike. So it was not, it was figuratively and.

Not figuratively into rare air where we didn't have a roadmap to follow.

Man.

That'S inspirational. So let me ask you this, and maybe this is related to, you know, we always ask this question because it's why not Wednesday? What's. What's your biggest why not moment in your life, Rob? A time when you said why not to something and it's, and it's something you look back on and I'm so glad I said why not to that there's a lot of things we say no to. But you said why not? What was it? Maybe it's a couple.

Yeah, there's so many that come to mind. Certainly the Cycle Kelly campaign and, and, and you know, out of that there was no intention to. To set a world record.

Right.

But there were three that were set in. In the first two I think are pretty ding dang cool and certainly fall into this. Why not? The first was my son became the youngest man in history to mountain bike Mount Kilimanjaro.

Excellent.

And then the second, really cool. The first father son team to mountain bike Mount Kilimanjaro.

Wow.

The third, I don't like to admit I became the oldest mountain bike Kilimanjo. And I'm not looking to be the oldest, recognized as the oldest to do anything, but I mean, that's a, that's A clearly one of them. And, And I. And I think the aspirations of writing a book are in the why not? I don't have anything published, those thus far, but I have that mission statement to author five books, and I am convicted, Dan. I will write five books or more before I hit the finish line. I know it. I guarantee it. And there's all the same whispers coming out of the shadows. The naysayers line up and say, oh, you can't do this. And there's this reason and there's why you shouldn't. And. And you have to just blow past those with that steely conviction of, I will get that done for sure, man.

Hey, you're. You're gaining a lot of fans here today, I can tell you that. Rob Watson, you know, I, I don't want to skip the comment that he made earlier, but I want to make sure I share it because he's saying, hey, the oldest for the win. He's always got the. For the win. He. He loves that. But Watson wrote a book, and maybe you guys need to connect. He wrote about losing his son very young, you know, lived only a few days, but he wrote a great story about that. I read that book over. Over the. Over the. The winter break. And so Watson's one of our coaches. I think you guys. You guys got to meet. So make sure Watson. Make sure I get you guys connected. But. But the. The other thing is, you know, I look at the oldest for the win. You know, if you keep going back every year, you can break your own record, Rob. You keep breaking. You can keep breaking your own record unless somebody that's older than you decides to. To climb up there, but you can keep. Keep stretching that. That finish line.

Well, what I'm so excited about, and this is what you and I have leaned into after Gary introduced us, is that here you have your community of coaches, and that's who I see as influencers. How many followers you have, how many likes you have? Insignificant. The people that step forward and try to lead, guide and direct and coach up. The people behind them are the people next to them, you know, and it's. The SEAL image is certainly every bit of that. I've watched my son go through SEAL qualifying training. There's that tagline of link arms as they're told to enter the ocean in freezing temperatures and somehow survive together. And so I love the idea of the Y Institute and becoming part of that community, to link arms with some of these other individuals and to have that mindset of.

Of.

All right, we're here to kick down doors and, and bring others alongside us to do the same. So very much excited about that.

I'm excited about you joining our community, Rob. If, if you, those of you that are, that are still on, if you want to link arms with Rob, let it let us know that. And, and Raymond Kemp, I knew he was going to say something. It makes sense that the navy is part of the first looking for a better way and challenging the status quo. You guys share a very similar yos. So he's better way. Challenge your chall. Jeff Potter says and paddle together. So I'm sure you've heard, you've heard that, Rob. So. So, man, our time together has, has really flown by. Jerry says my daughter made that climb but on foot. She's an iron man and a long distance runner. So you're getting a lot of love here. If somebody wants to help, what's the best way to, to support that mission? Because, hey, let's, you know, let's not forget that you're not only climbing to the top of Kilimanjaro, you're also supporting a great cause. So if somebody wanted to help, would. Is it your Facebook.

Ryan? What is it, Mike? Killy.com Cycle Killy no go.

Yeah. Go right to our banner, our website, Godjust wins.com. god just wins.com and we have a support vehicle there. And, and it does take support. You know, it's funny, so much of what I do just has that excitement and, you know, willingness to step forward and the monetization, it's a part of it. And so. But yeah, anyone that wants to link arms in any capacity, I'm, I'm all in.

Wow. Well, Rob, hey. Can you believe it? Half an hour is over. I knew this was going to be a great interview. I want to thank. You know what? I didn't do this last week. Last week was our first show of the year and I didn't thank all our followers. So I want to say everybody that's commented, everybody that's listening silently and is not making comments, I want to thank you for following the show, for being on the show every week, for encouraging our coaches that come on, our supporters that come on, and for being part of this great community that encourages people to say why not? So thank you very much, everybody. Rob, what's. Let's get a closing thought from you today.

Yeah, well, in the closing thought is absolutely your battle cry. Why not? And I say that with. I'm going to go right back to Teaspoon's words, which is you've got this. And no better way to answer a battle cry with that affirmation, that confirmation of you've got this. And then like you said earlier, just stepping forward. I tell the story so often in terms of, you know, how do you go about these things and tongue in cheek, you go about any aspiration with leaning forward far enough to where you have the choice. I mean they're going to step or I'm going to fall face flat and so take the step. You've got this.

Lean forward, man. What do you say we end on that note, Rob?

Why not exactly.

Thank you so much, Rob. Thank you everybody for joining us. I will see you guys next week on why not Wednesday. And don't forget to go to Godjustwins.com to support Rob on his mission and have a great rest of the week everyone and we'll see you next week.

Well done, Dan.