In this YouTube video, Nick Hutchison reviews Suzanne Conrad’s personal‑development book Get There Now: Transform Yourself and the World Through Laughter, Listening, and the Power of Choice. He highlights the book’s central message that breath symbolizes the ability to choose and act, using a vivid anecdote where Conrad’s birth attendant’s garlic breath disrupts her focus during labor. Hutchison explains how the author distills life stories into actionable lessons about reclaiming agency, being present, and embracing our messy humanity. He critiques conventional life scripts—college, 9‑to‑5, white‑picket‑fence ideals—and parallels them with today’s hustle culture, arguing both are oppressive narratives that limit choice. Throughout, he mixes humor with serious leadership insights, urges listeners to restore their power of choice, and promotes the book while announcing an upcoming podcast with Conrad to explore more concepts.
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My biggest takeaway from this book is pretty funny, okay? So here it is: never eat garlic before attending to a laboring woman. This is a personal development book, it truly is, right? But that's my biggest takeaway, and if you want to learn a little bit more about it, you'll have to stick around. So Book Thinkers family, today I will be reviewing Get There Now by author Suzanne Conrad, and the subtitle reads Transform Yourself and the World. Through laughter, listening, and the power of choice. So the power of choice is really important, right? Suzanne tells a lot of stories in this book, right? She goes back to yesteryear. She recaps a point in time in her life and sort of what she learned from that. She distills it into a lesson that you can apply to your life. And while she was giving birth to her first child, the woman that was attending to her had garlic breath. So Suzanne is already in a struggle, right? It's pretty chaotic giving birth. I'm a man, I haven't done it, so I'm not 100% sure, but I can imagine it's pretty chaotic. You want to remain in control, so she's focusing on her breath, she thinks things are going well, and then boom, she gets hit in the face with the garlic. All of that goes out the window, she loses control, she ends up having a successful birth, but her suggestion is if you're ever going to attend to a laboring woman, do not eat garlic. Then later in the choice— later in the chapter, she talks a little bit about, you know what? Garlic breath is pretty bad, but you want to know what's worse? Want to know what's worse? What's worse than garlic breath is no breath at all. And she reminds the reader that as long as you have breath in your body, you have the ability to change. You have the ability to move forward. And earlier in the book, she actually says that she wrote this book so that she can help you as the reader restore your power of choice. What does that mean? The choice to discover, to love, to understand, to forgive, to liberate, to embrace our mess as human beings, which is exactly what we are. So restore the power of choice. That's what it also says in the subtitle here, The Power of Choice. So now that you know that you have some breath, you know that you have the ability to win in life. In that same chapter talking about breath, which again is my biggest takeaway from this book, She talks about that epic Eric Thomas speech, the one that I used to listen to years and years ago when I was going to the gym that says, you need to want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe. So, if you're walking out in the ocean and you're starting to lose the ability to breathe, you no longer take it for granted. But a lot of us do. You need to remember that we have the same power to restore our choice. You need to become present in your body. Suzanne says it's kind of the most protected place we can be. if you're present and in the moment and you can kind of get back to yourself, right? You want to think about that with the power of choice. There are a lot of relationships in our lives, in our lives that cause us to enter into a negative spiral. You want to toss that out the window. Remember, you have the power to shift the momentum. The power is yours. You don't need to live the standard narrative. You know what's interesting too is Suzanne says in this book, you know, the whole go to college, get a 9 to 5, get married, have a white picket fence house and 3 kids and a dog and all that kind of thing. Doesn't the same thing really apply to the hustle mentality that we hear nowadays with entrepreneurship? Like, oh, you need to grow a big social following and you need to quit your job and you need to grow a big business and you need to develop all these relationships and you need to be super independent and you can't work for anybody else and have a 9-to-5. Like, isn't that kind of the same narrative that we're pushing on people? It's oppressive. Remember, you have the power to choose. So I would highly recommend checking out this book. There are so many great lessons. Suzanne and I are absolutely going to do a podcast and expand on a dozen other concepts that I learned in this book. But if you found today's concept interesting, which is never have garlic before you attend to a laboring woman, and you want more stories like this with kind of like a fun humor undertone, but serious business lessons and like kind of epic leadership stuff in here too, then definitely grab a copy of Get There Now by Suzanne Conrad. If you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, go read something and I'll see you soon. Bye.
