John Ulsh — Finding The Upside of Down: How to Pivot When Your Playbook is Destroyed

In 3, 2, 1.

Welcome back to Becoming Preferred, the podcast where we equip entrepreneurs and business leaders with the mindset, strategies and edge to level up their game and become the best version of themselves.

Now, when a business or a career hits an unexpected crisis, most leaders talk about bouncing back.

But what if the playbook is destroyed and there is no version of Back to return?

2.

My guest today knows what it means to rebuild from scratch.

In 2007, John D. Alch survived a catastrophic head on collision and was given less than a 3% chance of survival after more than 45 surgeries and years of recovery.

He didn't just survive, he transformed his mindset, became a USA Today best selling author of the Upside of Down and now leads a top performing real estate team.

Today, John shares how to lead under pressure, make high stakes decisions when there is zero clarity and embrace the process when the owner the only way forward is through.

Please join me for my conversation with John Alsch.

Well, hi John, welcome to the program.

We're delighted to have you.

Thank you Michael for having me.

I'm excited to be here.

Now where are we speaking to you from today?

John?

I am in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

So I'm originally from Central Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, but I'm down in Philly right now.

I know where Harrisburg is and a great sports town.

You got such great sports teams there.

So Phil and I know you're getting LeBron now for this coming up NBA season.

I don't know, maybe we have a championship on the way.

Well, I think that's the only reason LeBron showing up and I think that's what we all believe.

But you know, as we're also home of Villanova basketball and my son just graduated from there and those programs were built off of kids putting four or five years together.

And so yeah, I don't know how the, I don't know how the sports basketball particularly does when you bring all the superstars together who they'll have to take, take a role play and I don't know how that's going to go, but we'll see.

We're excited.

I work with sales teams and Phoenix Suns are one of our clients and I work with their sales teams and when LeBron went to Miami, they fired and laid off the entire salesforce.

They sold everything, sold out instantly done.

They didn't need it.

There was nothing to sell.

There was nothing to sell.

Spaces all there was nothing to sell.

They everyone bought everything instantly and they literally.

So that's kind of impact he has and of course we know he's a.

He's an impact player.

Well, thanks for doing this.

I'm really excited about this.

It was interesting.

I had a chance to peek at your book and talk about your story.

You have got a great story.

But before we kind of get into it, let's go back, first of all, to high school.

You're back in high school.

Maybe you're living in Pennsylvania.

You're deciding what you want to be when you grow up.

Start there.

And what were you thinking?

What was your journey like?

Where were you headed to?

Because life stuff, you know, events got in the way.

Start there first, if you wouldn't mind.

Give us a little back.

So I grew up in a little town north of Harrisburg.

So Harrisburg is divided by the Susquehanna river, largest tributary into the Chesapeake Bay.

So the river is over a mile wide, but you could, in the summer, you could walk across it and not get your shorts wet.

So, big open river.

But I grew up in the small town called Millersburg, north of Harrisburg.

And we graduated an average 60 to 68 kids a class.

Wow.

Very small, very rural.

I was a high school athlete.

In our town, you played three sports because you otherwise didn't have enough kids.

So I played football, basketball, and ran track.

I excelled at track.

Track was immediately easy for me.

I was a really good hurdler, and so ended up growing into a sprinter as well, and then ultimately a jumper as well.

And so I left little Millersburg and had an opportunity to run track at some big universities on the East coast, like, had an opportunity to go to Syracuse, Rutgers, visited those campuses in the winter of my senior year.

And this is before you ever committed a year in advance and was way like a, you know, a small fish in a huge pond.

And I'm like, yeah, this is like, I would have been like, probably the eighth fastest sprinter on the Syracuse tee, but I was the fastest kid in districts and, you know, state champion in hurdles.

So I was like, this is not where I want to be.

So I ended up going to a Division 3 program where I got to be MVP as all four years of my collegiate track career ended up doing decathlon, which allowed me to do all the events.

And so built that, you know, running foundation, you know, early on.

But it was more of the, okay, well, running hurdles is fun.

I was a big skateboarder growing up.

I was of that.

Of that late 80s, early 90s skateboard era.

And so we had half pipes in our backyard and.

And so hurdles was just, you know, another fun way to run without having to just run straight line like you had to jump over something.

Right.

So.

Well, how you could even do that?

I get on a skateboard.

I can't get off of one.

I need help.

I can get on it, but I can't do anything when I'm on it.

And it's.

I can't even get off it without falling on my butt.

So I was never, I never had that.

I wish I did.

I could play baseball and golf, but I was never your last guy picked.

I was always your second last guy picked and saw your bonus player and you can have Vickers.

So I had to put my pursuits elsewhere.

But, hey, we all have those talents.

All right, so you're a poli sci guy, too.

In college, were you going to be a lawyer at one time?

Was that.

Yeah.

So my father's an attorney.

Well, he's 80 years, about to be 80 years old in two weeks and still says he's an attorney, still practices a little bit.

So it was in my, in my blood.

My grandfather was a banker.

So, you know, my thoughts were professional.

Go to law school or go work in banking.

So I did both.

I got accepted to law school.

Yeah.

And then ended up not going and went to work for a bank and did that for a little over a year.

Year before I was brought in to my, my wife's business, you know, so.

Yeah.

Which was the jewelry industry.

And I spent 12 or 13 years there before I decided to go into real estate.

Separating ourselves.

We ended up being separated as a couple as well, but ultimately just not being in the same industry.

And so that's what, you know, as we get to my accident, that's what I was, I had, I had just started in March of 2007, and the accident happened December.

And we all know what happened in 2008, which was the start of the housing crash and the stock market crash.

And I jokingly said you could write a book.

You could write, you could write a book on all those nasty events and how they impacted your life.

Right.

Well, let's talk about.

Because I know you were in real estate.

I think you were for one of Warren Buffett's real estate company for a little bit.

Williams, before that was a Berkshire.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

All right, so let's go, if you don't mind, let's go to.

Let's tell our audience what happened.

So December 1st of 2007 was a Saturday, and it was the Saturday right after Thanksgiving.

So Thanksgiving was real late that year.

Right.

And so we had Thanksgiving, had a bunch of family spend the night in the Friday Saturday morning, my 8 year old daughter Katie had a swim meet.

And the swim meet was about an hour south of Harrisburg, Carlisle down 81, almost in Maryland for those who know the area.

And so we had a real early morning to be at the pool.

I think she had to be at the pool at 8am and as I said, I was been a runner my whole life, so I was running marathons at that point.

And so I clearly remember like, you know, Saturday morning, getting up at like 6 in the morning, it's dark, I go outside and there's you know, an inch of snow on the ground, which in Pennsylvania, December 1st is real early, you know, to have some snow on the ground.

And I remember because it was, you know, sort of a pain to run.

I ran 13 miles that morning before mostly because again, combination of needing to get the miles in, but also just finish Thanksgiving and running was also a great stress breaker for me.

So we get early in the car, like 7am and we get down to the swim meet and we, we have a four year old son, James, and so basically we bribe him and say, look, if you can behave yourself in this indoor swim meet, which if you've ever been inside an indoor swimming pool, it's sort of like a Russian sauna in there.

It's just generally sweaty and hot and smells like chlorine.

And so, so he's like, you know, we'll go get a Christmas tree when we're done if you can, you know, get through this swim meet.

So we leave the swim meet and it's about noon, so, you know, it's already just lunchtime.

And we're pulling out of this high school where the, where the meet was held.

And instead of turning left and going exactly the direction that we came from, we decided to take the more scenic route.

Turn right out of the school, get up to Interstate 81 from a different exit, very rural area of Pennsylvania.

And we're driving on a 55 mile undivided road.

And a car coming the other direction at the last second crossed the center line.

We went driver to driver, no skid marks on the road.

So the police report would estimate the impact speed at 125 miles an hour.

Jeez.

Other driver did not have a seatbelt on, died instantly.

No drugs, no alcohol.

He was actually on a, on a cell phone talking to his fiance.

We only know this because obviously after the fact, the police investigation.

Distracted.

Yeah, that she was.

And so something distracted right at the last second, whether it fell off at sea, you know, we've all been In a car, you know?

Yeah, especially if we travel for work where something falls or the coffee spills out of the thing.

Something happened last second.

So my whole family's in the car.

So my wife is in the front passenger seat.

She's unconscious.

Broken hand, broken ribs, broken foot, laceration from the, from the lap belt.

My son James, the 4 year old, in a booster seat behind me.

And so my chair comes back into him and snaps his fibia tibia in his left leg.

And then the lap belt ended up severing a small intestine, but it never cut his skin.

So he was already admitted into the hospital before they even realized he was going septic because he didn't see a cut on his skin.

So my daughter Katie, the one who had the swim meet, was in the back passenger seat.

She was the only one who stayed conscious.

And so when first responders actually arrived, they found her crawling between the seats crying, daddy, don't die.

And so I took the blunt of it again.

Impact speed.

I'm six two.

The engine block did what it was supposed to.

It collapsed, but shattered my left foot.

The energy came up my left leg, split my pelvis 7 inches apart in the front, snapping the back of it.

And then my tailbone split long way, and then L1 through L4.

So my four lower vertebrae all fractured into each other.

That orthopedic stuff wasn't even.

That wasn't even their concern.

My spleen had ruptured, my diaphragm ruptured, my appendix ruptured, my left lung completely collapsed.

When my.

When my diaphragm diaphragm ruptured, my right lung partially collapsed.

And so we were closer to Hagerstown, Maryland than we were Harrisburg or any other major city.

And University of Maryland's trauma center was actually the closest trauma center, but Penn State Medical center, which is Penn State University, the hospital itself is located in Hershey, Pennsylvania, so right outside of Harrisburg, where Hershey Chocolate's manufactured.

You know, the university is in the middle of the state, but the hospital is, the teaching hospital is in Harrisburg.

So they kept two of these helicopters.

They're called Life lion because Penn State is the Nitley Lion.

So they keep one at Hershey and they kept one in Carlisle, the town I was living in.

And that transport saved my life.

My son and I were transported there.

My daughter and my wife were taken into Hagerstown and later transferred that afternoon in an ambulance, you know, two hours up to Hershey because I was going to die.

I was given less than a 3% chance to survive.

I took 38 units of blood in the first 12 hours, which is, you know, guys, our size, we hold about eight.

Yeah, that's how much I was bleeding out.

That was what was going to kill me.

You know, I survived for over 45 minutes with a collapsed, completely collapsed left lung and a partially collapsed right lung.

And you know, part of the reason I tell that story about running 13 miles that morning is, you know, my physical condition saved my life.

Yeah, no kidding.

I was also under 10.

I was 185 pounds, was under 10 body fat.

So when they cut me from sternum to pelvis to open me to try to stop the internal bleeding, they also didn't have all this visceral fat that they had to work around.

Yeah.

So I would spend 18 days in a coma.

My son spent the second longest amount of time in the hospital and he was there 15 days.

So by the time I, you know, came off a ventilator, came out of a coma, my family was home recovering.

So, you know, one of my very first questions was, where's my family?

How's my family?

And you know, for me, you know, I got it.

You know, I knew they were home, I knew they were injured, but I also knew they weren't still in hospital.

They were alive.

You know, my second question, was it my fault?

And by 18 days the police report was there and you know, they had the impact speed and the fact that the driver, driver came across the line and there was no drugs or alcohol.

Like, you know, he had a, he had a three month old baby boy to his fiance who he was on the phone with.

And so, you know, this year when we have the 20th anniversary of our car accident, there'll also be a 20 year old young man who's never known his dad.

Yeah.

Wow.

Have you ever reached out, have you ever connected with that side of the family at all?

We had some very minor connections.

That fiance wasn't interested at all.

I mean, honestly, you know, I think she was, you know, I mean, Pennsylvania minimum coverage is $30,000 for liability for car.

It cost $30,000 for that helicopter to fly.

My son and I. Yeah, you know, whatever he had from his employer, we didn't try to go after.

Yeah, you know, we, you know, she was going to have to deal with her son by herself.

And so whatever, you know, this is before the Internet as well, you know, so we tried to make some connections and ultimately got to her and she wasn't interested in talking.

Yeah, yeah, well, that's true, but, well, it's such a tragic, tragic thing.

So 07 hits, 08 hits.

And of course we know the financials.

So you go from one crisis on a physical level to a mental one right where we're a job.

So the real estate's down.

That's for your training.

So obviously financially it was very difficult.

And so I mean it doesn't get any worse really.

If you were going to paint, let's draw out something that's really worse.

Let's talk about how because you started to evolve from there.

So after the 7 08, how did you start your work career?

What were you doing to earn Ensby?

So when I came out of my coma I was, you know, I was so swollen.

They left me open for three days to try to repair these internal injuries, stop the bleeding and eventually they had to close me because of infection risks.

They couldn't pull my abdominal muscles so they just pulled the fascia skin and stitched together and said if this guy lives, we're gonna have to fix this later.

So when I came out of my coma it was, you know, 18 days.

It was 18th of December.

By the Christmas Eve I was transported out of the hospital and I thought I was going to rehab.

Physical therapy inpatient to I was paralyzed from the waist down.

I could not move either of my legs.

I thought I was going to physical therapy because of my back and my pelvis.

I was non weight bearing for eight more weeks.

So I got moved into a nursing home at 37 years of age to spend eight weeks the day before Christmas laying flat on my back.

So I tell that story because while I was in the nursing home I sold three homes.

Two to nurse aides and one to a nurse.

That's awesome.

I had people from.

There's a closer for you.

Yeah, people from my office.

Show it back then we were still using four part forms while laying flat on my back wrote those contracts.

I am 100% sure that my partners took those contracts and rebid them afterwards.

I'm also very sure that I got paid on transactions I wasn't involved in.

That was just the group of people that I was working with.

Lovely people.

Yeah.

And so yes, so I was in real estate continued while I was recovering to, you know, sell where I could.

And again, I had great support, I had great, great assistant.

I had people who could cover for me.

My wife was working for her family's business.

So they covered because this is Christmas and they were in the retail jewelry business.

So this is the time of year.

Yeah, exactly.

It also was A realization that maybe even CEOs and upper, you know, leadership isn't as important as we think we are because things still happened and people still stepped up even though, you know, your number two person wasn't there, which was, you know.

Yeah.

Positive and on the fact that the team could do it.

But also, you know, sort of a realization that maybe we overemphasize how much, how many 80 hour days we have to put in or 80 hour weeks we have to put in at Christmas, you know what I mean?

Like so.

But yeah, so I left rehab and went to physical therapy and they thought I would be there for a month.

I was there for eight days.

One of the decisions I made early on was that if I was going to be paralyzed from the waist down that my kids weren't going to push me around in a wheelchair.

And so with by New Year's I had stretchy bands tied to the rails of my bed.

And you know, again I was 185 pound marathon runner.

So under 10% body fat.

I was 155 pounds by J.

Small.

Yeah, yeah.

So I was just losing muscle.

It was a lot of body fat to lose, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So using those stretchy bands became this thing that I would do constantly while laying in this bed in tremendous amount of pain because now I'm taking oral narcotics versus IV and you know, every four hours I could have more narcotics.

They lasted about three hours if you know, so it was always this like, okay, I'm just waiting for the next chance to have some pain relief and so I just pull in these stretchy bands.

So when I got to physical therapy, even though I was 150 some pounds I could hold myself between two parallel bars.

Had no use whatsoever of my left leg at that point.

After, you know, now it's, now it's 13 weeks since the accident.

I could use my right leg a little bit.

To this day I don't have any feeling in my left leg, but I feel my big toe which is the only reason again your listeners can't tell.

But I'm because I'm sitting, but I can walk.

I'm not in a wheelchair right now.

And that's simply for the miracle that I can.

The damage that was done through my to my nerves didn't affect my big toe.

So are you limping or you just.

Can we tell that you've had.

Yeah, I mean not a lot anymore.

Yeah, I'm good.

Very strong now.

Yeah, so what I've lack in, you know, balance and core balance because again, half of my abdominal muscles are still missing.

They were only able to reattach half of them when I finally was able to do it.

My balance is really held together by the fact that I'm very strong around my core now, but I can't close my eyes and stand on one foot.

I'd fall right over.

I probably in the same way I've seen your on stage photos and you look so good for you.

Like, wow, that's just, that's not.

And how's the rest of the family do?

How did they recover from all of that?

So, yeah.

So everybody.

So my son again with the legs being snapped as fibia tibia, being four years old, he just graduated college, he's six foot four.

So I did grow, right.

He did stop his growth.

It didn't.

No.

Yeah.

And, and so later my wife's bowel would end up rupturing and they said it was damaged from the seat belt.

That was pretty scary for her because she ended up being septic and ended up in the hospital for a while.

But again later after the accident, just associated with that.

And you know, my daughter who's, you know, now 26 years old, you know, even as, as a kid struggled to see car accidents again, dealing with the fact that, so, you know, my kids being 8 and 4 when the accident happened, they don't have a lot of memory of my life, particular my 4 year old son before the accident.

So I've had 45 surgeries to date related to the accident.

Wow.

The last 16 of them have been related to complications because I didn't die.

So I can't really be upset about it.

But like literally a lot of them have been to save my left leg from being amputated.

Yeah.

Dealing with the damage to my heart that would they later find that was at the time the only person they knew in the country with a traumatic vsd.

A hole between the right left ventricle that opened up from trauma.

And the argument would be you should have died from six other things.

So the fact that four to six months later a hole opened in your heart after the accident, you know, they don't have, they didn't know anybody back then.

Unfortunately we do now because soldiers, you know, being in the area of explosives would experience, you know, similar injuries and they would later determine that really what happened to me was not the airbags or the steering wheel.

It was actually the recursive vibration from 125 mile impact speed.

Wow.

What kind of car, what kind of vehicle were you driving?

ACURA rdx.

So this small car.

Yeah, yeah.

Built off the Honda CRV platform.

Yeah, it's like a luxurious Honda.

Yeah, exactly.

Wow.

And we ended up buying three.

Two more after that one because.

Yeah, well, they're collapsing cages.

I mean, they've got some great design to those things as well.

Wow.

Well, you've.

One of the things you talk about is.

And you've certainly have come back and obviously a great example of that.

And most of us will never have to go through things like, I've had my setbacks have just kind of gone by the wayside as I'm listening to you.

And, you know, for me, when I look back at a setback, I'm going, you know, I'm a speaker, 2020 hits.

All my speaking contracts collapsed and 60% of my stock portfolio tanked.

But I'm sitting here going, no, poor me.

Right.

And yet we're healthy, and our family's healthy and our kids are healthy.

But let's talk about the comeback and the resilience, because you've got the eight pillars of an unbreakable comeback in lessons, which you talk, which I think is really interesting.

And then I want to talk about your ready framework, but let's talk about reframing, bouncing back in general.

So, John, most of people view resilience, which you've done, as bouncing back to where they came from before the crisis.

But in your work, you argue there's no version of back.

So how should entrepreneurs reframe adversity when there's a market shift or business failure completely destroys the original playbook.

Yeah.

So again, when you're thinking about adversity or setbacks, the first reframing, which is sometimes the hardest, is there's so much opportunity to learn not only about yourself or your business or your industry, with inside that setback.

Right.

You know, we were talking about professional athletes a second ago.

You know, professional athletes, or college athletes, for that matter, are very unique individual in the sense that they don't reach the level where they are without actually falling in love with the process.

Right.

Taking the injuries, the setbacks that you didn't get picked, you didn't get this school that wants you like, they're.

They don't play for championships.

Now, we just made a discussion that LeBron may be showing up just to win a championship, but he didn't get to where his level is by not wanting to go to practice.

You know, So I feel like for a lot of people, the goal, the finish line becomes this thing that you focus on.

And if you talk to entrepreneurs, you talk to athletes, you talk to people who have dealt with adversity.

They'll all tell you that everything that they've learned, all the beauty, lies in the process and not the outcome.

Right?

So I. I'd like people to think is, okay, fine, we are in this adversity, we're in the setback, but at this point, we don't have any control over that.

Like, my accent's a perfect example.

I always say, like, I'm not a first responder.

I'm not a soldier.

I say I was.

I'm not even a motocross racer.

I was doing nothing but leaving a swim meet with my family and a call across the center line, like, no control whatsoever.

People would later give me like, oh, here's an award for survival.

And I would be like, the only reason I survived is because God insurgents.

Like, I had nothing to do with my survival from the day I came out of a coma till today.

I can take credit for my journey, but the reality is there's so much built into a plan or built into, you know, your goals that are way out of your control.

Collapse of.

Of a real.

Like, you had a speaking keynote, and then all of a sudden, Covid happens.

Yeah, you couldn't have figure that out, like, no way.

But so.

So just like that, what you built was turned upside down.

So you can only control what you can control.

And so, you know, for me, the only thing I could control was showing up every day, trying to work on getting better every single day.

You know, that's good minds.

That's good mindset, though.

And you mentioned faith or God in your world, and you actually have a talk on faith in the fire, finding clarity, grace, and strength in the most painful chapters of your life.

And we have people who aren't believers and people are believer.

We have everybody, every walk of life that listen to the show.

What was the role of that for you?

Were you into, you know, spiritual things ahead of time for you?

Church going and then that helped you?

Because there's a lot of variables, but what was the role for that for you?

Yeah, so I.

So I grew up with Christianity in my life.

You know, I grew up in, like I said, a small town.

We went to church on Sunday.

Everybody.

We kind of had that same balance with my children.

And so it.

It did in the sense, like, early on particularly, there was some of this that, you know, why did this happen to me?

Mentality.

Right?

Yeah.

Well, the other part for me was I struggled with survival's remorse, particularly in the first two years, like, really, why did I survive and the other person didn't?

Because.

And so, you know, I talked to priests and pastors and therapists and psychologists, and nobody really gave me anything I could wrap my head around.

Not from, like, okay, you should write a book and become a keynote speaker and try to help other people.

But a friend who was a Presbyterian pastor who.

Who had played a role even from the first day when I showed up in the nursing home and told me that day on Christmas Eve, when no one else was in the room and watched my family interact with me for the first time since my kids only got to see me the very first time.

The day I moved into the nursing home, they never saw me in the hospital.

It was just decided to see me all hooked up to all that stuff was going to be too traumatic for them.

Pretty traumatic.

So he watched me interact, and then when my family left, he was still there.

And he said, you know, you're allowed to be pissed off and still be positive.

And I was like, you're right, because I'm in my room.

That's interesting.

That's good insight.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm watching this, like, Scrooge in the Christmas story.

Like, everything's going on around me in the room.

People are coming to see me, friends are coming to see, because I just got in a nursing home, and I'm in so much pain and so drugged.

It's just like looking through foggy piece of glass through a window.

Like, I'm not there, but I'm there.

Right.

And for.

And, you know, I'm just trying to be a positive person for everybody else.

Yeah.

And he said, you know what?

It's okay to be pissed off about it later.

You know, about two years after the accident, his wife worked for me, and I was sitting in his kitchen getting some paperwork, and he asked me how things were going, and I told him how the struggle of survival.

And he said, maybe just survive so your kids would have a dad.

Why you make it more complicated than that?

And so that was also, like, something that I held on to and.

And started to say, like, okay, well, that's sort of my role.

So maybe I was working too much or going out and playing golf with my buddies and not being there for, you know, soccer matches and swim meets and all these things.

We've all done that.

Yeah.

So I've all.

So that was.

Came a huge shift in my why.

And my real estate career gave me the flexibility of saying, you know what?

I can't meet you from 5 to 6:30 today because I have something else on my calendar which happened to be a soccer match but I'm available at 6:30 or 7 and I don't mind working until midnight so I'll just make it all kind of work.

And so that became sort of this mantra of mine that I wasn't going to miss kids activities because something else was taking me away from it.

Yeah, your values probably got focused and you got clarity around that so that matters.

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And now back to my conversation with John Ulsch.

Let's talk about decision making without a roadmap because after surviving a 3% survival rate and enduring 45 surgeries, you faced years of recovery with zero guarantee of the outcome.

It probably affected your revenue as well.

How do you coach leaders though to make high stake business decisions when there is no roadmap, there is no certainty.

Well, so my first, you know, framework or my first pillar is commitment.

And I think a lot of people want a perfect plan or the perfect opportunity or the perfect system in place or the perfect people around them before they commit.

Right?

And I think leaders know that doesn't work that way, that you commit first and then you take the step and then you start to kind of have to figure things out.

So there's that leap of faith that's built into every commitment and you can be as prepared as you can be.

But if you're going to wait to be 100%, you'll just keep waiting forever Right.

Yeah.

So there is this commitment factor, and I like to separate motivation from commitment.

A lot of people will say, I'm motivated, and motivation will get you started, but most always it kind of comes and goes.

Right.

But commitment for the car, it's cast for the car.

And then if you can make it to your purpose, that's purpose will give you the motivation you need if you're.

Yeah.

And so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, purpose again.

I would rather have somebody be purposeful than perfect every time.

I'm sure you coach the same.

Like, you can't be perfect.

So let's be really purposeful with our time and our energy.

And so I also think that when it comes to commitment, a lot of people want to say, I'm motivated to make this change in my life or make these adjustments, and that's great.

That'll get a meeting with you or a meeting with me or get us in group coaching.

But it's not going to get you where you want to go.

That's commitment.

And commitment is really just getting a plan.

Yeah.

And then kind of executing from the plan.

So when you don't have motivation, you literally have commitment to lean against.

And some days that's showing up and being at 100%.

And some days it's showing up at 10%.

Either way, it's showing up.

Yeah.

Showing up.

No, it's.

Let's talk about the trap of why me versus what now?

So when disaster hits, whether it's a severe injury or a loss of a major client, it's natural to fall into the why me?

You know, when did this happen?

What practical mental exercises do you use to shift a team or yourself into what now Mode?

So I think the first thing is to understand the why part of it.

You look at that and you're like, oh, here's the team comes together, and here's seven different things that we should have done better or we did wrong or this is why it happened.

Right.

Reality is there's probably one of those things that if you fix that one thing, a lot of other disappear.

Right.

So I use the perfect example for a lot of individuals.

A lot of people say they don't have time.

Right.

But the reality is they're really bad at time blocking.

And so when you look at the why me or why now Situation, we're back to this commitment thing.

Like, we have no control at this point.

This is where we are now.

Our choices are all based off of where we are right now.

Right.

So we either.

We either stop.

We either evaluate and go forward or we just sit in this place until we're ready to make one of those two decisions.

Like that's also the other part of commitment is there's a, there's a part of this to let yourself be in that moment.

And if you're not ready to make commitment out of that moment right now, you know, you shouldn't be, you know, you shouldn't be hard because you're not going to get there anyway.

Yeah, no, that's right.

So just, you might as well stop and take some more time to evaluate and determine if, you know, if you're not committed to go forward, is it because you're still hurt, you know, either physically or mentally hurt, or are you financially in a place that you know requires you to stop for a minute?

But I always say there's a difference between grace and a pause and quitting.

You know, I would say, you know, through my journey I've had lots of setbacks that if you looked at it from a mile high, looks like a vertical climb the whole way.

If you looked at, on any given six month period of time, lots of times where I was in a worse place than I was six months earlier.

Yeah.

The difference was I just didn't quit.

And to me saying I didn't quit was enough.

Like I would just say I'm taking a break.

Yeah, mindset's everything.

It's that programming.

So you obviously had that.

And I think maybe your athleticism and that just determination worked with it.

And you actually talked on it earlier in our conversation.

Embracing the process over the outcome.

So in the upside of down, you talk about learning to embrace the process rather than hyper fixating on the end goal, which I believe it, I believe it's all process.

Don't worry about the money, worry about building something that's excellent, that process.

It's the journey, not just the climbing.

You know, quick story comes to mind.

One of my friends climbed Everest.

Three times they climbed Everest and first time they fell 150 meters short of the top.

Second time, 300 meters short of the top, third time they actually summited.

People died on the expeditions.

60% Of the people die on the way down.

And I mean they're just committed.

Seven year journey, millions of dollars of investment.

So I said to him, his name is Al Hobson and Jamie Clark, the two mountain climbers.

And I said, Al, what was it like?

I was speaking with him two weeks after an event and he was, he was keynoting as well.

And I said, what was it like when you finally got to the top and seven years of journey, millions of dollars, people, teammates died and stuff.

And he goes, you know what?

It was anticlimactic.

I go, what are you talking about?

And he goes, when I got to the top, he goes, I realize that it wasn't about the summiting.

That was the thing.

It was the journey, it was the process, it was the getting there where all the action was.

And he goes, to me, he goes, I'm tired of being a human doing, doing this, do this to get to the outcome.

I just want to go home and be a human being and I'm going to be this and be that.

So I thought, great insight.

And you've kind of said the same thing.

So how does an ambitious entrepreneur become or balance high growth goals and stay present in the grind?

Well, again, I think it's based off a lot of what your, what your friend said.

And I, I've got a good friend, Stephen Pivnick, who never got the summit and he's done the other peaks and he's not going back.

Yeah, I don't blame him, you know, and two and all the big ones and he's done.

He's finally got to do the Ironman Kona.

But he did it by never qualifying.

He did it by doing 20 full Ironmans.

If you do 20, you automatically get a bid into Hawaii.

Right?

Yeah.

So, so he, again, perfect example.

Like, all right, he never was fast.

And so it's the same thing.

Like most people who take on really big challenges when they achieve them are anti.

Anticlimactic.

Right.

Yeah.

Because.

Because all of the beauty lies in the grind anyway.

Right.

I 100%, I know, I'm with you.

I think even then it's like, can we, you know, in my world, the finish line just keeps going further away.

The goalposts just keep moving away so that I don't ever get to the finish line.

That's right.

And even if you look at, you know, super successful entrepreneurs, Billion and billionaires.

Right.

It's not the money any longer.

The money is nothing more than a way to measure.

Yeah.

What you're doing.

Right.

So, you know, executives and entrepreneurs are just, it's just another way to measure success.

They don't get to that point and go, I'm done.

Yeah.

So I think that's the key.

The key is that you ultimately love the process and what you do so much that you don't want the finish line and you don't want the, you know, the peak, if you will.

And so bigger challenge then Is how do I keep myself in the game?

Yeah, well, balance.

That's back to being balanced.

Family balance, life balance, exercise.

You know, if you do all these things and at the end you die of a massive heart attack.

Yeah, that.

Which is quick way to go, you know.

Well, it's like I say, the process, you know, I call it.

We get glimpses of peace once in a while, but they're glimpses.

And you know, I'm fortunate to work for some of Warren Buffett's companies and he has a great line speaking line because food always tastes best when you're hungry.

And he's not giving his grandkids, you know, all the millions.

His kids get some, but they get four year college.

Right.

Full ride scholarship, that's it.

You could give them 100 million each and not.

He's given it 99% of it away to charity because he doesn't want to rob them from the process.

And is the process you're talking about?

Let's talk about your executive coaching program through some of your programs.

What is the single biggest misconception that high performing leaders have about their own limitations?

I think that the biggest one is this idea that there's a temple or church at the top of the mountain that they're going towards.

I think so many leaders are driven by this nirvana at the top.

Right, right.

Never really realizing that it's just one step in front of you.

So after the accident, when I could finally walk again and I could move, I kind of made it a thing that I wanted to see the world.

I wasn't going to wait till I was 50 some years old to travel.

So I was fortunate to go to the Holy Lands and I went to Greece on two trips and went to Italy and I went to Hong Kong and China.

And every single one of these places there was a temple or a church on the top of a mountain that would be anywhere from 800 to 3,000 years old.

And every single one of them had 800 to 3,000 year old set of steps that went up.

Right.

And I'm a guy, I told you earlier, I don't feel my left foot.

So I can walk.

But I can tell you that I could start at the bottom in Hong Kong at this mountain and look up and see this temple and just look at these stairs.

And there was only one way I was going to get there and that was looking at that one stair in front of me and then stepping on that one.

And then, and then if I had walked staring up at the horizon or at the top of this mountain, I would have fallen over and over and over again because I needed to look down in front of me.

And I use that example a lot with we've all seen a giant set of stairs, and we all want to get to the top, even Philadelphia, you want to go see the rocky statue at Franklin, you got to go climb the stairs.

So the only way you're going to get there is one step at a time.

And the only opportunity to hurt yourself or fall is to spend way too much time looking up at the top.

Yeah.

And the other part of it is, you know, you get halfway up there and, you know, and you're like, all right, well, I'm halfway.

You look behind you and you're like, I've come a long way.

But you didn't.

You know, every step, if you look backwards after every step, you'd be like, I got a long way.

I didn't go very far, and I have a long way to go.

Yeah.

And so I think that, you know, the goal itself, when it becomes that thing on top of the mountain that the false God that you want to worship, then you're going to end up not getting there, because the only way to get there is to take that next rickety old step and stop and take another one.

Like, it's just first steps over and over.

Well, in your discipline, and you've had a career and a lifelong discipline just through your athleticism.

So let's talk about the role of discipline when motivation fades.

So it's easy.

When business is booming, things are great.

But what daily disciplines or non negotiables kept you moving forward on days when you physically or mentally just didn't even want to get out of bed?

A written plan.

I, to this day, particularly as my recovery from my physical recovery, I keep journals, like my workout journals.

And I could have used it even back 10, 15 years ago, you could use an app on my phone.

But I chose to keep these written books.

And so there are times where I'll just take one and I'll look at it from, you know, 2013 or 14 and see where I was.

Right.

And a lot of times I'll see the things that I also stopped doing that seemed really important, but I don't do them anymore.

And why?

What made me get away from that reoccurring activity, particularly if it was revenue driven.

Right.

Or recovery driven.

And so I, again, I am a big scorekeeper.

Even though I'm not so much about achieving the goal, I am about keeping score.

Because I grew up as an athlete.

And how do you know if you're winning if you're not keeping score?

Right.

So I do think that, you know, keeping accurate record, whether it's a journal, whether it's your P. Ls, like, whatever it is, it needs to be tracked and because again, a big part of my recovery is dealing with the setbacks.

Yeah.

And when the setbacks come, all you can do is reevaluate and then adjust your plan appropriately.

Yeah, no, it makes sense.

I love to measure everything.

You know, I use a Apple, watch the loaded up one, and I track everything.

I track my sleep, I track my macros, I track my heart rates.

And I've actually lowered my physiological life by just over seven years, seven and a half years.

And you know, I'm coming up on 67, but it's showing.

I'm 59 with all the measure.

Thank you too.

And.

But I wasn't.

I'm healthier now, And I was seven, eight, 10 years ago.

And it's those little steps, it's that daily thing.

But.

And I look at that.

Habits versus discipline.

And I have mixed feelings about this because I think habits are important.

We have to have some good habits.

You know, this morning I'm in gym 5 15.

I'm already heading out the door.

Right.

I don't always feel like it, particularly on Monday mornings, but I have that habit and I have that discipline.

And I said it.

And what I do is I will actually book it in and calendar it and book it with the instructors so that I'm showing up or I'm getting charged.

And just that alone is my trigger to going, no, I'm not giving that up.

I just don't want it.

And then I'm always glad I did it when I did it, but not in the moment.

It just doesn't, you know, so it's a relative.

The discipline's the anchor, I guess.

And you got those daily non negotiables, you know, that keeps you going.

Because I'm sure you had days where you're just feeling awful.

You're really terrible.

You didn't feel like working, you just.

But you got up and just did it anyway.

Or even a half day.

Well, and so, first of all, one of my biggest challenges, like, again, part of my story is two years after the accident, my daughter's now 10, is out there juggling a soccer ball in the front yard.

And I'm working in a home office.

I'm on a walker at this point.

And she comes in the office crying and I thought she hurt herself, Right.

And she hits me with, I miss my old daddy, the one who will come out and train with me.

Yeah.

And of all the things I had been through at that point, at 20, some surgeries at least, I was like, well, that's the worst thing anyone's ever said to me.

Yeah.

So, like, I, again, I thought I was here for living so that my daughter would have a daughter.

So the next day I literally went to my physical therapist and quit and said, I can do this on my own harder than you're going to push me.

Right.

And so I go to my local YMCA at 10am and there just happens to be a program there through United Cerebral Palsy with teenagers with down syndrome.

Wow.

And if you've spent any time around people with down syndrome, the most positive human beings that you know.

And so I literally walked into something that became a foundation of my ability to recover because I put myself around positive human beings who weren't there for any outcome other than the love of just going to the gym and working out.

And I worked out this kid Danny, who by the way, was 17 years old, strong as a bull, significantly stronger than me when we first met each other.

But he was always just positive and pushing me and like, come on, you can do like, let's just go, let's just go.

And that's the opposite of the world in my business world, Right.

Where everything was goal oriented.

And so the lesson there was, okay, well, just show up.

Yeah.

But showing up was hard because I.

Chronic pain and a lot of pain and.

But what I started to understand was if I went to the gym and pushed myself really hard, I was going to be really sore.

But this was pain.

I could control things that were within my control.

And the chronic pain that I dealt with was completely out of my control.

Right.

So it, you know, I got really strong and ultimately I was able to learn to walk without a walker, without a cane then.

But it all came out of this decision to want to control things that I could control and let the things that were out of my control, out of my control because you let it go.

The chronic pain was there, but I could control, push myself.

And I knew this as a, as a marathon runner, as a college athlete, that there was a point in which you're now pushing your limit again.

Yeah.

And, and that felt really good to me because I could control limits.

So I would say this, you know, I say the same to executives, like, look there, it's stuff that's out of your control.

But if you push your comfort level just a little bit each time, then you're going to make the progress that you want and you're going to own the progress because you pushed yourself out of your comfort level.

Yeah.

We're always capable of more like amazingly and obviously.

And you're probably still in pain.

You probably still have the owies.

You probably got arthritis and half your body.

I don't have my left leg because of the nerve damage.

Feels like your leg when it's a fault, when it's asleep.

So, you know, your leg falls asleep, you got to stand up and you almost fall over.

You get those pins and needles, you can't feel it.

Like it's not there.

Again, all I can feel is my big toe.

So I live with that.

So I had to even learn that, like, reading comprehension was a huge problem.

You ever try to read something when your hands asleep?

It's like, all I can think about is your hands asleep.

Right.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I've had years to get better at it.

Yeah.

But like, again, talking about this, you having to pay a trainer.

Right.

Or people paying us the coach.

Yeah.

Is that, is that little bit of a commitment that comes from a financial cost?

Right.

Yep.

For me, for the first, you know, the first six months of when I started working out the why with Danny and these other special need kids, I slept on my workout clothing decision.

Fatigue is a huge problem for everybody.

Right.

So I took away one thing.

And when I got up at six in the morning to get a workout and be, you know.

Yeah.

I would sleep in workout clothing just simply because I didn't have to figure out what I was going to put on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I kept a pair of Crocs beside me and that it would slide on.

And because I couldn't tie shoes, got my feet in them and a hoodie if it was, you know, cold.

And that's.

I never, once I got in the car, I never didn't go.

Yeah.

I just had to get there.

No one ever feels bad afterwards, right?

No, Exactly.

Well, listen, last question for your time flying.

This has been awesome.

Turning downside into the ultimate advantage of an entrepreneur.

Listening right now.

Or business executive professional.

Kind of feels like they've hit rock bottom in their company or their career.

I suggest they listen to this whole episode again.

But what's the very first step to finding the upside of down?

It's.

I think it's, stop, give yourself grace for a minute and breathe.

Understand where you are.

I talk a lot about this ready framework and Reflection is the first R. And it's really.

It's really like, okay, where am I right now?

Like, not where do I want to be.

Not where I think I should be.

Like, real.

Where am I?

There's, you know, next is like evaluating a situation, not how you want it to be, not how you know, you're really like, this is.

This is where I am.

You don't have to want to be there to be.

Okay, saying, this is where I am.

Like, there's a huge.

Like, there's a piece of honesty that comes that if I don't have to say it to you, Michael.

But I gotta be able say it to myself.

Yeah.

And for some of us, including myself, saying it to ourselves is sometimes harder than throwing it out to the general public.

So you really do need to stop and evaluate and understand this is where I am.

You know?

You know, this is not where I want to be.

But.

And by admitting it, doesn't say that you're okay with it.

Right.

No.

And then.

Right.

And then I think you just.

Again, a lot of times people struggle with the fact that there's this.

You need to yield to things that are out of your control.

And we talked a little bit earlier, like, there's just stuff that you're not going to be able to control, like the economy or, you know, a pandemic.

The weather, Right.

Yeah, the weather.

So you there, you just have to yield most things.

Yeah.

And understand that.

That you just.

You yield and change.

Because, you know, I look at my journey as an example of somebody who I had all the best intentions to keep pushing.

And then they'd say, okay, you're going to have another surgery.

And when they're done, we're going to put Gore Tex in you, and we're not going to let you.

Let you lift more than ten pounds, you know, for the next ten weeks again.

And I know what's going to happen in this 10 weeks when I don't lift more than 10 pounds, I'm going to go so far backwards.

What?

There's nothing I can do about it.

I'm laying in a nursing home bed thinking, if I recover, my body heals faster.

My orthopedics are going to let me go to physical therapy.

And they would tell me, you are not leaving this bed for eight weeks.

We don't care what the X ray show.

Like, you're going to spend eight weeks here.

Yeah.

So just deal with it.

Yeah, we've seen it.

We had a NHL hockey player who was badly burned, but 70% of his body.

And doctors told him two years, it was in the spring.

And he goes, I've got, I'm drafted by university.

I got to be in camp in the fall, four months.

They go, oh son, you're not getting there.

There's no way he not only did that, he made it there into the NHL.

Total visualization, total manifestation for him.

Total just grinding it and working on the habits and just he was trained athlete and through his own fault, he set himself on fire by an accident.

But Valparia put that information in the show notes.

But great episode.

Same kind of.

He says the same thing.

And that's the one thing I've seen with people who've gone through tragic, horrific things.

There's what can I control in here and control that?

And you know, I love reading the Stoics because they talk about that.

It's my hero.

And it's good wisdom.

So no, lots of great stuff.

Hey, great insights.

The book is called the Upside of Down, available where you get books.

Johnalch.com, we'll have all that in the show notes.

John, John, there's lots of great insights.

Appreciate you sharing these with our audience and if they're interested in executive coaching, then go to your website.

Got lots of good detailed resources there and formulas.

Whether it's speaking at an event, whether it's working with the team and going, overcoming and building, that strength and resiliency can reach out to you.

John, thank you so much for being our guest today.

Michael, thanks for having me.

It was a great interview.

Appreciate it.

As you were listening to this episode, what is one idea that you've heard that's caught your attention and why does it matter so much to you?

And who is one person you can share that with?

Either sharing this episode or just sharing that insight that occurred to you while you were listening?

Perhaps it is that true resilience isn't about hyper fixating on the end goal, but about falling in love with the daily process and controlling what you can control.

Or maybe it's that real commitment means showing up and taking action every single day, even on the days when motivation completely fades.

Thank you for listening, for learning, and for investing in yourself so that you can become the best version of you.

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