Soul SiStories
Soul SiStories was born out of a mutual desire to bring forward hope and healing through sharing our lived experiences. Hope is embracing life despite adversity. Hope is our reason.
Soul SiStories
Going Beyond Customer Service: A Life Dedicated to Helping Others - Neal Woodson
A childhood brush with death shaped Neal Woodson's entire life philosophy. After surviving what doctors called an infant tachycardia at less than a year old, Neil's mother consistently reminded him: "You're here for a reason. Don't squander it." That powerful message became the foundation for a life dedicated to service and helping others realize their potential.
Neal takes us on his journey from aspiring musician to leadership trainer and service advocate, revealing how unexpected opportunities and saying "yes" led him to discover his true calling. Though he initially pursued music, studying composition theory and playing trombone professionally, Neal found his purpose in teaching others about leadership and service. His transition wasn't planned but emerged organically as he followed his instinct to help others.
What makes Neal's perspective so refreshing is his definition of service. "Service is much bigger than customer service," he explains. "It's something we all do every day." From opening doors for strangers to bringing milk home for your family, service permeates our daily lives in ways we often overlook. Neal's research reveals that humans are biologically wired for cooperation rather than competition, with our bodies releasing feel-good hormones like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin when we help others.
His book "Giving a Shit" challenges the notion that businesses exist primarily for profit, arguing instead that making money is necessary (like breathing) but not the purpose. True purpose comes through service. Neal shares a fascinating contrast between the fictional "Lord of the Flies" and a real-life incident where shipwrecked schoolboys thrived through cooperation rather than descending into savagery, illustrating how service and cooperation represent our natural state.
Throughout our conversation, Neal returns to his core mantra: "Go do some good." This simple yet profound directive guides his work and personal life. When asked how he hopes to be remembered, his answer speaks volumes about his values: "He helped me. He helped me be better than I thought I could be."
Whether you're navigating personal relationships, leading a team, or running a business, Neal's insights on service-centered living offer a transformative path forward. Listen now to discover how embracing service can create a more fulfilling life and a better world for all of us.
Thanks for listening to Soul SiStories. We hope you follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Five-star ratings and reviews always help to spread our message of hope.
Soul SiStories
Instagram
Facebook
Soul SiStories Podcast - YouTube
Welcome to Soul Sisteries. Hey, oh my gosh, that was really exciting, wasn't it, Sis, we just talked with Neil Woodson, who we didn't know before this, but our wonderful Kirk brought him to us and now I'm so grateful and took away so many nuggets I have notes all over my page about.
Speaker 2:Oh, remember this. Remember this yes, me too. And movies to watch and books to read, and really just that message of going out and doing some good, and I think that is just a great way to enter into our week and our weekend here.
Speaker 1:Go do some good.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody, come, do some good and listen to Soul Sisteries right now with us and enjoy Neil Woodson. We are so thrilled and honored to be talking with the author, speaker, presenter, mentor, neil Woodson right now. Let me tell you a little bit about Neil. Neil has spent the past couple of decades helping individuals and organizations elevate their leadership and service by exploring where the two intersect. His focus is on fostering a human-centered, relational approach built on compassion, ethics and meaningful connection. How much do we love this. With a diverse background that includes roles in retail, restaurants, education, hospitality and corporate training, neil brings real world experience to his work. Through his writing, teaching and speaking. Neil encourages others to think differently, act intentionally and find greater fulfillment through service. He leads workshops, delivers keynotes that help organizations create cultures centered on well-being for both employees and customers. As Neil says, go do some good, neil welcome. Welcome. Welcome to Soul Sisteries.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much. It's great to meet you too and I have to give a shout out to my good friend, dear friend, your producer Kirk Lane, who actually invited me here and I already feel like I'm part of the family, so this is good.
Speaker 1:Awesome, we're so glad that he did. And yeah, as we were just saying, kirk is the third sister in the group, so that totally works, so thanks, kirk. So, neil, really where we like to start when talking with anyone, we are obviously in Soul Sisteries, invested in the story, in your story, in people's stories. Everybody's got rich, many stories to them, right? We want to know your story that brings you to where you are today doing this work that you do. But as you get into that, we'd love first, if you don't mind, share with us your hope through. What's your particular angle? What's your particular way in which you hold on to hope throughout your journey?
Speaker 3:Well, I think first we probably should get into some defining of what hope is. I think hope means different things to different people. Sure, I, and I actually thought about this cause when Kirk invited me and said, hey, would you be on this podcast? And I said sure, and I did a little reading about you and I knew hope was a big thing and I thought, wow, I have not really thought that clearly about hope. So I began to look at that and think what is hope?
Speaker 3:And I was brought up in a relatively religious family, a conservative Christian religious family. I'm not necessarily that way now, but that's the way I was brought up, and so we did a lot of Bible reading and things. And I do remember in Hebrews it says something to the effect that hope is faith in things unseen. And the more I thought about it I thought, well, that's actually kind of the way I feel about hope. Hope is knowing that there is something better, there can be something better. But then, oddly, this morning I was working out and I was listening to another podcast and it was a podcast with these two psychologists talking about hope and they defined it from a psychological viewpoint of being something like that, you know seeing a better future, but they included action in it yes.
Speaker 3:They said, hope is a verb. Hope means you got to do something, you can influence that future, and that put a whole new thing on it, and that was literally this morning. That put a whole new kind of flavor to it. What I've been doing for the last 20 years has been largely in that direction, because my thinking is that we can have we can have better workplaces, we can have better places where we buy, we can have better lives at home if we serve each other, because that's what we're built to do.
Speaker 3:We're, we're made to help each other. I mean, we're not the biggest, fastest or strongest animals in the jungle, right, and we've relied on helping each other from the time we appeared on the planet. Yeah, and we kind of give lip service to that. We don't pay enough attention to it and we typically think when you say service, people automatically go to it's customer service. No, it's not. Service is much bigger's customer service. No, it's not. Service is much bigger than customer service. It's something we all do every day, all day. I mean, if you open the door for somebody in the store, that's service. If you smile at somebody, if you go buy milk on the way home, that's service. And we do it all the time and it's so important to what we do. So for me, hope, my hope through is I hope that through service we can make our world a better place, and I certainly want to make it a better place when I leave it than when I found it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, so will you. I know you kind of shared how you're finding this hope through the service that you're doing, but can you share what got you here? Like you talked about your early upbringing in the church. Where did it go from there?
Speaker 1:Well, from this particular angle, yeah, that has gotten you to like this Let me go back.
Speaker 3:I'm going to. This is going to sound crazy. I know you say tell us your story.
Speaker 3:Nothing here is crazy, no, but you you know, people go oh, what's your story? And you go well, I was born in, wait a minute, but I want to start there because there's something that big that happened early, early, early on, that seriously has impacted the rest of my journey on, that seriously has impacted the rest of my journey. So I was born in in Virginia, in Norfolk, Virginia, and my dad always used to boast, when you look at your mom's window, you know, after you're born you looked at the Atlantic fleet, you know so. But wow, he worked for the railroad and the railroad moves, moves people around like the military, um, move all over the place. So my life was marked by moving a lot.
Speaker 3:But born in Virginia and less than a year later we moved to West Virginia and we moved to a little place called Williamson, West Virginia, which is in the mountains, in the coal fields, Um, in fact, the radio station there is called WBTH, which stands for between two Hills, Um, but when we were there, first big, major life event, I was less than a year old and I had what they call an infant tachycardia, which is kind of like a baby heart attack. Um, and basically your heart starts beating out of control and, um, I'm sitting in a high chair and my brother walked past and he said mommy, is he supposed to be blue? Oh, uh, they rushed me to the hospital and we get there. They put me in an oxygen tent and at the time the doctor that took my case was a woman from Korea. Now, I say that because this is the early sixties and in the early sixties there weren't many women doctors period, much less a Korean doctor in the wilds of West Virginia.
Speaker 1:Right, how did that happen, wow?
Speaker 3:And she comes to my parents and she says look, I've seen this before, uh, I've had it happen in Korea. Um, and I can tell you this, if we don't do anything, he's going to die. But we have a procedure that we've been doing in Korea for years, and it's to give them a massive dose of digitalis to slow their heart down. Um, and I can only give you a 50,50 chance on that, good golly. Well, thank God my parents, they took the 50-50 chance.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I'm here today. So my mom, her whole entire life she called me her miracle child and she always told me. She said you are here for a reason, Don't squander it, help others, do something good. Just you know, don't squander your life because you're here. She was very clear. She always used to say you're here for a reason. So that for me that was a big like first life lesson and I've carried it through probably my whole life that you know we all have this opportunity to contribute. So don't squander your life, don't squander it on. You know I want to go out and be rich. No, do something that's going to matter, because nobody I've never walked through a cemetery and seen somebody's net worth on their tombstone you know.
Speaker 3:So that was kind of the first life lesson, um. From there we moved back to virginia. We moved up into again into the blue ridge mountains, into a city called roanoke, virginia, um, I lived there through fourth grade. Then we moved to ohio, um, on the banks of the ohio river, um, and that's another life event happened In fifth grade.
Speaker 3:They start looking for people to be in the band and I wanted to be a sax player or a percussionist, a drummer or a sax player, and the band director looked at me and said we don't need any more sax players or drummers, we need trombone players. And he handed me a trombone.
Speaker 1:Oh golly.
Speaker 3:And so I started playing trombone players and he handed me a trombone and so I started playing trombone. And then we moved back to Roanoke, virginia, where I lived until I graduated from high school. I got very, very entrenched in the music program. I became a member of the Roanoke Youth Symphony.
Speaker 3:I was actually asked to be part of the Roanoke Civic Ballet Orchestra, which was that was a professional group that was actually players of the Roanoke Civic Ballet Orchestra, which was a professional group that was actually players from the Roanoke Symphony, and they needed somebody to play second trombone. And my trombone teacher said, hey, you're the guy.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:And so I was playing pro gigs. I was playing whenever I could play. But my school band I pretty much gave my heart and soul to them and you know I did everything. And when I was a senior I became lieutenant in the band. We had officers in the band, we had a captain and that was kind of the right-hand man of the director, and then the lieutenant and that was me, and my job was kind of to make sure everything got secured and was in the right place and people were doing the right things. You know I made sure that instruments were where they were supposed to be in, the practice rooms were clean and just things like that.
Speaker 3:And so anyway, I but I gave my heart and soul to the band. I was there, you know I came in early and stayed late. I was the guy that helped out on every fruit drive. If anybody that's ever been involved in a high school band has done a fruit drive, you know you go around and you get people to buy fruit. You raise money for the band bake sales and fruit drives.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:And so at the end of every year we had an award ceremony at a band banquet. And so my senior year, you know, we go to this band banquet and there's, like you know, most improved and and they announce everybody who was an all county band or all state band and all those things, and they give out a very special award called the bandsman of the year, the John Phillips Sousa award. And I knew I probably wouldn't get that, because the the captain usually gets that. So I was. I was pretty set on the fact that I was going to get nothing. It was going to go to this thing. It'd be like here's the officers and the bandsman of the year is the captain. Um, so, and that's what happened.
Speaker 3:But then the band director stayed and he stayed, stayed up there for a minute and people are like what's he doing? He said I've got one more award to give out. He said this is an award that I've only ever given out once before, and so this is very, very special because I'm giving this and this is to someone who has done more for this organization than anybody in this room, and he gave it to me and it was the most outstanding contribution award and I remember getting back in the car and my dad said you know what A million people win those other awards, but you're one of two.
Speaker 1:How precious is that?
Speaker 3:And yet still hanging up on a wall in my house Love it.
Speaker 3:And let you know second life lesson. You know, no matter how unimportant the work you do or how unimportant it might seem right, you can make a difference that you may you know nothing about, you might not know anything about. You know I'm making a difference for somebody, but you probably are, yeah. So from there I went to college, got a bachelor's degree in comp theory. You know, thought I was gonna write a bunch of music to change the world. Did fall in love with my high school sweetheart. We got married, went to grad school, got another degree, a master's degree in comp theory, which, by the way, you don't get paid any money to do.
Speaker 2:Not the big bucks yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, of course you know, I was thinking I'm going to get a break somewhere and write music for you know a movie, or get an orchestra to commission me to write something. Anyway, I moved to Baltimore, maryland, which is where I live now, and became a member of a music group that a friend of mine had and they played all their own music and it's all kind of arty music and I thought, well, this might be you know something to give me that break. And we played a lot of arts festivals and colleges and things like that, but you don't make any money doing that. So I worked in restaurants. I was a bartender for years, worked in restaurants. I was a bartender for years. Uh, worked in retail. I worked. I even worked in a sales department for a forklift company for a while. Um and through all of that are a couple big things. One was that whenever something like that happens, it's never one person, one person's fault it's both people's fault.
Speaker 3:You both did something wrong, it doesn't matter what even if somebody you know broke the rules, somebody slept with somebody else or whatever it was, you both made mistakes, you both blew it. You know this is both people's thing, but the big life lesson that we, the two of us, learned was that life's too short to go through it with hate, and so we both decided we would be friends and we are still friends to this day.
Speaker 2:Beautiful.
Speaker 3:Good, and it's true, you know, I've, I've, I've talked to other friends of mine who are who've gone through divorces or going through divorces, and I've told him look, whatever you do, don't hate, figure out a way to be friends. Um, so anyway, a few years later, I met another woman. Um, I was actually writing music for a dance company and she was in the dance company and she was teaching at a college, and we met and we got married. And here we are, lo and behold, 34 years later.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness Beautiful.
Speaker 3:But she got me some teaching work. She was teaching in a high school and also at a college. But she was teaching at a high school and I kind of, through her, made my way into being the orchestra director at a high school and also taught at a community college. And I taught at one class at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. But it was all contract work. So from semester to semester, you kind of didn't know how much am I going to make any money? Am I going to be able to pay my bills? It was like a rollercoaster. Well, my daughter was born, my daughter Hannah was born, and we were able to make it okay on that and we lived in a little tiny house and it was all good. And then my wife got pregnant with child number two and that's when she kind of looked at me and said, okay, this is not going to work, we're barely making it now. We need like a bigger house and we need more steady, reliable income. And I was like, yeah, you're right. You know I always tell people.
Speaker 3:That's when she told me I need to get a big boy job Um and so that's when I went looking for something else and I you know this was back in the days when you looked in the paper for at help wanted ads.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And, um, I found this ad for, you know, audio visuals in the hotel industry and I was thinking, oh, I can do that Cause I've run sound. You know, I've run live sound before for bands. When you're a musician, you learn how to do a lot of different things, yeah. And so I was like, and even when I worked with dance companies, I did a little bit of lighting and stuff like that. So I was like I can do this and I was thinking how hard can it be?
Speaker 2:That was wrong.
Speaker 3:Really difficult job. Ask Kirk, he knows for sure. But for those of you who don't know what that means, what AV industry is it's sound and lighting and video and screens and all that stuff for meetings and hotels and conventions. That's what that's all about. So I landed that job and I was managing a team in a hotel and was doing that just fine.
Speaker 3:And through various conversations people learned that I used to teach and this company had was just starting their training department and they said, um, hey, would you you've got teaching experience Would you like to be one of our instructors? I said, sure, that'd be great. So I started to teach some classes. You know, you did your regular job. But they'd say oh, you know, we need somebody to teach this class, and so you teach these classes. Well, that started to happen more and more and more and I talked to the director of the training department. He said well, we like you, we think you can. You do this pretty well. I was like, oh, okay, great, fantastic. And I was doing it more and more and more and more well. One day I was actually driving back from the eastern shore in maryland over on the other side of the uh, of the chesapeake bay and I'm crossing the bridge and there's this big bay bridge and it's for a lot of people it's really scary, it's a really high bridge and it goes over the chesapeake bay, yeah, a
Speaker 3:long way down and my phone starts ringing. I'll just glance down, down and it's the CEO of the company. And man, I'm like, okay, I went over in the other lane. I'm like, what am I doing? I'm on the Bay bridge, so I zoom over the bridge and get over the other side and immediately park it and answer the phone and he's he starts talking to me about the training department. He says I'd really love it If you would work full time at the training department. We want to move you out of what you're doing and put you full time in the training department and I need somebody to build a leadership training program and I think that would be you. And I was like. It was like you know, you know when the angels start singing, you know the angels were singing and I was like yes, I'm in.
Speaker 3:I want to do that, um, and so to be honest, that's kind of what I've done for the last 20 some years is do that, um. And I finished out working COVID kind of stopped that career because just it stopped a lot of people's careers Um, but I finished out the AV career, teaching and coaching and doing all that and now I still do that kind of on a freelance basis and I write and blog and do all that stuff. And I'll give you my final kind of life lesson out of all that was you know, don't think you know exactly where you're headed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because if you start taking all the opportunities that come, you never know where they're going to lead. And I'll be honest, you know, as I look back at the music thing, I was just never. I'll be honest, I was never good enough. And a lot of people say, don't ever say that about yourself. I'm like no, I'm being honest, I was never an A level, I could be maybe a B level. I was never an A level, I could be maybe a B level. But to be A level you've got to have some really natural gifts that I just didn't have and you've got to have just a high level of discipline and be willing to um practice. I just I was not wanting to go sit in a practice room for hours and hours and hours and hours. You know I'd go in there. They said you got to practice at least two hours a day. I'd go in and literally a timer ding two hours, it's happy hour, right yeah and it just takes something I didn't have.
Speaker 3:but when I got into teaching people, particularly in the business realm, and going in and sharing kind of a vision for a better world, that's when I realized this is what I do, this is I just honestly. You know, there's a time when you just realize this is what I'm supposed to be doing, you know. And when my mom said, you know, you've got a contribution to make, I was like that's it, this is what it was.
Speaker 2:This is why. This is why I'm, this is why that Korean doctor was there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is why that Korean doctor was there.
Speaker 2:Yes, and you focus more on service, just like that doctor did right. She was there to provide this amazing service.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, the service thing came almost by accident in a way.
Speaker 3:I built leadership training program and had to put there was obviously some service elements in all of that. And then later the company started to put more of an emphasis on service and started to build out things like you know, sending out surveys and doing all that stuff. And I remember sitting in a meeting cause I since I taught a lot of the customer service stuff, I was in a lot of those meetings and they said, well, what are we going to do with all this data when it comes back? And I was the idiot who raised this hand and I said, and I'm in this room with all these senior vice presidents, right? And I raised my hand, kind of me meagerly you know me, meek little me and I said, um, well, you, probably, it'd probably be good to have someone who goes out in the field and explains and helps these people kind of decipher what things mean and then helps them work on how they're going to fix it. One of the vice presidents said you're the guy for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so literally I spent the last oh, 10 years, eight years, doing just that. I was flying all over the country. That's where I met Kirk, flying around the country coaching teams, helping them build plans for improvement, things like that, but it was still teaching. It was just a little bit different, with a different, but I got much more kind of entrenched in. What is service all about? What does it really mean, started really doing a lot more research into that and and how it relates to not only work but how does it relate to life, and so it became a much bigger influence on me, to the point where leadership, to me, when we talk about leadership, leadership is service, and I even build that out to the fact that business is service and life is service in many ways.
Speaker 1:So so, neil, I'm hearing this common theme throughout a lot of what you're sharing, which I would love for you to speak on a little bit, which is, as these opportunities come up, or as you co-create these opportunities, your inclination is the yes to them, is stepping forward with it. Yes, I can do that. Yes, I can try that. Sure, trombone, okay, yes. Sure. Teaching, okay, yes, sure, go out and teach people, okay, yes, I'm going to do that. What do you think it is in you that generates that? That that is your inclination. And I can even tie it to one other thing.
Speaker 1:When you originally said, your mother's comment to you is that you are here for a reason, and that was one of those first life lessons For some people that could have been. Oh my God, what a heavy burden to bear. I'm here for, but not for you. Your choice, your yes, was I'm here for a reason. What am I going to do with that? It's a you know that spin. So all of that together, what is it about? What is it in you that moves in that direction?
Speaker 3:Um, wow, that's a big kettle of fish. You're open.
Speaker 3:Well let's start at the beginning the thing. Instead of seeing the thing that my mom would say, all the time you're here for a reason, I took it more as a responsibility. Um, I gotta do that. Um, many, many, many years later, uh, I use that same thing on my dad.
Speaker 3:My dad had a double aneurysm, um in his aorta. Um, he had one aneurysm up here near the sternum and one down near his belly button and and they both were at the same time and he almost bled out. He, in fact, they lost him on the table a couple of times, but they basically took that big chunk of his aorta out and put in a hose, my gosh, and he went through this depression which people do a lot when they have major surgery. And, um, he, he just wouldn't do anything. And finally I remember talking to him and I said, dad, you've been bought some time. And I used it against him. I said you're here for a reason. You're here for a reason, there's some reason. You were, you were that didn't happen by accident. You're here for a reason. You've got something you've got to do.
Speaker 3:And I know my mom told me she said that was one of the things that helped him get back up and he started going. So I guess it for me it was it's responsibility. You know that plays into that. Um, the other part is why say yes? Um, I'll be the first one to tell you you I'm not the most confident person in the world. I'm a person that needs reassurance a lot. It's just a natural thing for me, for a variety of reasons, and I'm not the most confident. So sometimes I just take it as a challenge and say, okay, I'm not confident about this. It scares the hell out of me, but I'm going to try it because I don't know. You need to.
Speaker 3:You need to try this, you need to do this and I'm not that way about everything. You know I look at, you know I go stand on the edge of a big high diving board and I'm like hell no. I'm not doing that. Maybe that's a voice of reason kicking in. But the trombone thing, you know, I looked at that and I was like, well, everybody's going to be a beginner.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, what have I got to lose If I sound like an idiot? I can always just quit and be done with it, you know. But I took to it, you know I was able to take to it and and it actually my parents were pretty good about it. They were both pretty encouraging they were. You know, you seem to be doing well at that, you're doing better at that, you're getting better, and I'm sure to them it was just like honk, honk, honk, cause those first band books suck. They're just like bum, bum, bum, bum, bee, bee, bee, bee. You know that's all you're doing.
Speaker 1:And after a while as a parent you're like oh God, kill me. You know, it's funny. Just a quick interjection. My eldest son was first a drummer. Well, actually not. He did piano first, but then he went to drumming. And I can still hear in my head those initial paradiddles like oh my God, I cannot unhear that.
Speaker 3:It's just all day, every day, that and the only reason when they're drummers that you can stand it is because they go it's a paradiddle and you kind of laugh.
Speaker 3:They really call it a paradiddle and there's a flamadiddle too you know but but so I had that and then a lot of the other yeses, I don't know. Sometimes there's just a voice, you know you get this voice that says go. You know, go with that. And the whole teaching thing. You know I grew up.
Speaker 3:My dad, you know, unfortunately well, fortunately and unfortunately my dad worked in a career that he did because he had a family and, of course, in his generation that was a lot of your generation. You get a job. You're working for your whole life, whether it's your dream job or not, and I understand that and a lot and that happens to a ton of people. How many people do you know that have their dream job? If everybody had their dream job, hell, they'd be nfl quarterbacks and movies, right.
Speaker 3:But he worked that job but what he really wanted to do was teach. So he took every opportunity to do it. He was a sunday school teacher. Every sunday he taught sunday school, um, and he ended up when he worked for the railroad actually working in their training department. So he did some teaching, um. I never really saw him do teaching at all, but I guess it was just kind of in my blood somehow, or or hanging around back here in that back part of your brain, that, and when it came up to do this, I was like, yeah, I want to do that. Something just spoke to me and said that's where you should be, and so yes to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a lot of people, though, would run away from those challenges. Well, that's not. You know, I'm heading to music, this is what I'm doing. I'm not going to do these other things, but something in, you told you go with it, and you said it doesn't happen all the time that there's things that you don't. You know, jumping off the cliff. Well, I wouldn't do that either, but what is it Like? How did you develop that? I'm going to call it confidence, even though you said that you don't really have the confidence, but how did you develop that, like? It's almost like. Well, I'm just going to do it, and if it doesn't work out, then I'll go to the next thing, maybe, but how did you develop that along the way?
Speaker 3:That was a tough road because I have, for all of those things you're going to be on stage, a lot of the things I said yes to. You're going to be on stage. What's ironic is that I have stage fright.
Speaker 3:Yeah too, you got to be on stage. What's ironic is that I have a stage fright. Yeah, when I was, when I had to do my senior recital in college, um, I remember a friend had gave me a half of um, god, what's the pill? It was some heart pill that her uncle had and she said I took one of these. I took a half of one of these before my recital. It really really settled me down.
Speaker 3:So I took this pill anyway, and then, right before the recital, or right before my comp recital which is equally crazy because you're on stage, I had to conduct for that. So and went to his office, he said I know you're, you're just frozen in fear. And he opened the bottom drawer of his, his, his desk drawer, and he had a bottle of Jack Daniels and he poured us both a shot. So we stood in his office and we both did a shot of Jack.
Speaker 3:He said this is going to help you out right here and it was, but it was a bonding experience. It was great. You know, we both had a shot of Jack and I went out and did my recital.
Speaker 1:But, and we both had a shot of Jack and I went out and did my recital Well as you go out.
Speaker 3:But I have stage a lot of stage fright and I just had to get over that and it was tough because I also have an anxiety disorder and a lot of men between the ages of I think it's I don't remember which one of you. One of you is a psychologist right, that would be Diana.
Speaker 3:Diana of you is a psychologist right, that would be Diana Diana you're a psychologist and, um, I know a lot of men kind of between the ages, like in their thirties, I think.
Speaker 3:A lot of men kind of have this anxiety thing, and I read somewhere that the belief is that one of the reasons for that is that, um, that's when men pick up a lot of responsibility, traditionally, you know, they start families, they've got a career that's starting, they just bought a house, and so you got all this stuff lumped on you and all of a sudden, ah, you get paralyzed, um, and so anybody who has any kind of predisposition to that it kind of kicks it into gear. And that's exactly what happened to me. And so I was on Xanax for a while and I was there, some a little bit of therapy and this, that the other, and and um, that worked itself out. But also, I think part of the way it worked itself out was because I had to get up in front of people, and more and more I would get up in front of people and my stage fright started to lessen. It started to go down to the fact that, you know, I'd get in front of people and just go.
Speaker 3:I've done this before, you've done this before, it's okay, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And what you don't. I always joke with people when you get up in front of somebody. If you don't know something, just start making stuff up and do stuff Well we always used to joke. When I was in an orchestra, we'd always joke if you miss a note. Most of those people in the audience don't know.
Speaker 2:Nope yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, In the world of theater, you know I do a lot of children's theater and this is absolutely what we tell them. You know you just keep going, because if you telegraph that this is a big mistake, then everybody's oh feeling badly for you. But if you just move on, nobody, nobody, thinks twice about it.
Speaker 3:no, and all as well, and even if it was a mistake.
Speaker 1:If you move on with that attitude, people are willing to move on with you rather than like feeling sorry for you or feeling for you well, I remember.
Speaker 3:I remember at one point when we lived in ohio, we went to a see a play in columbus and it was a play called norman is that you? And the star was, and I can't think of his name, he was harvey corman oh harvey used to be on. For those who don't know who har Korman is Harvey Korman was in Blazing Saddles. He was also a big star on the Carol Burnett show.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:And he was the one that a lot of times got everybody cracking up on the Carol Burnett show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he had great pride in it.
Speaker 3:When Norman, is that you? He forgot his lines in one place and he started just making stuff up and he got everybody in stitches and everybody on stage was. And he got everybody in stitches and everybody on stage was laughing and everybody in the audience was laughing and everybody knew that it was all a mistake, and I guess maybe that had lingered for me thinking that well, if that person cannot get up there and just be an idiot, yeah.
Speaker 2:But everybody everybody had a great time.
Speaker 3:Everybody had a great time, and that's what everybody. I couldn't tell you a thing about that play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that Everybody had a great time and that's what everybody.
Speaker 3:I couldn't tell you a thing about that play, yeah, that yeah, and so for me, you know, getting in front of people to do that, I still get nervous. If you don't get nervous, there's probably something wrong with you. I don't get frozen, though, like I used to, but you'll see me backstage pacing and and going over whatever I'm going to talk about a hundred thousand times and rewording it and changing it, and you know all of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I had this big awareness a few years back that changed the game for me on so many things. I had this awareness that, whoa, confidence doesn't just come, it's not that I just suddenly feel confident, I choose confidence, I'm choosing to be confident, and that like flipped everything for me, it worked for me and how to go about it for what it's worth. So that was a big revelation. But I want to ask you something. Go ahead, neil.
Speaker 3:No, I was gonna say well, Simon Sinek, you know, Simon Sinek is right. Yes, the why? Guy right Mr Optimism? He always says you know, don't tell people you're nervous, tell them you're excited.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do that in a different way to use that, use that energy, it's just energy.
Speaker 2:It's the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so anyway, go ahead. They're like this. Yeah, yeah, so anyway.
Speaker 1:They're like this yeah, I love it. I love all of this. It's so great, thank you. Thank you, neil, for everything that I want to go back to. Okay, that kid who's being handed that trombone, and you know about that age, and that guy, if we were to go talk to him, what would he say about where you are right now and what, what you're doing, what would be his thoughts and feelings about all of this?
Speaker 3:if he could see in the future, if he could hold up that crystal ball yeah, see where, where it all went. I think he'd go. Wow, I can't wait oh oh, I love that.
Speaker 3:I have been, really, really even through the hard things and and going through a divorce is hard. I don't care what end of that, and I know a lot of guys that think well, I left my wife. She was horrible, blah, blah, blah. You know what? There's still a dark night of the soul. Everybody goes through it and I don't know if either one of you have been through that, but probably split up with some partner, some friend, something that was tough Right, or split up with some partner, some friend, something that was tough right, or someone died Cause it's, it's a lot like a death, you know, in a way, and um, that's tough, but you know what? I wouldn't be where I am without it.
Speaker 2:Right no.
Speaker 3:And the things that I had to go through because of it. I made me a better person, um, made me we didn't have children. That was a good thing, but I'm I have a feeling it made me a better dad for the future.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 3:So, but I've been very blessed. My wife now is an amazing woman, very smart, um, super organized, loves to travel, um, she's from Scotland and we've been blessed to be able to travel a lot because of her work. We traveled all over the world and I think you know, if I were a kid I'd look at that and say, wow, you went to the pyramids. Holy cow, you did this. I can't wait. I think that's what he'd say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. So who? I think your wife probably inspires you somewhat, but I would love to hear, like, who or what you get your inspiration from.
Speaker 3:I don't want to pinpoint any body in particular. It's probably a conglomeration of people who inspire me and a lot of times it's it might be just something people have done. Whenever I see people who have conquered something that just seems unconquerable, yeah. When I see somebody like the other day I was watching the masters and they had an ad and this kid drove the ball and they pan out and he's only got one arm and it was a beautiful drive yeah, I was like, oh my god, that's inspiring, yeah, inspiring, yeah, um, yeah, when I see people who have, who have some horrible disease or or problem and they're plowing through, um, so those kinds of things really inspire me.
Speaker 3:Um, and then there's you know, there are a lot of different kind of writers and people that I've read say certain things. Seth godin inspires me a lot of times with certain things. He says he's got kind of a wacky writing style, but he does throw out these lines and these particular things, over and over and over, that are inspiring. You know, if we want a better world, we need to build better things. You know, that inspires me. I, um. So there are a lot of different kinds of people in that boat.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Um, I and and I different kinds of people in that boat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um I and and I'm not a incredibly religious guy, but jesus inspires me. The reason jesus inspires me it's not because of dying on a cross and all that stuff, and I know I'm not, I'm not saying anything about that, right but this was a guy that was up against every odd. He stood so hard for believing in something that matters. You know he stood up for. I mean, to me my favorite story in all the gospels is the woman at the well. You know, he goes to the well and he goes to this woman who's just going to be, she's going to be stoned to death.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And he basically chases away all these guys and he says what have you done? She says basically I've sinned, I've done all this bad stuff, I've slept with men. He goes you're okay, go and sin no more. You know you're good and I'm like that's the world I want to live in for sure you and me both you know and I'm like I can get behind that yeah yeah, and so that inspires the crud out of me that kind of stuff yeah yeah, I don't know if that answered your question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it did, and and you mentioned the writers that you appreciate and behind you.
Speaker 3:That's one.
Speaker 2:Yes, one, but I'm looking behind you to your book and I would love for you to talk a little bit about your book, if you would.
Speaker 3:I've written two. I've actually got a third on the way, which Kirk knows about because he's been one of my pre-readers Lucky on the way, which Kirk knows about because he's been one of my pre-readers. Um, lucky, and he's going to. He's going to get pride of place in the acknowledgements on that. Um, but he's been one of my pre-readers and I so appreciate that.
Speaker 3:Um, I've written two books. One the first book was about coaching, uh, about coaching in the workplace. This book was written. This book called Giving a Shit and apologies to anybody who that offends, but the subtitle is how a willingness to be an inconvenience can transform your life and your business. So it was kind of a weird start to that book. It started as a rebuke of the current kind of customer experience world that we see all the time and how complicated people have made it and all this stuff and and that quickly transformed into something else.
Speaker 3:Um, my wife was. We had planned this trip just before the pandemic and the pandemic put that on the back burner, yeah, and so through canceling all these things, my wife is the, she's the travel person in her house, she does all that stuff and she was canceling, you know, plane flights and hotels and all that garbage. And one day she just threw down the phone exasperation, said why is this so damn difficult? Why don't people, why don't these companies care about their customers? And of course, knowing what I was doing, you know, for a living I went upstairs and I said well, it's kind of what business is all about. I mean, they, they're there to make money. Well, actually that stuck in my crawl and I started thinking wait a minute, that's not what businesses are for. They're not there to make money. Well, actually that stuck in my crawl and I started thinking wait a minute, that's not what businesses are for, they're not there to make.
Speaker 3:I mean, yes, they have to make money, but they're not there to make money. Just like we have to breathe, but I'm not on earth to breathe. I like that.
Speaker 1:What a great analogy.
Speaker 3:You know, or even you know, I bought a car to travel, not to fill with fuel. Right, I have to fill it with fuel, and so, the more I looked into that, it took me a little journey, and the journey, part of that journey, was looking at what are humans here to do? And what you begin to look see, is that a lot of people think that we're built to compete and fight against each other, and and and rise to the top.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:When all the research that I did said the opposite. It said actually about 200,000 years ago we were actually much more cooperative and helpful to each other, partly because we we had to. We have to be that way. If we weren't, we'd all be dead.
Speaker 1:Right. Interesting when you say that when that show Survivor first came out, I heard about it and my thought was well, that'll be an intriguing social thing to see how people work together to survive. Literally that is what I thought that show was going to be. It is so not what that show is.
Speaker 3:But remember they said all that up, yes, but they said all this, that's all rigged right they said all that stuff up, of course, but everything that I was researching started to say the opposite yeah and I even came across a really good book by a guy named rutger bregman called Humankind, where he did a lot of that research for me.
Speaker 3:So it's great, but in it there's a story about a real-life Lord of the Rings and if you remember when you were in high school, you probably read Lord of the Rings right William Golding's book about the kids that are playing crashes on an island, Lord of the Flies, I think you mean Lord of the Flies, lord of the rings lord of the flies yeah, lord of the rings lord of the flies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're not talking cobbets, here we are.
Speaker 3:Yes, that's the well, the island and survival with yes I'm so glad you caught that I was wondering where you were going. I would say not a lot of high schools and you're like wow wrong, I did it, everything I did it.
Speaker 2:Yes, I thought I did. Lord of the flies. Okay, yeah, the flies by william golding kirk can get all of and you're like, wow, wrong author, everything I did it. Yes, I thought I didn't read that one.
Speaker 1:Lord of the Flies, okay, lord of the. Flies by William Golding.
Speaker 3:Kirk can get all of that in the editing.
Speaker 1:So start again Right here.
Speaker 3:Kirk. So these kids? The plane crashes on the island, all the adults are killed and they're left to their own ways.
Speaker 3:And essentially they resort to savagery right and two or three kids get killed in the story before they're found. Well, in the early sixties there were some kids that actually this virtually happened to them. They stole a boat because they were in a parochial school that they hated on a South Pacific island and they were on their way to find somewhere else. They wanted to live somewhere else. I think they were trying to get to Australia and a storm came and they were shipwrecked. It's starting to sound like Gilligan's Island, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But they did the same thing. They start to set up a community, but they built a community right, and they had rules and laws and they they actually built a little gym, they, they garden, they did all this stuff and they were there for over a year oh, wow and when they were found, no one had been killed.
Speaker 3:none of the stuff that happened in Lord of the Flied, none of that stuff happened. They cooperated, they helped each other. They realized we better get back to the good angels of our nature, because that's the only way we're going to survive.
Speaker 1:Survival depends on it.
Speaker 3:What I found through the research for this book was that we can choose another path. We don't have to go to work every day and beat each other up. We don't have to take advantage of customers. We don't have to do all these things, and we certainly don't have to do it to make a ton of profit. We have to make a profit, but we don't have to make more than enough. We can do it a different way, and so that kind of is where I got kicked into gear. Now, in defense of all those people that say what about, though, the fact that we do compete and we do all that? Yes, we do have a part of us. That is that we do. However, it's reserved for a specific time in life when we get pushed into a corner. Yes, we fight to survive, but it's not the way we're meant to be 24-7. And the reason I say that is because our biology says it. Our biology when we do good things and help each other, we're actually gifted from Mother Nature with a little cocktail.
Speaker 3:She gives us a little cocktail of feel-good juice, right, opamine, serotonin and oxytocin, and on top of that it not only makes us feel good, it blocks cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and a lot of the bad stuff for us, like heart disease and depression and high blood pressure. And all that stuff comes from cortisol. And when we have that rushing through us 24 seven we can't help but be fat, have bad hearts and have high blood pressure. But when we help each other and when we're doing things to cooperate with each other and innovate and and all that good stuff, we have better outcomes less depression, we live longer.
Speaker 3:So not only are we happier, we're healthier. So it's like mother nature screaming at us help each other, be of service to each other. That's where, that's where you're more successful. And so this was kind of my rant against that, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Beautiful and and I am not in the business world at all, but paying attention to things going on today what I am seeing is that when there are businesses that keep their customers in mind and go over and above to provide the service and the support for customers, the customers show up for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, so yeah More times than not, yes, yeah, and, and, and. A lot of times when they don't, it is simply because they feel like they don't have any other alternative.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when, when companies and you can usually tell when a company ties you into a contract and says, oh yeah, I'm here on the dotted line, You're with us for three years and you guys suck up and do whatever you want. It's like when you get on a plane and oh, okay, now you got to follow our rules, door shut, yeah. Same kind of thing, but again, we don't need to be that way, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, you are absolutely right. That's beautiful, neil. Thank you for sharing all of that. That was the little synopsis.
Speaker 3:It gets into more than that. Yeah Well, some people read the book. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a wonderful one. So through all of this, do you have any sort of life philosophy or motto or mantra that kind of gets you by? That's your go-to.
Speaker 3:I have to say it's the last four words in that book. In that book, go, do some good. Um, that's the thing I think. That's why we're here yeah, I love that my mom said you're here for a reason. I think we're all here for a reason.
Speaker 1:I think that's the beginning of it yeah, I think that's our next soul sistery shirt. Right, right, go do some good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and before I, before I moved from California, we had a sign right at our front door. So every day when you walked out of the door it said do some good. So I, I love that. That's perfect.
Speaker 3:I'll get your addresses. I do have stickers. I'll send them to you. But here's the deal If I send you a sticker, you have to put it on something and send me a picture.
Speaker 2:We'll do, we'll do, we'll do, and I love it.
Speaker 3:I got the biggest compliment the other day. I sent it to a friend who I know and she sent me a picture and I got pride of place. She put it over the Apple on her Mac. You know, the big, the lit up Apple on the lid of the Mac. She put it on that and I was like, oh my gosh, I beat out Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1:Good for you. Good for you. Things are going to start happening for me now.
Speaker 3:But yeah, I guess that would be my my. My mantra these days is go do some good Good.
Speaker 2:That's a good mantra. And at the end of this lifetime anyways, when your journey here is done, how do you hope to be remembered?
Speaker 3:This is the tombstone question, the eulogy question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, not how much you made, but.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't care about that. I guess it would be. I would hope somebody would say he helped me. He helped me be better than I thought I could be. If somebody says that I will, I'm done, I'm good.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Good yeah that you did that. Good, yep, you've done that exactly yeah yeah I.
Speaker 3:I know that's probably a little sappy for some folks, but no, well, not here not here, yeah sap lives and breathes here with abandon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, good yeah, yeah, yeah, you are among friends, my friend, yeah.
Speaker 2:So, donna, do you want to like take us into our rapid fire? Let's do it, let's do it.
Speaker 1:These are fun little questions, neil, that like don't think too much about the answer, it's just whatever first comes to mind, let's just go with it and see what it is. Well, we say they're not hard and then people will go wow, that was a hard one, so it won't qualify. It is what the meaning of the universe yes, well, let's see, exactly okay we'll leave that one out, okay all right, first one, what is your walk-in song? You know the walking onto the stage, the walking down the pitcher's mound. What's your walk-in song?
Speaker 3:well, you know, I don't four. There are four things that come to mind. Okay, the first one that comes to mind is a song by bruce springsteen called land of hope and glory. Yeah, and the reason for that is there's a line, the chorus of the song. He says this train carries and he reels off things like kings and lost souls, and I think I know one of them is whores and gamblers and one of them is like winners and losers. It's a list of things like that, and whenever I hear that song, I think that's a place I want to be.
Speaker 3:I want to be a place where everybody's included. Yeah, it doesn't matter what your title is, what your name is any of that stuff, yeah.
Speaker 3:Second song that comes to mind is a song by Dave Matthews called you might die trying, and the chorus to that song is if you give, you begin to live and that really I mean if you were to ask me what's in my book and you give, you begin to live, and that really I mean. If you were to ask me what's in my book the giving a shit book. In a nutshell, there you go. If you give you begin to live, you'll be happier and healthier. Yeah. Then there's another song, and this is because I love the Beatles. I'm just a massive beatles fan. In fact, last year went with a friend and we went to liverpool, london and hamburg to visit all the beatles stuff nice um, and it's the song blackbird and the first.
Speaker 3:The first thing is blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life you were waiting for this moment to arrive. Beautiful, and although that song was written for the civil rights movement in the US, it carries a different meaning for me, and that meaning is that, essentially, we're all broken and people take that the wrong way, but we all are. We're all broken. None of us is perfect. We all have stuff in our lives that that has fractured us in some way. Um, but my thing is, you know, regardless of that, get up, you've got something to do, move forward. Um. And when he said you know, they say you were waiting for this moment to arrive, I say no, we were all. We're all waiting for that moment to arrive for you. I'm waiting for that from you. Get up, show us what you are. Be something better than you ever thought you could be, make this world a better place.
Speaker 3:That's to me what that sounds yeah and then the last one's not a song at all, um, it's uh a piece by bach and it's the the last movement of the brandenburg concerto number three. And if you don't know it, just look it up on youtube. Listen to that last movement, uh, because it is joy in, it's just joy, it's just pure unadulterated joy, it is just like look life. It is so optimistic, it is so hopeful and it's there's no words. But you'll just feel like I can take on the world listening to this.
Speaker 1:This is it, you know you're the first person to mention an instrumental piece of music.
Speaker 3:I love that. I like that Of course, from the musician.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Go for it. Sis, what book changed you?
Speaker 3:Oddly, it's a book that's actually sitting here and this is going to seem like a weird book, but it's a book. It's called the outward mindset and it's not by a single person, it's by the Arbinger Institute and I didn't. I read it, and I think in 2013 or 2014. So it was late in coming, and the reason it changed me was because, basically, the theme of the book is that, um, how do you see people? Do you see them as things or do you see them as people? Um, and it has influenced so much of what I talk about and so much of what I think about these days. Uh, great, it kind of gave me some language to use, but also makes me think.
Speaker 3:I think, you know, when I'm with somebody new or with somebody I'm talking to, am I seeing them as a person or as a thing? Yeah, am I seeing them as an obstacle? Am I seeing them as a person, especially these days, with so much division around us, you know, and so many people with views that I don't hold. You know it's hard, you know you get into a situation. You see somebody wearing a hat or wearing, you know, wearing something you disagree with and you go. I don't want to talk to them.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Am I seeing them as a person? How can I better see them as a person? It's a challenge, you know yeah. So in that way it kind of changed changed. It didn't change me, but it validated a lot of things for me, right yeah?
Speaker 2:Changed your focus.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it also gave me some language and a way to think about it in a way. Yeah, it brought pieces together.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah nice, okay, next one. What movie lives rent-free in your brain?
Speaker 3:oh, usually you know, when people say that something lives rent-free, it's a negative oh, oh no, I know, we mean.
Speaker 1:We mean it as a you love it just as occupied and you think about it.
Speaker 3:Okay, I'm gonna throw a couple. Okay. Yeah, I love movies. Um one movie probably my favorite movie of all time is casablanca. And the reason I love casablanca is because it's got everything it sure does love, war, peace, hate it's got it all. It's got like every theme in it. But the thing that strikes me is you know you get to the end and good wins out. People do the right thing when people do the right thing, you know, yeah and I love.
Speaker 1:In that movie there's such, there's such scope, it's such a large story and yet it's a very small and intimate story as well, and both exist and it's just so well done, and it's got angry birdman in it um.
Speaker 3:The other one is a tom cruise movie and I'm not big tom cruise guy. A few good men, courtroom drama yeah and the thing that stands out to me is right at the end, when, um, if you know the movie, yes, uh, when dawson the, the guy who's being charged with murder and is let off for murder, but he's given a court martial anyway for not behaving like an officer and he's about to walk out of the room and tom cruise says you don't have to.
Speaker 3:you know, harold, you don't need to have stripes on your arm to have honor. And all of a sudden Harold turns around and says attention, there's an officer on deck and they salute each other.
Speaker 2:I'm like yes.
Speaker 3:It's just such a great moment of respect and getting it. It's like all these trappings we put on people and all the labels we put on mean nothing. It's about how we treat each other and how we respect each other.
Speaker 1:Which speaks to your life work, so that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3:I say it a lot to people Love changes everything. Yeah, it does, and that you know that's a moment of love, you know that's a moment of I love you dude. Yeah, even though throughout the whole movie they're at loggerheads, right, but wow, yeah, anyway, okay, so those are a couple Beautiful Okay.
Speaker 2:What did you love doing as a kid that you still love doing today?
Speaker 3:oh, I can tell you a bunch of things I'd the other way oh, no, no, no, no, I like doing yeah.
Speaker 2:oh, that's a toughie yeah.
Speaker 3:Animals, animals. I have always just absolutely loved dogs, cats, you name it. I to this day can't watch a movie that has a theme around an animal because I know somewhere in it something horrible is going to happen. So I can't see that. It's torture to me.
Speaker 2:I have to peek ahead and I go online and make sure that the animal lives, Otherwise I can't finish the movie.
Speaker 3:I can't even see him suffer. Yeah, no, um, and what's? I guess the maybe the sad part of that is I can watch people get blown away on TV all the time, but I can't see an animal.
Speaker 2:anything happened to him, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I have to either turn away, like those ads come up, you know, with Sarah McLachlan singing in the background, or whatever, and yeah or whoever I'm like. Okay, change the channel until that ad is over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, you're not alone.
Speaker 3:So but yeah, that love, love for animals and being around animals and stopping for animals, I still do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's gorgeous, so what? You know, it is it is beautiful, that love and that connection, because of course you know animals are right there, pure, and they're innocent and they're unconditional.
Speaker 3:Which isn't really true. They need to be fed.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, yes.
Speaker 2:Well, yes, yeah, but they still love.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's about the closest to unconditional that we can get. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, unconditional, that we can get yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay. So what in your world is lighting you up right now, positively or negatively, or both either.
Speaker 1:Well, however, you receive that question, I guess.
Speaker 3:Uh, current political state lights me up negatively. Um, some of the things that are going on that I just don't agree with but I don't want to get into, yeah, you are in perfect company here. Things that light me up positively are. I think a lot of what's happening is waking some people up to what might be really important in life.
Speaker 1:Amen, amen, amen yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:To stop making everything about profit and loss.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, isn't that the truth?
Speaker 3:That yeah Life. You know, there's a biological reason we're here and that's to reprocreate. But there's a subjective, a very subjective reason we're here. You know a transformative reason that we're here a transcendent reason, shall we say you transformative reason that, yeah, we're here.
Speaker 3:A transcendent reason, shall we say, you know, and that's about all that stuff you can't measure and we spend so much time over indexed on what we can measure oh gosh, yeah, and we don't think about. There's so much in life that's so important that you can't measure. There's a great line in um the dead poet society movie, if you know that movie I was just when we were talking a minute ago.
Speaker 1:It was the movie in my brain, so so he you know where he says um to the boys.
Speaker 3:He says you know um engineering medicine. All these things are noble pursuits. But art, music, love drama.
Speaker 2:That's why we live yeah there's.
Speaker 3:There are things that help us live, and then there's things that we live for live for and we've we something, I don't know. We seem to forget all that and we everything's got to be measured and everything's got to be, and then all of a sudden, something happens and people go wait a minute you know, love and art and drama and music, and there's things that that's why I live, that's what I do.
Speaker 3:People go home. Wait a minute. Yeah, love, art and drama and music, and there's things that that's why I live, that's what I do. People go home at night and they play in a garage band, right, and they make zero money doing it.
Speaker 2:Zero, they love it.
Speaker 3:But they love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay, what color is hope?
Speaker 1:purple purple what does hope sound like?
Speaker 3:Bach Brandenburg, concerto number three. I was going to say I can't, I said it, I can't, I mean, it's just so. Or maybe even the Italian Concerto, Bach's Italian Concerto, which is for solo keyboard. It's again so optimistic and so hopeful and it seems to say the world can be better than we can imagine.
Speaker 1:So Bach speaks to you.
Speaker 3:Yes, Well he's one among many. Yeah, yeah, bach speaks to you. Yes, well, he's one among many.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Service is what.
Speaker 3:Helping people. Okay, all right, it's not big and fancy, I have to tell you no but that's okay. People think it is. People put these big giant definitions. It's like no man, it's just helping people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, if hope is, you know, if hope is found through service, then hope is found through helping people, and I think that's very.
Speaker 3:We make hope happen by helping others.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hope is excuse me, hope is action is one of the I think, one of the key things that you've said here and we absolutely agree with you, and this is interesting because this morning and I'm probably pushing time here but if you look at compassion I talk about compassion in the book Compassion is an awareness of need or suffering coupled to a desire to help. And if you think, you know, a lot of people think hope. A lot of people talk about hope being like optimism. No, optimism is more like empathy. Empathy is, you know, you put yourself in the shoes of another, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but you don't have to do anything. Yeah, I can look at you and say I know how that feels, but I don't have to do anything. Compassion means you've got to do something. Well, optimism I can say, well, yeah, things are going to work out, it's going to be a great world, but I don't have to do anything. But hope says, no, you got to do something.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And compassion says you got to do something.
Speaker 2:Yeah Right, you can't just sit back, I love that.
Speaker 1:I love that, all right. So then, hope is complete that statement. Hope is Complete that statement.
Speaker 3:Hope is the belief, and belief is a big deal, but it's the belief that Everything around us can get better. Yeah, and I can influence that, I can contribute to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh God, what an important piece that is and I can contribute to it. Yeah, I can make that choice. I can make that choice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh God, what an important piece that is, and I can contribute to it. Yeah, I can make that choice I can make that choice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, well, before we wrap up, neil, I just I know you shared your book, you shared the teachings you're doing. You do a lot of traveling, it sounds like. How can people find you? Is there a Facebook page, a website?
Speaker 3:You know I'm I'm on LinkedIn linkedin. Obviously that's a great place to connect and just dial me up n-e-a-l-w-o-o-d-s-o-n and it's important that you put the a in. Everybody likes n-e-i-l, but yeah my mom and dad decided to go with the welsh spelling. Yes, well, I'm donna with yes.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm Donna with one N, so I can have the same life that I do.
Speaker 3:You can go to my website and that's very easy. Neil Woodson, all one word. N E A L W O O D S O N dot net. Dot net, notcom, it's anet, and there you can find links to my book. You can find out more about me. I blog once a week and there's always a post in there. There's probably four or 500 in there. Now, if you can go back and search and find all kinds of things, great Um. And if you want to reach out to me, you can reach out to me at service coach, one at gmailcom. Service coach all one word, one, the number one at gmailcom. That's a place you can reach me if you want to.
Speaker 2:Great and your. Your books are those on your website.
Speaker 3:Yes, they both are and you can get them both at most. You know most of the places where you get books, but a great place to get books is what's it called Bookshop Okay, which supports a lot of independent great, yes, stores and things like that.
Speaker 1:We love that. Neil. We want to thank you so much for taking time today to to spend with us, share with us um your insights, what you're doing, who you are. It's been a real joy for us to share this time with you and get to know you and call you part of the soul sisterhood.
Speaker 2:So thank you, thank you yes.
Speaker 3:Well, it's nice to be an honorary sister.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I really, I really appreciate it. It's great to get to know you. I hope we see each other again, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:And again thanks.
Speaker 3:Thanks, kirk. Thanks for inviting me, and it's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1:A big shout out to our Kirk. Thanks, kirk for bringing us all together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:We appreciate y'all. So thank you, Neil, and you know, go do some good, my friend.
Speaker 2:Yes, go, do some good, as we all will. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us today on Soul Sisteries and thanks for sharing stories with us. We'd love to hear your stories as well and keep the conversation going, Absolutely keeping the hope going. So we're really hopeful that you'll connect with our guests as well, who have great stories to share. Go ahead and follow them in various social media platforms or live venues, wherever it is that they're performing and sharing what they do.
Speaker 2:We would love to have you follow us on all of our social media platforms, subscribe and rate, as that will help us get our message of hope out to others. Thanks for listening to.
Speaker 1:Soul Sisteries.
