Chris Sullivan: Donating an “Angry” Kidney To Slow Down and Speed Up

I donated my angry kidney.

Yeah, that's right. That was my left one. The angry one's gone. The right thing was listen to her, support, be there when needed, but don't smother her. It's really amazing how I don't sweat the small stuff anymore.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Okay. So every living donor has what's called a journey. It's their giving journey, their donor journey. My journey started on a February afternoon. It was a Saturday or Sunday, a weekend, and I was in my kitchen and the television was on in the background. We have a small TV in the kitchen, and something just caught my ear. You guys have all been in that situation where you're doing something, but then something catches your ear.

And it stopped me in my tracks. I stopped and I watched the ending, maybe 20 or 30 seconds, of a piece on one of the local news channels about, I can't remember if it was a woman or a man, but somebody who had donated a kidney and saved a life. And like nothing else, like a bolt of lightning, I literally was just dumbfounded. I watched this, turned over my right shoulder, looked at my wife, and said, "I'm doing that." It was that instantaneous.

That was God tapping me on the shoulder and whispering in my ear, which really stuck with me. It was pretty profound in terms of the impact it had. And like I said, nothing has ever impacted me like that.

Now, what I have learned since is that people who donate kidneys typically have an enlarged amygdala, which is a small part of your brain that sits kind of back behind your brainstem. Those who have large amygdalas are very empathetic and will do things like donate a kidney and are very giving, versus those who have shrunken and small amygdalas, who tend to be child molesters and murderers and people—

So they also say that most people—and I have found this, now being around a lot of donors who donate non-directed, because that's what I was. I donated non-directed, meaning that I didn't give to somebody I knew. I just gave a kidney out of the goodness of my heart because it felt like the right thing to do. Everyone I've talked to and everything I've read, everyone makes that decision with the same lightning bolt, whether it's a news piece, a billboard, a bumper sticker, something they read, but they had never given any thought to it.

It's not something they had planned. They didn't live their life thinking, "I'm going to donate a kidney when I turn 45." It's an event, an awareness that is just instantaneous, and then they're on a mission.

Probably the first thing that went through my head is, how much work am I going to miss? Typical workaholic. And is it going to hurt? Honestly, that's really about it. And then I did some research, and at no time did I really think, you know, is it going to limit me from doing things? That's one of the big messages of the group I'm with, Kidney Donor Athletes: donating a kidney does not change your life. In fact, it has done nothing but enhance my life in ways that I couldn't even have thought of before I began the journey.

And post-donation, you do everything you did before donation. The only thing you can't do is take ibuprofen, because ibuprofen is processed through the kidneys, and since you only have one, they want to give that one kidney a break. So you have to give up ibuprofen. That's it. Otherwise, to donate you have to be healthy, and the doctors say, just stay healthy. So keep doing what you're doing.

So I will say from a personal standpoint, I've also read it, and studies have shown, that once you donate, your sense of love, worth, and potential for life goes up. You've saved someone's life, which is a pretty cool thing. Not that I harp on that, but that's a really cool thing. But just an overall sense of giving and purpose is elevated. And studies have shown that people who donate a kidney actually live longer lives than those with two kidneys. It has nothing to do with the science. It has to do with the well-being and happiness.

Now, there's also a piece of that where it has to do with health, for the most part. You've donated, so you're going to be more cautious in terms of what you do and what you eat and what you drink and things like that. So it all ties together. That's one piece of it. The bigger piece for me is, I often have said, I donated my angry kidney. My left kidney was my angry kidney. Not that it was angry, but I donated my angry kidney, and whoever got it, I never met the person.

Yeah, right. And I say that because once I donated, I had a tremendous amount of angst and anger, and I used to have a really short fuse, and that all went away. It's really amazing how I don't sweat the small stuff anymore. I travel a lot for work. I'd be one of those people, if the flight was late, "Unacceptable!", screaming at the young lady behind the counter as if she has any control over the weather or the airplane. I don't do that anymore. It's not worth it. I just don't sweat the small stuff. It's taught me a lesson in humility, and I am really just a much calmer, happier, at-ease person.

And then there's another piece, and that is all the amazing people I have met in the donor community. What an amazing group. We all have something in common, but these are people who live purposeful lives, really meaningful lives. It's harder to make friends as you get older, and I have made lifelong friends in my 50s with donors that I never would have met if I hadn't donated. It has brought fulfillment and richness and purpose to my life. That's not why I did it. I truly was moved at the idea that I am very healthy. I was gifted with good health. I can live, as anyone can, on one kidney. And so my thought was, I'm going to share my kidney, I'm going to save someone's life. That was really the intent, and that's all I was looking for.

What has come out of it is this just deeper sense of giving, life, purpose, richness, friendship, and relationship. It's pretty amazing. I think I'm a better father, a better husband. I personally—

And I'm not as angry.

Completely.

Yeah. So in the living donor world, and these are regulations and laws put into place, the recipient controls a lot of that. They control relationship. They control communication. It's up to them whether they want to have a relationship. Now, that's a different story if it's a directed donation, meaning that, John, you need a kidney. You and I know each other. I'm a match. There's a relationship. In the non-directed world, it's completely controlled by them.

And understand that people who need a kidney are usually pretty sick. For the most part, they're on dialysis, and health issues come with that. So these are people who carry a lot of health issues with them. And then there's the sense of guilt, like, "Oh my gosh, somebody gave me their kidney. What do I do if I have a relationship with them? Do I need to keep them abreast on, you know, I ate a pizza last night? Sorry." Of course, none of that matters, but I've heard in research that these are some things that some donors—I'm sorry, recipients—deal with.

My recipient was a young man at the time, 32 years old. I knew he lived in Wisconsin. He received my kidney, which is now his kidney, at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. And he wrote me an email. It was just really short and sweet: thank you very much, I'm doing well, I appreciate it. And one question he did ask is, why? Why did you donate? That struck me as interesting. For me it's easy, I'm in that world, I know why. But then I put myself in his shoes, and I'm like, yeah, here's a stranger who just donated a kidney, for what reason?

My answer was, like I just said, I was blessed with good health, and if I can share that, I'm happy to do it. I told him, you don't owe me anything, I'm not looking for anything. I think this is what I wrote him: you're 32, at the time I was 50. I think about all the things I experienced between 32 and 50, and I want you to experience those things. Birth of my children, first baseball game, graduating high school, all the proms, homecomings, going to weddings, friends, other kids, vacations, all those things that sometimes we take for granted. And I think that's part of the overall greater sense of purpose that came with the donation.

So my first answer to you is, have you met me? Research? Really? I tend to shoot from the hip.

I did do some research, but it was more like, hey, how's next Thursday? It was pretty much, I'd made my mind up, and then I decided, yeah, I should probably do some research. So research number one: health impact, really long-term. That's very quickly put to bed. There really are no long-term health impacts. And like I said, studies have shown that typically those who donate tend to live longer lives. Less than 0.01% in terms of any type of health issues. The question I often get is, well, what if you need a kidney? Well, I have a kidney. Humans can function on 25% of your kidney, which means you have two. So 25% is half of one. So with one kidney, you actually have double what you need. You're fine.

And if I, or any donor, happens to have a kidney issue and would need a kidney, because I'm a living donor I immediately go to the top of the list, so I wouldn't have to go on a waiting list. So there's a bit of an insurance policy there. The research that I did also, for me, was athletics and sports and staying active, which is how I came to find Kidney Donor Athletes, which I've become very active in. Are there going to be any limitations? Very quickly I found, no, there are no limitations.

And then the other was pain, discomfort, what to expect after. That's probably, if not the most, one of the top two or three questions we get from people who are considering donation: what's the recovery like? How long am I going to be laid up? It was really easy. Everybody has a different outcome, everybody has a different story, but mine was pretty simple. I donated on a Thursday morning. I was home Saturday morning. And I was on an airplane the following Monday, traveling for work. They want you to move. You start with walks and you get back into it, and it's about six weeks. And then you're just really back living a full life, no change. It's pretty remarkable, just the power of the human body in terms of healing.

But back to the research. I then got very much involved in terms of who else has done this, what organizations or groups are out there, which is once again how I found Kidney Donor Athletes. I have often said that from the very beginning, if you're going to be a living donor, part of that role is also advocacy. So a lot of my research went into how I can become an advocate to provide information, awareness, and education for the hundred thousand people out there who are waiting for a living donor, who are on dialysis.

I just want to be clear: dialysis is not a cure. Dialysis is actually just a prolonged death sentence. Companies like DaVita and Fresenius, the leaders, provide a great service. They do amazing things. They keep people alive. But at the same time, dialysis is really a miserable way to live. So advocacy has become a big part of my life for living donation, and there was a big part of research that went into how I can personally be a better advocate, how I can help Kidney Donor Athletes be a better advocate, to solve this problem for a lot of people.

And it is a solvable problem. It's unlike cancer. Kidney disease, yes, that's a disease, but saving people's lives, it's actually probably one of the easiest things that can be fixed. There are a hundred thousand people out there, in a country of 280 million, that are willing to donate, and they don't even know it. They're me. They just need the trigger. They need that moment. That's a big part of what we're doing at Kidney Donor Athletes: trying to provide that moment and awareness to the people who don't even know that they are living donors, just waiting.

So I've always had an adventurous streak, and I've always been an endurance athlete since my late teens, early 20s. I found that kind of at the end of my high school career. So it's always been adventurous. I've done Ironman and marathons and long bike rides. I will say that that has moved, as I've gotten older, to where those types of events tend to beat up my 50-something-year-old body a little bit more than I like. I still like doing adventure and things like that, but I've toned it down a little bit. So maybe instead of marathons and 100-mile mountain bike rides across the top of the Rockies, I'm now doing hikes and treks and things like that.

It's always been part of me. I've just shifted now to do them for awareness. So Kidney Donor Athletes, we have the One Kidney Climb, which is an annual event. I've been on two of them. The first one was to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. There were two living donors that made it to the top, which is a great group. And then last December I led the One Kidney Climb to Guatemala, where we did three volcanoes in four days, with a group of 17 living donors. These are just amazing events, and the camaraderie and the bonding that we get between the donors on the trips are fantastic. And then we do a lot of media and publicizing of the events to get them out there to promote awareness.

So yeah, I am passionate about that. I love it, and it's fun. But they're also hard, and they're designed to be hard. These aren't vacations. So thank you, everybody who's donated to help me be part of these. I'm not going on vacation. There's not a lot of lounging going on.

Right, that's the entry. That is the only entry to being in the lifelong friends community: donate the kidney. It's a pretty low cost of entry.

You're talking in regard to the donation?

To be honest with you, John, I've had people ask me that question from day one, and my answer is nothing. I never look back. In fact, I had to go through the testing, and it's pretty rigorous testing, twice. That's 120 vials of blood, urine tests, full body testing, pricking and prodding, MRIs and CTs and CAT scans. They make sure you're healthy before they're going to take a kidney. Of those who raise their hand, whether it's directed or non-directed, and say, "I'm willing to donate," only 13% make the cut. They found out some physical or psychological issue going on that inhibits them. A lot of people don't even realize that there's something. And so they are eliminated from being a donor.

Now, if you make the cut, well then great. Then you go through more testing. So I started the testing, and I was approved in late summer, early fall. I said, okay, we're going to do this—I had a big business trip, I went to Asia for a couple of weeks, and I was going to do it afterwards. Then my mother got hurt. She had a traumatic injury, she fell and basically broke her neck, so I had to take care of her. That pushed it off, and then I was ready to do it in the spring of '20. And what happened in the spring of '20? The whole world shut down because of COVID.

It was the spring of '20, and then I timed out. You have one year from when you do all your testing. All the transplant centers were closed in the spring and summer, so I timed out. When they opened again, I was '19 actually, and they opened again, I timed out. I had to go through all the testing again. So we pushed off, and then I was cleared in August, and I donated September 30th of '20.

Yeah. So, to answer your question, long-winded: at no time did I ever second-guess and say, "Hmm, am I scared, or should I do this?" Yeah, a little nervous, but I think that's normal in terms of major surgery. It was more about, is this going to hurt, and the pain. It was never a question of long-term effects. Why would I do that? I had committed from literally when that lightning bolt struck me on that Saturday in my kitchen, and there was no turning back.

Right. And I will also correct that: a hundred thousand people on the waiting list, and there's another 300,000 people on dialysis who aren't on the list. Either they've chosen not to be on it or they didn't qualify. It's pretty rigorous, and I don't know all the details, but from what I do understand it's pretty political. There's money involved, and anytime you get money involved, unfortunately, then there's greed and things like that.

I will also say that the underserved, the African-American community, those who live at or close to the poverty line, those communities, they're the underserved. They're the ones who need the help the most. They don't have the ability to do a podcast or a social media blast to friends to say, "Hey, help me with the kidney." A lot of times they don't even know they're eligible for a kidney. These are the people who get left behind, and they're the ones that we are really trying to serve, finding kidneys for them, because they aren't able to do it themselves.

So at no time will I ever be pushy about it. I'm very clear on that. That's a very personal decision. Everybody has to make that decision. That's fine. What I say is, ask me anything. I am happy to talk about it. And then I leave it up to them, in terms of a stranger or whatever. A lot of times there is curiosity, and once I open that door, then stand back, because the floodgates are going to come in terms of you asking the question and my giving you an answer.

The short answer, though, is if somebody is interested, I will say, take the next step and be the next one. That's part of a campaign that I've been working on with KDA for the last six months, with Brian Teal with Mile High Def and Abby Collins with Collins Consulting, who's a public health consultant. Kidney Donor Athletes and we have developed a campaign that's called Take the Next Step, Be the Next One. It's a three-year social media campaign that uses social media on both the donor and recipient side to try to advocate for more awareness and also to initiate an emotional response, to get people to take the next step and ask about it. It doesn't mean you need to give your kidney next week, but if you have any curiosity, just ask the question. We're happy to answer.

That's a great question. Nothing's really jumping to mind. It's a lot of the same: can you eat and drink and exercise, recovery, and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I get that. Am I too old or too young? It's pretty much, I think, 18 to 70. I know 70-year-olds who have donated. So honestly, I can't—

No. That's the beautiful thing. Kidneys are blind when it comes to race and age.

Yeah, that's right. That was my left one. The angry one's gone.

Yeah, I think some of it has to do with age and experience and a lot of gray hair, which brings a little bit of wisdom. You learn through hard knocks. It's interesting. I think part of it is psychology. Part of it is emotional, of the donating part, that I gave an organ and saved someone's life, and the impact that truly has. Until you go through it, you think about it, and then having gone through it, that's purpose. That's important. That has meaning. A delayed flight, the meal not being exactly right at the restaurant, kids screaming, who cares? It's not important. It's just a deep breath.

Now, I will say, layered into the story of donor, right around that time there were some other things that happened in my life that impacted that as well. I had a job change that was not of my making, but it really ended up being the best thing that could have happened. The position I was in was eliminated, and it came out of left field. I really didn't expect it. That's a gut punch that happened shortly after my donation, putting me into the position I am now in, in combination with kids getting older, moving out of the house, going to school. So a lot of different things were layered in there that added to the overall life experience.

I will say, hard knock, that whole job experience and post-donation: I am a very tenacious person. I don't give up, I don't quit. It's one of the things that I've thrived on in terms of these crazy endurance sports, like Ironman triathlons and 100-mile mountain bike races and so on and so forth. But that is also a double-edged sword. One side it cuts really nice; the other side, I've learned that I've been in some jobs a couple of times in my career where I should have cut bait. But because I have that tenacity, my answer is, I'm just going to work harder. I'm just going to put my shoulder into it. I don't quit. I don't give up.

Where now, stepping back and looking at it, that was a situation where you, not quit, but you probably should have moved in a different direction about three or five years ago. But that's the double-edged sword. I won't quit. I won't give up. I just put my nose to the grindstone. And sometimes you need to slow down, take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. This is a time where, I don't want to use the word quit, that's not a great word, but realign, refocus. And sometimes that can be a significant change.

The third or fourth, I forget how many layers we're talking about here, is I read a book that summer that I was looking for my next career, called Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. It changed my life. It just fell into my lap at the right time, which was right when I was 51, 52 years old. Job had been eliminated. What am I going to do? I don't necessarily want to go back to what I was doing, because I wasn't happy, but yet I was in that put-your-shoulder-into-it mode, and I'd probably still be there if that hadn't happened, and miserable.

And I read this book, Strength to Strength, how to live the second half of your life better and more fulfilled, and it just spoke to me. It's what you need to do, and that can be a significant life change, in terms of leaving a job, maybe leaving a bad relationship. In this case, my decision was made for me, because my employer decided to end our relationship, and so I was now looking for a new job. But it helped and guided me to where I am now, which I am so fulfilled. I'm enjoying this job more than probably any job I ever had, and I love the challenge. It's great. So that's the final layer in that whole story, and this all kind of gleans together in this big glob of layers over about a four- or five-year span.

Absolutely.

Go do something that is completely out of your comfort zone. Donate a kidney. There's a Japanese word for it, and actually I read it in a book called The Comfort Crisis. I don't know the author, but it's a great book about how we as Americans, or just the Western world, have gotten really comfortable. Everything is about comfort: faster, more efficient, quicker. How that truly goes against the grain of who we are as human beings, in terms of we're still designed as we were 300,000 years ago, where every meal wasn't guaranteed and you had to fight the saber-toothed tiger. Life wasn't sitting on the couch and so on and so forth. We've gotten pretty comfortable, and because of that comfort it's a crisis, in that all the diseases we deal with, and so on and so forth.

But one of the things that the author talks about is a Japanese word. The Japanese program is to put yourself in an uncomfortable position every year, whether it's for a day, a week, a month, whatever, but something you haven't done that's really uncomfortable, a different perspective. For instance, since we're talking about the kidney world, go volunteer and spend a day at a dialysis center and watch what dialysis truly looks like. See what these people have to go through and what that looks like. If you've never climbed a mountain, go climb a mountain. That puts you into a different place, makes you uncomfortable, and gives you a different perspective.

So I'm going to go even a little bit further back. And so here we are, tenacity again. I'm a freshman in college, and I was taking a myriad of classes. The business stuff, not so much. I remember I took a class in architecture, not really that much. I took a chemistry class. This is challenging. So once again, it's hard. What do I do? Put my shoulder into it. I'm going to work hard.

At that time, I think it was just Chemistry 100, whatever. But everyone else was saying how hard this is. I'm attracted to that. Did I have any particular fondness and love for chemistry? Probably not, if I'm being 100% honest. But it was hard, and it was viewed as hard. And so there's that tenacity. Put my shoulder into it. I'm going to show the world and myself that because it's hard, I'm going to do this. So I'm going to be a chemistry major.

Happens that the other classes, you take a lot of math, and I am not a math person, which is crazy. But then you also took some business classes, and lo and behold, I have a chemistry degree with a business and a math minor. I graduated in four and a half years with the sole purpose that I wanted nothing to do with chemistry. And I said that. I was done with school. I am not a scholastic person. That was my brother. He inherited that from my dad. I got more on my mother's side, which is work with your hands and much more the social, outgoing, eccentric, if you will, kind of person. Which is another reason I stuck out in the group going through chemistry. There were about 15 or 20 of us that all were going to be chemistry majors, and while they were studying, I was skiing. While they were talking about going to dental school, dentistry school, medical school, I was talking about how I'm going to go travel the world. While they were talking about building their careers, I was talking about where my next adventure was going to be. So different, but yet here I am, a chemistry major, in Pittsburgh at the time. I went to the University of Pittsburgh.

I was just such an odd duck, and they looked at me as if... A few of them, I remember having conversations afterwards, and they just said, "You were a fish out of water." But I did it. I graduated, I had my chemistry degree, and literally the day after I took my last final, I was on an airplane to Colorado to come out here and be a ski instructor. I didn't even walk. I did not walk to get my diploma. I said, you can mail it to my home in Pittsburgh, I'm going to Colorado to go—

It didn't mean anything to me. I had done what I needed to do, and now I was ready to go move on and do something fun. So I spent the next few years skiing around the world, and it was fantastic. But then that kind of wears out as well. And then I met my wife in those couple of years, now my wife, and we settled down and got married, and kind of the rest is history.

But yeah, chemistry. There was never any desire to be a chemist. I never really had any desire to do anything with chemistry, even though I will say that I am built for sales, and I went into technical sales in the coatings world. So I did use my chemistry quite a bit, and it actually gave me a leg up in many situations. I became known as a subject matter expert within my industry. I was inducted into the Decorative Concrete Hall of Fame in 2017.

There is.

It's not as exciting as it sounds.

Number of feet laid? Nope, has nothing to do with that. But it served me well and provided a great leg up, if you will, in terms of having that chemistry in an industry where I was able to use that and leverage that as part of my sales.

No, not too far off. It's a combination of just who I am, and that's the way I make decisions. But also, I think at that age, a lot of shooting from the hip. And I paid some prices for it too. So, hard knocks.

There was definitely some wreckage on that highway, looking in the rearview mirror, that was caused by being so impetuous and making fast decisions. For the most part, it's all worked out and it's been good. But at the same time, yeah, definitely I made some decisions based on that quick, "do this, I'm done with that, this sounds good." And looking back on it, I have no regrets. There were decisions that were made that I look back on and go, "Probably wasn't the smartest thing to do." And you were one of those in particular.

So early on in my career, and I know this is going to come as a surprise, I was very loud. I donated my angry kidney. I would make decisions very quickly. In my jobs, I was so rough around the edges that I had alienated myself and pretty much ticked off everybody in my business group, so that my boss called me one day and said, "You've ticked off everybody in the business group. You need to leave." So I had to go switch divisions. I had to go to a different division. He wasn't letting me go. He was just saying, nobody here wants to work with you anymore because you've just ticked them all off.

Well, that's the Chris pre-donation. That was the angry.

Running so fast, thinking no one else can make decisions as fast as I do, just quick, and expecting everyone to understand what I want. I need those decisions today. Just being very restless, being very demanding. And I think we've all dealt with people like that, where it happens a few times and you're okay, but then it keeps happening over and over again, and what happens is you just pull back. I don't want anything to do with that person. So that was me in some situations.

I have a few of those people who work for me now, and so we have great conversations. They are me 25 years ago. And so I'll say, if you're open to it, can I coach you? Let me guide you. Let me share some insights. I didn't have a mentor at that age, and if I did, I think it really would have helped. So now I've learned, and I will mentor those that I can.

The first thing is I recognize it instantaneously. I'm like, that was me.

The first thing that I recognize is it's just really speed, in terms of moving so fast you get out over your skis. You miss things. You're making poor decisions. You are not paying attention. You're not communicating well. You're not realizing that you have to work within a team. That's really the first thing I recognize.

The other piece that I recognize is over-communicating. Like, "Do you have it yet? Do you have it yet? Do you have it yet?" Really thinking, oh, I'm staying on top of you, I'm driving it. And what am I doing? No, I'm just annoying the living crap out of you. That's the other piece that I recognize. So there are really two big things that come screaming at me when I see that. Aha, I recognize it. I've been there, I know what that looks like. I can help

I am going to use a Mark Repkin-ism, and that is: slow down to speed up. Slow down, understand what you're doing, plan ahead. Don't just shoot from the hip. Think about what you're doing. Dial into your mentors, ask the question, get advice, communicate. Like, "Hey, what's the best way for us?" Instead of me coming at you, for us to talk about this. "How would you like to hear from me?" Versus me thinking, if I call you every 20 minutes, that means it's going to get done faster. Yeah, probably not. So why don't we have a conversation? Do you want me to call you every 20 minutes? Oh, okay. Once a day? Fine, then I'll call you once a day.

So baseline, it's nothing fancy. It's nothing complicated. It all really usually comes back to communication, alignment, understanding. Are we collaborating, or am I needling you?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And I see that a lot with the younger generation, especially the hard driver. A great thing I heard years ago, that somebody actually tagged me with, was "thrust and vector." Do you have thrust and vector? It's an aviation saying. Thrust is propulsion and vector is direction, and the two of those together are very powerful. I have a destination. I have a very distinct focus. I know where I'm going. Throttle, and here we go.

If you've got one but not the other, thrust without vector is chaotic. You're just going, but you have no direction. If you've got vector but no thrust, you'll sit on the couch all day and think, I need to do that, I need to do that, but you'll never get up. So the two together work really well. But then it's also controlling the throttle on the thrust: when to go fast, when to go slow.

I think it's sense of urgency. Speaking in the sales world, it depends on the level and scope and size of the deal, customer size, customer importance. Am I going to go full thrust and vector on a very small project that has very little implications? Probably not. But now bring me an elephant of a potential project, and now we're going to get some thrust and vector. We're going to make this happen, collaborate, make sure it happens. Size, scope, importance, lots of different feedback that comes into it.

I've also learned that I understand my strengths, and I am going to surround myself with people who have the strengths that I lack. Those are my mentors. Those are the people that I seek feedback from. And you guys are part of that. You're part of my resource network. You guys are the marketing geniuses. That is not a gene I inherited. I don't understand that world. I'm not good at it. So when it comes to that, that's when I call David and John and say, "Guys, I have an idea." And I drip on you, and then I walk away. And then, like magic, a week later you come back with pages of great, beautiful programs.

The first thing is stop. Just stop. Whether it's for 10 seconds, 10 minutes, a day, a week, whatever, let's just stop. Talk to me. I bring out my Barry White voice. Talk to me. Let's have a really calm conversation. Explain to me what's going on. And then I listen. There might be periods where I interject. And then it usually comes back to, let's prioritize. Number one, is the customer taken care of? Because that always has to come first in our world, in sales. Customer first, then let's take a look at inside, and then let's break it apart and understand the different pieces. How did you work it? How could we have done it better? This went well, this didn't go well, this was okay. We break those pieces apart and we take a look at it.

That's a great question, and I'm glad you asked, because the answer is emphatically yes. I can remember from a very young age, in my first job, actively seeking a mentor. I had people who guided me and who helped, but at no time did I truly have that mentor that I will say I have now. I've got some really good mentors in my life, and coaches. And that's something that I remember, the last two or three jobs, actively seeking. I had a few coaches, but none of them ever clicked. These would be executive coaches, sales coaches, mentor-type coaches in business, which then overlaps into life as well.

So the answer is yes, I was seeking those out, and either for financial reasons, or the company didn't see value in it, or I wasn't in the right position, but I never had that mentorship. I've often said that the Chris with two kidneys, the angry Chris, if I had had a mentor, I think there would have been some significant differences in terms of some of those hard knocks, and I'd probably be in a slightly different place. I'm not going to say better, but I think I would be richer and at least have had more experiences, if you will. And you know what? I'm going to rescind that and probably say, yeah, I might even be a little better.

I think the first thing, if I could talk to myself 20, 25 years ago, my advice would be: seek a company that values culture and mentoring. That's worth, I'm going to put a dollar number to it, salary and mentoring. Absolutely. I would take that guidance and mentoring and take a reduction in pay, which at the time I'd probably be like, "No way." But now, looking back on it, a company that values that, that provides that. And if the company doesn't do it, then you need to work harder at finding it yourself. It's so very important.

I agree with you 100%. I would say that school, whether it's a trade school or college or whatever, that's just the beginning. That is the foundation for education. I am a believer in lifelong learning. Now, I will say that that comes in lots of different forms. For some people, that's a master's degree or a Ph.D. or the curriculum in a university or that type of setting. For others, like me, that education is hands-on in the field, taking seminars, being mentored. There are lots of different forms, so one size does not fit all.

I would encourage anyone: you need to find how you learn. Is it taking a class? Is it going back to school? Or is it in the field, hands-on? How do you learn? And then hone in on that and grab it with both hands and don't ever stop.

It's part of it, yeah. The Decorative Concrete Hall of Fame was started by Bent Mikkelsen with Concrete Decor. He wanted to recognize leaders in the decorative concrete industry, which is a very niche, relatively small industry. He wanted to recognize those people who, outside of your job, outside of that, raised that particular industry by giving above and beyond. You're not going to make it into the Hall of Fame if you made a lot of money and you were successful because that was your job. That's great, but it recognizes people who gave above and beyond, who did something.

In my case, I latched on to the need for education within the decorative side, of troubleshooting and understanding. This ties into the chemistry side. That's something I realized very quickly: that industry was blowing up and exploding in the 90s and 2000s, and there was such an influx into it that people got ahead of themselves. They were moving faster than the technology. There were a lot of problems, a lot of failures in the field, a lot of complaints, and the industry as a whole was getting a bit of a black eye. I realized very quickly there was nobody out there explaining why the problems were happening and how to fix them. That's called troubleshooting.

So I created an entire series and did hundreds, if not thousands, of classes and seminars. I wrote four books on the whole idea of troubleshooting in the industry and what it's all about. And it taught me a lot, from the standpoint of: I learn by teaching. I try to get the foundation, the fundamentals. I'll do the research and so on and so forth. But where it really is solidified is when I then can regurgitate and teach, and watch that person and see the light bulb go off. It's very rewarding.

It came pretty quick.

Yeah. So there's a bit of recognition, in terms of I was trying to create a brand of Chris Sullivan at the time. And part of it was helping my career in sales by creating that brand. It was helping the company. There's a paycheck, not from that, but that derives additional financial benefit. But honestly, the underlying cause out of all of it, I think, goes back to the empathetic, giving side. I like teaching. I like sharing. I like passing the knowledge on. I get great purpose and fulfillment from that. That means a lot to me, that if I can share knowledge, if I can save someone the heartache and the headache because I am showing them, "Don't do that, do this," or "If this happens, this is how you fix it," I'm like, wow.

Honestly, I would say the greatest emails that I got were not the ones where, you know, "Oh, the class was great" or "Thanks," and so on and so forth. The ones that really resonated with me were, "I took your class five years ago, and I remember you said this, and I used it, and it saved the job," or whatever.

Yes.

No.

It was in my 20s, so early on. I don't ever remember wanting to be a teacher. But then I will say the first teaching environment was as a ski instructor, in my 20s, mid-20s. I realized after doing that just a very little bit, this is fun. I like this. This is great. I like the sharing, I like the knowledge. Skiing is fun. It wasn't an overly difficult job, if you will. The saying was, if you left with eight students in the morning, you came back with eight in the afternoon.

So there wasn't a whole lot of P&L or the lifeblood of the company on the line here. This was before helmets, though.

Long, skinny skis. The industry has come a long way since then. The crazy one-piece, flashy color suits and so on and so forth.

Oh, man, you're going to get me to dig into some personal emotional stuff. But okay, let's do it. So my dad—I think it really stems from, I didn't have a great father figure. My dad loved me. We had a family unit. My parents were married for 40-plus years. But my dad was very different than me. He got married later in life. He was an older gentleman. And right about the time where I was in my formative years, so late grade school and junior high, when you need a dad to catch baseball and take you to the football game or whatever, my dad went through some really tough situations. He was laid off. The entire industry he was part of literally evaporated.

That was steel manufacturing, the supply side, with a company called Dravo. Brilliant man, he was an engineer. He worked on the equipment design and manufacturing side that went into steel, but that whole industry in the 80s just up and evaporated, and he just never got back on his feet. So he was an absentee father during my formative years. When I wanted to throw the baseball, it was my mom who threw the baseball. When I needed a ride to a baseball game, and who was there watching me, that was my mother. My dad went through some tough times. We had a good relationship, we came together at the end of his life, he's not with us anymore, but we hammered that out. There were some rough years there, in my late teens and my 20s, where we did not really get along.

He's very cerebral, and I'm not. Just a very smart guy. He had full-ride scholarships to high school, private school, and college. Very book-learned. That's not me. Just very, very different, and so it's kind of a different path. So I think that was a piece that was missing, and I then went looking for that and filled that void on my own without even really realizing it.

Probably underlying, but I think part of it was just a sense of adventure. Nothing against Pittsburgh, great city, fun place, but it doesn't have the adventure that Colorado does. The mountains were calling. I came out here with a friend my senior year in high school. I'd never been west of the Mississippi. He invited me to come to Colorado to go skiing with him on spring break. We flew into Steamboat and spent a week out there, and that was it. I was hooked. Like, this is where I want to be. I want to be in the mountains. So the first opportunity I had, I took it.

So yeah, that is not a new story. There's probably a couple million other people who heard the call, go west. I think a quarter of the city of Chicago has moved here in the last 20 years.

Who was my first mentor? Probably my mother, if that counts. I mean, she's my mother.

Second mentor. I had a high school history teacher, Dr. James Mooney, who was probably kind of a second mentor for me. He's an interesting guy. I—

Yeah. He was a high school history teacher, but he also mentored students. Every summer he took a bunch of handpicked kids, and we did a backwater canoe trip in the Boundary Waters of Canada. Not the Boundary Waters, I'm sorry, Algonquin in Canada. He was really important for me in my latter years of high school. There was a time, as I approached my senior year in high school, I had no interest in going to college. No interest in anything other than skiing and being a lifeguard. I had a lot of thrust, I had no vector. And so he got me vectored in, in terms of, you need to do this. He gave me some great advice, and he's probably the reason I went to college, which is good.

Then he kind of guided me when I was at the end of college. I went through that same thing: okay, great, now I'm coming to the end of college, what do I do? And he's the one who said to go out and be a ski instructor. Go have fun for a couple of years.

It's been a while since I've talked to him, but I talked to him actually well into being married with children. He's retired now. I think he lives in Albuquerque or Santa Fe, New Mexico, is the last I heard of him.

Yeah. And I don't know if he even realizes the impact he had in terms of my life. So that was the second mentor, kind of early on. And then there were a few that kind of came and went through my career and had an impact on me. But there was about a 15-year period there where I didn't really have a mentor per se. And those were important years when I really could have used that.

No, I didn't.

Great story. So my wife and I met. We were both ski instructors here in Colorado at Copper Mountain, that's how we met, and we spent a season teaching here, skiing, and it was fantastic. At the end of that season, we were both invited the next winter to teach in Zermatt, Switzerland. I'm like, all right, sounds pretty good, we'll do that. You twisted my arm.

So we then went to Europe and we taught a season in Zermatt, and it was fantastic. At the end of that season, Vicky had been doing it for five years, I'd only been doing it for two. I was, I'm ready, I can do this for a few more years, this is fun. And she had actually started her master's and wanted to get back to it. She had put it on hold to do that. Very clear: she is done with the ski instructor thing. She's done it for five years. She was really ready to get onto the next stage of her life, and she wanted to go back and finish her master's. She's a couple of years older than me.

I, on the other hand, was invited by the manager of that particular ski resort, the company, before they get assigned to different places. He came up to me in March of that winter and said, "Hey, I got my assignment for the summer, and I need an English-speaking sailing instructor. Do you know anything about sailing?" "Well, I've done a little bit of sailing at summer camp." "Perfect. I need a sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera for the summer." Oh, that's interesting. I'm like, wow. So Vicky's going back to the U.S., and I just got invited to be a sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera. We were—

No, no, we were just dating. So what am I going to do?

So that's what I call my first life decision, the first big fork in the road. Sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera? Go back to the United States?

I did not. Oh, man, what a surprise. My mother, to this day, said, "I was sure you were going to be a sailing instructor in the Italian Riviera." I think it was great. Vicky put no pressure on me whatsoever. However, she pretty much said, you do what you want to do. It sounds fantastic. I've had five great years. If you want to do a couple more years, that's great. But understand—and at this time we were seriously dating. We had already talked about potentially getting married, getting engaged, so there was a future there—her words were, if you do the Italian thing, then I'm going back to the U.S. to get my master's. You're going to Europe. We don't know where this is going. You might meet someone else. It could be the end.

But it wasn't, which was fantastic. One of the reasons I love her to this day is it's never been "you have to." It was, make the decision that's right for you, but let's talk about consequences. So I thought about it, and at that point I decided—I think I was 26 or 27 years old—it was probably time. Even though I could have been a sailing instructor, I'm—

Along the lines of, it would have been fun, but at the same time I don't regret it. It was the right decision. I came back, got an internship with Bayer that turned into my first job that turned into a position in Denver. And then we got engaged a year or so later and got married, and three kids, and the rest is history.

I had a chemistry degree.

It wasn't that long. It was about two years.

Yeah. So I did have a good friend in Pittsburgh, a family friend, who had a senior-level position at Bayer. She didn't get me the job. She got me the interview. I'm very thankful to Darla McCormick, and in 100% transparency, she did get me the interview. But she made it very clear. She said, "I'll get you the interview. You need to earn it." And I did. I got the interview, and it led to an internship, and I worked my butt off in that internship. That led to an offered position, which worked well.

Yes. It was, I think, a three-month or six-month internship. That was pretty clearly understood. Like, we're going to give you a test drive, and if you fit the culture, and if you're a hard worker or whatever, it will probably turn into a position.

So, funny story. I can remember going through the onboarding for the job, and there was a gentleman who was getting hired into the same division, in the technical, in the lab. He and I were talking about past job experience, and he was talking about how he worked in the lab at this company, in chemistry and so on and so forth. And it was like, "Yeah, I was a ski instructor in Switzerland and Colorado." And everyone kind of looked at me. Yeah, that's my experience, and they still hired me.

You know what? That wasn't advice from anybody. You asked me, we've talked about the word tenacity. That is inbred tenacity, from a standpoint of, call it a dog with a bone. You put me on something, thrust and vector, I don't quit. But what changed? I think it was something to prove, and once I committed to it, I'm not quitting. I follow things through, for the good or the bad. We talked a little bit about that. It's like chemistry: this is hard, everybody says it's hard, don't really love it, but because it's hard, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to make it work, and I'm going to pass, and I'm going to get out.

And then I think before that it was, well, college, college is tough. Maybe not my favorite thing, but all right, I need to do this, I'm going to do it. And once I make my mind up, I'm doing it. I won't quit, I just go. So it's just that commitment, that tenacity. But it wasn't anything that anyone told me. That's just something that's always been inbred, something that's inside of me, from the standpoint of, I'm going to do it, I do it.

Yeah, that probably plays into it. But I can also remember, and my mother has told me, even as a [inaudible] and quit. It was like, I'm going to go build a fort, go run in the woods and build a fort, just crazy things like that. I'm just going to do it. That's just who I am and how I'm wired.

So you know what the difference between you and me is? You'd be estimating your costs, and I'd already be in the backyard with a shovel, and I'd have dug a hole.

The problem is I would have already had the whole half dug, and you would have come out and said, "Chris, you're 20 feet to the left. You need to be over here."

I've done that many times. Many times. That's the dig first, pay the price later.

Interesting. I can't remember my first sale. It just wasn't that meaningful, and I think by the time the ink was dry, I was already, where's the next one?

Yeah, it's like, great, where's the next? What's going on? I remember I had great success, and that just came from, I came into the division that was pretty senior. I was in my late 20s and I think the next salesperson was probably in their 40s, which at that time was like really old. I remember I just came in and was going 150 miles an hour with my hair on fire, and these guys were like, "Who is this young punk? Slow down. You're making us look bad." And I did have great success. I jump-started a lot.

I would say I don't remember my first sale. I do remember a significant sale. There were two groups in that division, one was the construction side and one was the paint and plastic side. Paint and plastic had really floundered for that group in the United States. They hadn't landed a new account in years, just really trying to hang on to a very, very small percent of business. I targeted a very, very large paint manufacturer in Houston, Texas, that did powder coatings, and I had a relationship with the procurement manager. I remember being told many times, "You're never going to sell them. You'll never sell them." And once again, that's the trigger for it, right? Tell me no, I do. I just keep going.

And lo and behold, it took about a year, and I remember getting a phone call from the manager of that division, and he was just beside himself because we had just gotten an order for three truckloads. It was pigment I was selling at the time. We had just gotten an order of three truckloads from this powder coating company. "What did you do?" Like, I did my job. And that's just kind of the tenacity, you know, don't give up, keep pushing. I'm going to tell—

We celebrated our 28th.

I have said she's always been and always will be smarter than me. So you're probably right.

Yeah. So a powder coating is a type of paint. This is probably powder coated, this is kind of metal, but it's typically put on metal. What it is is liquid paint that's run through a dryer, and then it's broken up and ground into a powder, and it has a negative charge on it. Then they'll run parts through a powder coating booth or oven, and they put the opposite charge on the part and spray the powder coating, and it's magnetically attracted to the metal and it sticks. And that's powder coatings in 15 seconds.

Oh, I was building forts and digging ditches and making bows and arrows and building stuff. I was playing in the creek and running in the woods and riding my bike and building jumps, and never really hurt myself too bad. Sports, I tried, it wasn't really my thing. I played the sports, wasn't very good at it. But I found my niche in sports in high school when I discovered triathlon, and it was multiple disciplines, because I am ADHD, big surprise, I know. I was diagnosed at a very young age, and I need lots of change and lots of stimulation. So I found triathlon as the sport. It had just started in the 80s.

Yeah, he was decathlon, but multiple sports. Dave Scott was one of the early guys, Mark Allen. These are the early guys in the sport of triathlon. It gave me the three sports. It was hard, which, when I'm like, hard, I'm doing it, because it's difficult, I love it. Three disciplines. I had a swimming background, because I swam competitively at an early age, probably the first sport I did. And then I love the speed of biking, and running I just kind of suffer through. It's never really been my thing. But I found triathlon, and it gave me a purpose. It gave me an outlet. I was pretty good at it. It mixed up multiple sports, multiple disciplines. It was difficult, and it was unique. It was, at that time, just really the beginning of that sport in North America.

I was part owner for 11 years, and my business partner—

It was a small manufacturing company in Houston, Texas, selling products in the construction industry. And she told me early on—we spent a lot of time together because we're business partners, we were talking all the time and got to know each other pretty well—at some point, a few years into the relationship, she said, "You're restless." And not just in the moment, but "you are a restless person." It's kind of stuck with me, in terms of, yeah, she's right. I am a restless person. I get bored with things quickly. I'm always looking for something else. It doesn't mean that I won't go back and do that, but it's always, yeah, take the next step. What's next? What's around the corner? What am I doing tomorrow? What am I doing in five minutes? To get me to sit here for two hours, I commend you guys. That's a big deal. I don't sit still for two hours for just anybody.

So restless. Back to your question. It's something that's just who I am. It's kind of hard to put a finger on it per se, but that's just something that I've always had, that restlessness, that what's next. And I think part of that comes from the ADHD. As a child, I suffered with it, as a lot of young people did. Now, granted, this was also a time where it wasn't diagnosed. They didn't know it. Now there's really a lot of good medications or non-medication therapies for it. We've come to understand it quite a bit. I even saw it in how we handled one of my children who was diagnosed with it, how differently the schools and the education system deal with it.

Part of it comes from that, where it was a curse as a child. But I have learned, and I don't know when or how that happened, to manipulate that to my advantage, to use that restlessness and that disorder in terms of attention and the ability to just change directions quickly. I've used that to my benefit. So that's a good example of taking something that's a disorder and switching that around to the benefit of sense of urgency, get things done, move with thrust and vector.

Yeah, it hasn't been easy. I will say this: I've been blessed. I had two amazing parents who stayed together until my father's passing. They loved each other. It's just my brother and I, and we grew up in a great family unit. As much as there were many, many years of difficulty for my dad, my parents never had my brother and I in want of anything. They always found a way to provide. We both went to college, and yeah, we had some student loans, but they always found a way, and even into our adult lives there was always a way.

So I'm not going to say I grew up in poverty, and I did not grow up in difficult situations, but I will say, of the things we've talked about, I did not grow up in money. I found a way to make those happen, and that's something I've always done. I did not have the money to afford to ski. What I realized is that I love to ski, so I need to be part of something that's going to allow me to ski. I joined the ski patrol, which was a free ski pass and discounts on equipment and things like that. That's how I did it. And then ski school and teaching and so on and so forth, so I could take my passion and make money doing it. Everything I did, I earned myself. I was given a great foundation for it, but no, it hasn't been easy. At the same time, I know there are a lot of people who have a lot more difficult stories.

So back to the lymphoma. Just about a year ago at this time, my daughter, who was 20 at the time, started complaining about trouble breathing and a high heart rate. I'm a CrossFit instructor, and so my initial response was, you're out of shape, go to the gym. Typical, my answer, quick knee-jerk. It lasted for a period of weeks and months, and then she went on a hike and wasn't able to finish it because her heart rate was at 210. I'm like, okay, now that's not normal, we need to go see the doctor. We saw a doctor, which led to another doctor, which then led to some scans. And then I remember very clearly getting an [inaudible] that you are being referred to the Rocky Mountain Cancer Center. That was a gut punch. Like, what? Where did this come from? Sullivans don't get cancer.

So fast forward, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at the age of 20. We didn't know anything about it, because nobody in our family, it's not something I've ever dealt with and not something I ever thought I would deal with. So my 20-year-old daughter has cancer. It's even kind of hard to say it. At the time, it was really difficult. The one who handled it like a champ was my 20-year-old daughter. She was amazing, Amelia. She just took it in stride.

I remember being at the appointment with the oncologist, where they tell you, this is an hour-long appointment and they're going to walk you through everything you need to know about chemotherapy, what it is and what it's going to look like for the next six months. In that appointment, the nurse practitioner, for 30 minutes, literally tells you all the things that are going to wreck and ravage my daughter's body. You're going to lose your hair, and you're going to be sick, and you're going to vomit, and you're going to lose sensation in your fingers, and you're going to have either diarrhea or vomiting. It just went on and on. I remember being on the verge of tears and almost breaking down two or three times. And every time I was about to lose it, I looked across at my 20-year-old daughter, who's sitting there and just taking it in. And then at the end, "Any questions?" "Yeah. Can I paint my nails?" That was the question she had.

It just put the whole thing in perspective, in terms of she's the one facing this. Now, granted, it's very curable, and they said that, so the threat of death wasn't necessarily looming over us, but it's still cancer. It's a serious disease and serious illness. [inaudible] who get this who do pass away, and so it is kind of scary. And all she could think about was what was important to her, right? Can I paint my nails? That put the whole thing in perspective. Now, I don't want to make it sound like she didn't take it seriously. She took it very seriously. And then we went into battle mode. Like a Navy SEAL, she handled this: what do I need to do, tell me where I need to be, and let's go.

So in about a three-week period, she had three surgeries. She had the port put in, and then she had her eggs frozen, because chemotherapy impacts the ovaries of young females at that age. And then the day after she had her eggs frozen, which is a pretty invasive procedure, I'm driving her to college, because she had made the decision: I'm going to school. I am not going to let cancer dictate to me. I will dictate to cancer.

And of course, Vicky and I were like, no, you need to stay home. We need to take care of you. I was staunchly against this idea of her going to school. But she convinced us, and it actually turned out to be the best thing. She was surrounded by her sorority, her friends, in a place. If she had stayed here, yeah, she would have had mom and dad, but all her friends would have been at school. She would have been pretty miserable and pretty alone. There she was surrounded by that. We went and visited her multiple times, and it worked out.

So she went through six months of chemo, 12 treatments, lost all her hair. It was pretty miserable, but she got through it. And then at the end, she did get a clean bill of health. We are still going through some testing here. She's not completely out of the woods yet. But that was a year of just really, everything kind of went on pause, as much as we lived our lives and tried to be normal. If you have cancer, it controls you, because you're on a schedule, whether it's radiation or chemo and so on and so forth. You still live your life, which she did. She took some classes and tried to engage, but at the same time, you're feeling pretty crummy. That's what chemo does. It basically kills the cancer cells and everything along with it. And then through medicine, they keep you alive and then they bring you back.

[inaudible] takes a 20-year-old young lady and turns her into a mature adult in one year. I saw my daughter go from, she's pretty well put together, but I saw her go from a young college student to, at the end of it, a mature, independent woman who probably grew up too fast, but in a year earned her stripes. Nobody ever has to go through that, but unfortunately people get diagnosed with cancer every day. She grew up, and I am so proud of her in terms of what she went through and what she gained and the person that she became. It was remarkable. She owned that, and even in the low lows, she never let it dominate her. She always was in charge.

Vicky and I learned a lot from her. Like I said, we were staunchly against her going and being in Utah by herself, but she taught us, this is what independence looks like. This is what, "Mom and Dad, you did a good job. You raised me to be independent." And she did a great job.

She did, actually. All the men in the family, so my two sons and myself, we all shaved our heads in support of her. I didn't shave my head, I got a full-on mohawk, because I always wanted a mohawk. I got a lot of people telling me I look good. But yeah, I had a mohawk. It was fun. I really enjoyed it.

She's got tenacity. It morphs differently in her, in terms of she doesn't quite have the thrust and vector I have. She will be comfortable to binge-watch on the couch or whatever. But you give her a mission, something in her own way, she gets it done.

That's interesting. I've really not been asked that question. I think: support, but don't smother. Once again, age, and granted it'd be different if it's a 12-year-old. It's a 20-year-old, so an adult. Our initial response was just to want to wrap her up and protect her, stay at home, and we'll take care of you. I had visions of making soup for you every day, which probably would not have happened. But these are the visions. I'd cook dinner and so on and so forth. And that was the wrong thing. The right thing was listen to her, support, be there when needed, but don't smother her. And that's the advice I would give.

We were there many times: phone calls, tears, feeling sick. We made many trips out there to be with her, but she was in her world. I guess that's the other thing: let her battle this on her terms. Don't dictate it from your terms. Which, as a father, was like, well, I'm paying for it and you're my baby and you're going to do this on my terms and at home. My wife was actually really good. She kind of talked me out of it too. So it was these two women against me, and I lost. That happens all the time.

I learned it from the outcome. It was a year-long process, because even after we decided, and I drove her to school in Utah, and I said goodbye and I came home, there were months after that where there were bumps along the road, and I immediately said, "See, she should be home. She should be in Colorado." But then over a period of time, through the chemo and seeing how she controlled it, and she was the one winning this war, that was the right decision. So at the end of it, I look back and go, yeah, that was the right decision. Support, but don't smother. Let her fight this battle on her terms, how she wanted to.

There were a couple of times near the end where she said, "I would like to come home and do the next treatment at home." Come on home, these are your terms. And she did, and it worked out well. She said, "Okay, I need to go back to Utah." That's fine, it's time for you to go back. So treat her like an adult, support her, and let her fight that battle on her own terms. That came to me. It wasn't a snap decision, and like I said, I pushed back on that even months into it, but it was the right decision.

Yeah, actually, first, before we go there, I want to hit on the term "success" that you said, because that's something that Vicky and I have talked about through my entire adult life. What is success? You said very successful, and sometimes I struggle with that, because I am not financially successful, at least not to where I would like to be and where I see some of my constituents and people. I haven't struck the big financial deal. I don't have multimillions in the bank and a nest egg. I had some hard knocks. I had two jobs, a nine-year stint and an 11-year stint. Both those jobs ended poorly, to where I got nothing out of them. Yeah, I got a paycheck, but there wasn't a whole lot of retirement. We had some financial issues and things like that.

So from a standpoint of success, yes: successful marriage, successful relationships, successful kids, father. I will say I've done a good job. I've got all the stuff we talked about, which I'm very proud of. But in terms of success, I still have some things that I view in myself that I haven't really been that successful in. I just want to make sure we're clear on that, in terms of it's not all roses and unicorns in terms of what's going on. That's the part for me internally that I struggle with sometimes, just the way things have turned out in some of these career paths or whatever. I don't regret any of it, but a couple of them did not turn out the way I wanted them to. But once again, like we've talked about, put your shoulder into it, keep working, you don't give up, you take the next step. Absolutely. So back to your question, which I totally forgot.

Oh man, that's a great question. You guys are asking really good questions that I've never really thought of or had asked me about. So I'm going to say it probably has something to do with completion. Getting it done, following it through. Is that tenacity? Tenacity is kind of sticking it out, so maybe it's a bit of the same. I think they all tie together. What I will say also is have fun. I learned that late in my career. That came later. There were a lot of years early on where I wasn't having a lot of fun. I was—

The angry one. Yeah, the angry, exactly.

That's right. True. So that probably does tie into it, where that was a very pivotal point in my life, that whole donation period or whatever. But I definitely would say, enjoy the ride. And that's a cliche, and you hear people say that, but I think that's really—and that's something that I have done, in that I have worked hard and put myself in positions where I've been in sales positions that have allowed me to travel, not only domestically. I've been to every state in the United States. I've been to every major [inaudible]. I put myself into that position to be able to experience some of that.

And I coach some of my younger sales reps that I work with in terms of, if you're somewhere and there's something cool, then take a couple of hours, or take a day or half a day, and go do that cool thing. Don't just keep driving on by it. Don't get so consumed with the job. And that's something that I found myself. I visit a lot of cool places by myself, but I'm there, and I'm like, you know what, it's an hour out of the way, but I want to go see this or I want to go do that. I want to experience this landmark, this city, this place, this something.

Yeah. So when I was younger, it was always a race to get home. I'd go on a business trip Monday through Thursday, and it was almost like from the time I got to where I was going, I'd be looking at the watch or the calendar: three days to get home, two days to get home. If I could cram six hours of work into two hours, I could catch an earlier flight and get home earlier. I would work really hard. I'd take the last flight home, which got me home at two o'clock in the morning, telling myself, "But at least I'm sleeping in my bed." Great.

Versus now, when I book a trip, I immediately think, who's playing? Have I been to that stadium? What national park is close by? What area is that? What else is there? What within a short distance haven't I done, or could I do? I immediately start. Now, granted, different time. Young kids, want to be home, so on and so forth. Now the kids are all out of the house. No offense, Vicky, but it's not that sense of, I've got to run home and be there for baseball games and so on and so forth. So I will say some of that, but definitely enjoy the ride. Enjoy the moment. Understand that there's more to life than the job.

That's something my dad and I used to [inaudible], when I was a teenager, a young 20-year-old. He grew up during the Depression, and he was of the mindset that you are your job, that that is how you are rated for success. I remember having some pretty knock-down, drag-out arguments with him about, no, it's not. Success is the bigger picture. And I still think I'm right.

Yeah, so—

Yeah. So this was given to me by a friend, really a lifelong friend, and it was one of the first books I remember reading as an adult. You go through college, at least for me, go through school, kind of forced to read, and then after, I didn't want to read. There were many years there where I just didn't read anything for pleasure or whatever. And then in my early 30s, I discovered, hey man, there's a whole other world out there, some really good books. This is one of the first books that I read.

Falling Upward is about using your stumbling and your roadblocks and your falls in life, and how to twist those around and use them to your advantage. It spoke to me at that time, which was probably in my early 30s, about how you don't look at those as bumps and bruises, don't look at them as negative. Spin those around into experiences. Sometimes you learn more from your mistakes than you do if everything goes smooth.

We don't. Exactly. So happiness is a combination of being fulfilled, but it's also, when things aren't going well, understanding that that's part of life. Life is not perfect, and it's not always going to be happy. Understanding that fulfillment comes from being able to switch that around and getting yourself into the right frame of mind.

Did you talk to my wife about this question?

Yeah, because this is something that she actually has a phrase for me: that I was born in the wrong era. We talk about this. So if I could walk out the door anywhere, it would probably be the 1700s, North America, the mountains of Colorado. Mountain man, living off the land, or a rancher, having to build and fix and do stuff like that. That just energizes me every day. I've got to kind of survive by milking the cow and hunting and fishing and building, and build my own cabin. I think I could get really into that. Hard work, once again, tenacity, just to live.

So, but yeah, I've thought about that, not a lot, but from time to time. And Vicky and I, every time I do something or build something or whatever, she's like, "Yeah, you were born in the wrong era."

What advice would I give myself?

So: don't wait until you donate a kidney to just slow down and don't sweat the small stuff.

Yeah, I won't burn too many digital megabytes, but I want to thank David and John. This has been fantastic. We've gone through a little bit of the history of my life, which has been really fun. But I want to thank Vicky and Connor, Brady, and Amelia for being there the whole way. And also my mom, who is my first mentor and who I really owe my life to from the beginning. She's always been there, and she's been one of my biggest supporters. So thank you to Barbara, and I love you guys all, and I really appreciate you giving me the opportunity. Thank you.