Dr. John Oberg’s Story: Loss, Faith and Growth

Show notes

Dr. John Oberg's Story: Childhood, Faith, Family and a Mission to Change a Billion Lives

Who is Dr. John Oberg? In this episode, Randy Lorensen turns the questions on his co-host for an honest look at the moments that shaped him, and why he wants to positively change a billion lives.

John goes back to his childhood: step-siblings, playing by the rules of the game, an early loss and the coping habits it left him with until therapy in his 30s. He talks about being the water boy, swimming, and not taking no for an answer.

Then they cover college, lifelong friends and mentors, what Vector taught him about selling and managing, taking agency in his 20s and early parenthood. John explains how he approaches a challenge, and how the desire to win can hijack him.

In the last part he talks about stewardship, trading money for time, faith, a search fund turnaround, meeting his wife Amber and the date night they protect. He closes with why he wants to tell these stories raw and real.

John's Story: Resilience, Faith and Family

What you'll discover:

How childhood events shape us later
Therapy and new ways of coping
What Vector taught him about sales and management
Getting hijacked by the desire to win
Stewardship, faith and trading money for time
Date night and investing in marriage

Timestamps

[00:00] A different type of episode: John's story
[01:52] Childhood, step-siblings and a ruined bike
[03:35] Playing by the rules of the game
[05:20] A loss in childhood
[07:03] Coping, and therapy in his 30s
[08:46] How childhood events shape us later
[10:28] The water boy: sports in school
[12:13] Talking with his sons about "enough"
[13:57] Swimming, and not taking no for an answer
[17:25] College and the honors biology program
[19:09] Lifelong friends and mentors
[20:54] What Vector taught him
[22:38] Learning to manage through role-play
[24:22] Taking agency in his 20s
[26:05] Early parenthood
[27:48] How the people in his life see him
[29:30] How John approaches a challenge
[31:12] Fun, humor and winning
[32:56] Getting hijacked by the desire to win
[34:40] His 30s: unpacking the past and changing careers
[36:23] None of it is ours: stewardship
[38:07] Trading money for time
[39:50] Faith
[41:33] A turning point
[43:22] A search fund and a manufacturing turnaround
[45:05] Big changes, and meeting Amber
[46:48] Family health challenges
[48:33] Blessed, and still working hard
[50:17] Date night and investing in marriage
[52:01] Why tell these stories
[53:43] Raw and real: what Tales of Abundance is about
[57:09] Closing

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About Dr. John Oberg

Dr. John Oberg is a co-host of Tales of Abundance and a healthcare founder whose companies include Precina Health. This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg (Anthony Marino isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

Find us online:

🌐 Website: https://talesofabundance.com/
📺 Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70am1Pai4BM
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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:08] Dr. John Oberg here with Randy Lorensen for a different type of episode not sure I'm gonna love this one Randy uh I think you'll be all right I think I think you'll do fine so H for the listeners today we're going to find out about John and uh kind of why John is John uh I mentioned on on a previous episode that our introductory episode that when I first met John he said he wanted to change a billion lives and uh that doesn't doesn't just happen so I want to out how did Jon become that person with that that great goal and wanting to create you know change A Billion Lives that's for the better right which is his own version of positively impact A Billion Lives yeah not just impact A Billion Lives positively impact yeah positively impact which is which is certainly bringing abundance into the world so let's start and uh we have a framework that we've talked about uh you know kind of life in gener or in decades so 0 to 10 let's talk about what were the the big Stepping Stones the impactful things that happened to you uh in ear the early part of your life I think you know for me the the big memories that had amazing impact weren't all they weren't all positive in the moment when I tell the story but but I look back now and I'm grateful for the experiences but so my my mom and biological father uh divorced when I was young and my mom got remarried to my stepdad David who I considered my dad and um he passed away in the second decade but in the first decade when I was being integrated into the family it wasn't the easiest experience I was so excited to have brothers and sisters I was an only child coming into a blended family with um you know two step sisters and a step brother and um they I my bicycle was my prized possession and they decimated it with spray paint just destroyed the bikee um trashed it and I didn't see how they were disciplined I'm sure they were disciplined appropriately but I didn't get to see that discipline and so I felt like uh I wasn't protected in that moment and so it was a real moment of um angst loneliness uh separation um you're you're how old when this happens it's like seven years old okay you know and and one of the things that happened was you know they would play games like we'd have um on a set of stairs they'd say you can't step on the hamburger stair which was what whatever stair they wanted it to be and I'd figure out which stair the hamburger stair was and they'd immediately change it so I would lose and so the rules were constantly being changed so that I would lose and so that I remember that experience pretty viscerally um and it I think it really uh put a sense of justice into me that may not always be well placed in my older age but I I have this real sense of like you know what should be fair what shouldn't be fair and I again I don't know that's always well placed but that that was an early childhood experience in my first decade that really really formed me it's interesting thank you for that I've never I've never heard that before yeah it makes me it makes me wonder a little bit about some of the Frameworks and you being so stringent about a certain framework too if that maybe isn't a little bit of that started there at least oh yeah when you like like changing the rules Midway through the game is is definitely a a nerve for me yeah and and it's true that we have games in the world that rules do change Midway through the game but you know there's other times I daughter once who was losing at Monopoly and she wanted to change the rules of Monopoly in the middle of the game and I was like oh hell no you know and it wasn't about me winning it was about teaching her that when you're playing a game you play by the rules of the game I think it's important you know as I've shared with my kids throughout life like sometimes you don't like the rules of the game that you're in but nevertheless that's the playing field that you're on and wishing you were on a different playing field generally doesn't serve you that well unless you can do something about it and change that playing field later on but that's not usually in the moment usually you can't change the playing field that you're on in that moment and I mean that figuratively not just literally you know um you know whether it's work or school or whatever the case may be when you're in the middle of something sometimes getting through it you know is the most important thing tell the listeners where you grew up it grew up just outside Los Angeles California in different suburbs of Los Angeles I led a um you know middle class you know upbringing um certainly never wanted for anything um yeah so it was it it was a relatively sheltered upbringing looking back on it I feel very privileged to have had the upbringing that I had um particularly in the first 10 years of my life moving into the second decade you know the there's a couple really big events the first one was early in the decade when uh David my my stepfather who was my dad uh was diagnosed with uh cancer it was uh kidney cancer uh and it was a death sentence at that time and uh we turned our living room into a hospital room and um watched him go downhill over a period of a year and a half and it was uh it was tough for the entire family my mom is like a superhero and um yeah she was amazing during that time but I remember the night before he died he ca he became um very lucid and conscious for the first time in a long time and he asked my mom for a steak dinner when I was in the room and I thought that meant he was better you know I've been praying for a year that he would oh I prayed for everything Randy I prayed that he would be healthy I prayed that God would you know take my life instead of his I prayed that there'd be a miracle I prayed like all kinds of prayers how old were you I was 10 to 11 it was my 10 10year old and 11y old year and uh it's a lot for a kid a year and a half so a year and a half yeah in the house watching it yeah watching it happen hospital bed in the living room you know all the machines and monitors that's tough mom sleeping on the couch in the living room and uh and so he he wakes up and asks for a steak dinner I think everything's healed and he's good and I didn't know about heightened awareness before death as something that you know was a was a thought that clinicians had and so I raced into the room the next morning early trying to catch him you know before anybody else did because his life was good and all the machines were turned off everything was disconnected there was a whole bunch of people in the room next door no one caught me running into the room and I saw his body before they had covered it really tragic situation mom was in the shower trying to think through how to tell the kids uh not the optimal way for a child to learn about their you know their parents' death and uh another very formative moment for me in which unbeknownst to me at the time I um I learned 30 years later in therapy I shut down emotionally in a way that's very appropriate for an 11-year-old to deal with the grief but I didn't know how to as I got older learn the tools of an older teenager a 20-some a late 20-some I never picked up those new emotional coping mechanisms to handle that appropriately until I got into therapy in my 30s and that wasn't for lack of my mom trying my mom had me in therapy as a kid and all the right steps she took as a parent uh but I just didn't process it all the way through and uh it as we'll talk about in the future decades had a really um lasting impression on my life both positive and negative but had a very lasting impression that's that's rough I mean I'm just thinking when my mom passed I mean we spent a month in the and I mean that's that's a blip compared to 18 months in the home right I mean she was in a coma and there wasn't much going on but it was yeah it was I mean that's that's I you know I knew the rough thing I didn't know all that detail so yeah I mean and and there were some some beautiful things that came out of it the community that I was in at the time really rallied around the family and so all these kids who I I wanted to be that I was friends with that I wanted to be like close friends with came by and were incredibly generous with me for a period of time and I I was craving that based on the experience of my bicycle right I wanted to be accepted into that Community a much deeper way and so I had that experience you know Post David dying and um and so but and and that lasted for a period of time and um but I but I never I never really uh never really opened myself up you know until I was in my 30s and so you have this period of time 20 some years where I just wasn't I wasn't available in the way looking back I wish I would have been available so yeah wow okay yeah there's there's I think so often things happen to kids that have impacts later on that I think a lot of times we're not even aware oh yeah I mean like when did you become aware was it therapy or I mean when did you become aware that that was causing this for you know years in the future I didn't get real crystal Clarity until my early 30s for sure and look I don't want to hold this out as like I had some traumatic childhood that other people don't have like I've heard stories of you know really traumatic places and I think we all have our story and so I don't hold mine out to be better than or worse than somebody else but certainly recognize that you know people experience things all the time and that experience created great resilience in me in many ways that we'll talk about and it created trauma and it so it created a lot of things and so uh I'm grateful that I've been able to unpack it with a professional and um and learn from it and grow from it and uh but but you know you ask about like what are the most like impactful events of your you know first 12 years in this case that that has to be you know kind of top of the list okay yeah well it's 12 to 20 anything for the rest of that decade or yeah I think there was a couple of big things that happened in that place from from 12 to 20 I uh really got involved in sports and um for people that know me they know that I got really serious about soccer and and water polo and swimming by extension and um I you know was an All-American high school athlete um and uh I was I was recruited to play at a couple of colleges and when I say recruited to play I was recruited as the water boy like I wasn't big enough fast enough strong enough to you know play like there was I was playing with really really great players and so I was graciously put into the team picture um and uh but that I mean I I was not a division one athlete in that way um I got to hang out with him and uh be a part of that crew in college and so what I learned about myself playing water polo was I learned how to win I learned um how to be a part of a team we played at a you know a small high school where I think we had two we call them CIF championships equivalent to a state championships in my Junior and senior years of high school and I think we had nine All-American certificates across three years of uh across three a threeyear period between the two years of high school that I had in the next year and I really it was the coach right the coach did a fantastic job of putting a team together of focusing on conditioning the mental game and working as a unit uh as a team and so um I have a deep amount of respect um for for what you know Jerry did uh for for all the players for how he invested in all of the kids um and then you know I talked to some of those people I played with as adults um you know Matt Cherry uh kind of principal among them and the level of respect and uh that I hold for those people is it would be hard to overstate the respect I have for um what we went through through as a group and um how much I was formed in that period more than I knew at the time I love the concept of learning how to win I think uh I think that's a critical skill set that people don't talk about enough uh you know I've I've got sons in college and one of I know that's a conversation I had one of them that you know we went to a high school that was so so right and even as freshman you're playing football like going to a a program that wins all the I think there was I great lesson there so I can see that I mean what let's dig into that a little bit more I mean what you mentioned some of it but what else what what are your big takeaways are what do you I mean what did when you say learned how to win what did you really learn like what did you take with you I think I learned I learned I learned about expecting to win which is a really important thing I also learned how to channel my intensity there there was a great intensity that came out of somewhere in my childhood and I I couldn't even tell you where it comes from but anybody who knows me well knows that I can be intense to a fault you know this about me uh my friends know it about me my family knows it about me like it's and that's been a part of my life for all of my life but Sports were a way to channel that intensity um and you know I took there was one class I took in high school called peer counseling where you learned about empathy and giving to other people and that would place a seed in me that wouldn't sprout in the way that I would have thought for gosh 25 30 more years and so we'll come back to that you know that empathy piece of it but channeling intensity um into a Good Thing For Better or For Worse and I would say that there were times I was working out where I was probably too intense with people but like I remember the day before my last High School water polo game ever everybody was out of the pool I knew it was my last High School workout ever for water polo and I remember the sun setting I remember me just looking at the pool nobody in it knowing that I wanted to remember that moment I went underwater listen to the quiet but I I knew that was an important moment for me for some reason it's great awareness for I mean still a young kid right I mean I think most of us those things happen and we just don't have that awareness um I don't know that I had that before after that day but there was that moment in time where what what about work ethic too as as far as I know I mean look you you work hard is that where a lot of that came from or was that some somewhere else I you know there da uh David and Jim were two seniors in high school when I was a freshman and I I played my freshman year of water polo in the fall and I wanted to go swim on the swim team in the spring to become faster for water polo the next fall and they said you should try to get onto the varsity swim team and I'd been you know swimming and I thought there's an outside chance but not a great chance of that they said you just show up to morning workouts cuz because the JV team works in the afternoon but the varsity team works out in the morning and the afternoon so just sh start showing up to practice and swimming with us and even if you're not on the team just keep working out with us until they let you on the team and so I started showing up to these Varsity workouts and the water polo coach my water polo coach was the the girls team coach for swimming and then there was a different swim team coach for the the boys team and so I'd show up and the boys team coach wouldn't let me into the practice and so I asked my the water polo coach who's coaching the girls team I could swim with the girls and he let me work out with the girls team until they finally allowed me into the boys team practices and eventually I was a letterman as a freshman on the swim team um but I wasn't willing to kind of take no for an answer how long did that take I don't remember it took too long in my memory now I I don't remember if it was a day a week or a month did that piss you off I don't remember caring oh you know I think I think for me I just wanted to be faster but you okay I I'm I'm trying to figure out why you kept showing up right cuz I think a lot of people maybe most probably most people would go oh I'm not allowed and they would just oh that's it right but you you took the step to go work out with the girls I just I I don't think that's common well I don't think David and Jim were going to let me quit either right they they were both a little they were kind of rebels a little bit not a lot but a little bit and they just you know they picked me up at the house in the morning on the way to school and they weren't gonna stop showing up so so so in that way I had two people that were investing in me great uh for reasons that I don't fully understand today that I'm incredibly grateful for and uh and they continue to do that for their entire senior year and you know you don't see seniors take freshman under their wing like that all the time yeah and so um I I don't know what it was that that had them do that for me but I was grateful was that them or was that part of the culture that the coach and the program had uh I think it them I don't I didn't see it happen a lot okay yeah cool all right anything we want to add to this phase no I think once I got out of high school we kind of get into the 20s and that's where I started my first kind I I I had a lifeguarding job in high school whatever but my first real job happened after my freshman year of college I went to school um you know the the went to USC went to USC yeah and uh I I was very fortunate I got into the honors biology program when I was there where I was uh working in HIV lab that some of the biology students were allowed to take part in I wasn't doing any the major research I was just able to be in that part of the world and um and it was it was really good you know I I was quote unquote on the Water Polo team but I I was not you know I anyone who's on that water po team knows that I didn't play I was just I didn't make the traveling team I was never going to be you know a guy who did that but but the team never treated me like that like everybody was you know amazing and you know I left USC after a couple years I I didn't it was me it wasn't USC right I I wasn't ready for the school I didn't um hang out make the best choices hang out with the right people it wasn't like I was into drinking or drugs but I just didn't I didn't make a series of great choices for that community and so um ended up transferring later on to the University of New Mexico and I was working for a company uh Vector Marketing that sells cut Cutlery and had a really good set of experiences with management there that again invested in me personally um to help me learn about things that you know I wasn't learning in college and hadn't learned at home and I'm talking about things like as simple as how to manage my calendar how to get good grades in school how to um you know invest for my own future in terms of time energy and money how to balance my checkbook like like you know skills that and that and that was n just me being taught by the way that was a development program that was available to anybody in in the organization and I um I got a chance to work with PJ Potter and Amar de who two lifelong friends and mentors Scott Dennis uh along the way that was um again people that I'm infinitely grateful I crossed paths with that invested in me unbeknownst to me um you know some of those people ended up in that fatherhood place in my life it you know and that was subconscious they certainly didn't know it I certainly didn't know it and may not have been the most healthy choice in the world but that's a part of how I filled that bucket um in an unhealthy way and I was with that company for 11 years did really well was inducted into their corporate hall of fame um was given a lot of opportunities a number of promotions uh I think by most people's account very successful in that organization definitely and so um yeah and so I I really enjoyed that period of my life but the downside to that was I did work very hard I was working you know many many hundred hour weeks and and that wasn't about the company that was about me coping with a life that I didn't know how to cope with because I still wasn't I hadn't fully processed everything that had happened and so in that process I um you got married and divorced I uh and so when you work 100 hours a week there's not a room room for healthy other relationships in the way there can or should be and I think that if if you talk to that person they would say that I wasn't available in the way that would have been the most healthy for a marriage and so and and certainly you know it takes two parties and all that stuff but um I had kids at that point um I can I'm blessed to say I've got a great relationship with uh the mother of my children and so um it and I'm I feel very lucky to have that you know post divorce so okay um I mean what are the how do you think that's impacted you moving forward that that time with Vector that that I mean clearly the the kids the ex-wife I mean I you know that that's a pretty major change but during that time what did you take like again you're moving toward a person that you're going to become that wants to change a billion lives like what yeah I had I think I I got promoted to a place where I had uh a reporting Matrix that had like I can't remember 12 or 1300 people that worked for me had 50 managers under me at one point age of you know 27 28 um pretty unusual for someone to get that much responsibility in a company and and that company gives that type of responsibility young people all the time and they're very good at it uh they know how to do it and and and we watched the company grow I think 10x the revenue while I was there um and it was so it was a really fun time to be part of the organization and um you know PJ andmr allowed me to be part of the um process Improvement of the company that they were undertaking and so I got to learn about how to make things better inside of an organization how to how to rewrite processes and how to write processes for the first time and how to instill new programs into places that programs didn't exist before and and they took me along for the ride when I had no business being in those rooms and uh and and put me under their wing to to learn together with them and so I think it taught me about you know how to run a business how to run the entire profit and loss center it taught me about how to manage people and and I I remember being on the phone with many of my mentors and saying hey I've got this situation how do I have this conversation and they would patiently roleplay with me you know probably almost every day I was trying to learn something new about how to manage and develop people and this was my that period of time I really was learning about the psychology of management and human behavior and I read voraciously I I became a lifelong learner at that point I really found the value of reading books for self-development for management development and um some of the books you and I have talked about before seven habits of highly effective people and um you know we've talked about how to win friends and influence people and we've talked about uh what we haven't talked about is that I started martial arts when I was 19 and I became a black belt and a self-defense instructor part time and so I was reading things like the book of five rings by mamato Masashi who great book yeah read it five or six times in my life and find it I I I read it five times by the same person translating it and found it to be five different experiences when I read it at five different points in my life I I just literally picked that book up and looked at it last night yeah so I I read it a couple years ago but yeah I just yeah picked it up last night amazing amazing book and so I just think there's there's a um that period of my life was very intense about personal development I bought Tony Robins 30-day program went through through it with a number of people that wanted to go through it with me uh on a couple of occasions and so I I really felt that I took agency of my life in my 20s and um and that showed up in my work ethic and it showed up um in my really trying to invest in people and help people grow in their the early parts of their career let's tug there a little bit you said took agency in your 20s was it the work experience was it getting married was it kids was it martial arts was it all of that was it something else I I it was all of it I think I think I you know martial arts was all about the the Mind Body Spirit you know I wasn't Christian at that point I was devot agnostic at that point in my life and um so it was really about you the Mind Body Spirit piece of it and how to balance all of that and uh and then there was um you know the work ethic piece of it was how to how to work yeah and and I worked hard uh maybe too hard in fact probably too hard and then you know the you know kids I mean that that I mean I remember my daughter is my oldest and when I was at a class learning how to change diapers and this particular class was an all dad's class they had us at and they said um how many of you having girls and half the dads raise their hand give or take and he said keep your hands up he said of those people that you know are having daughters and it's your first daughter how many are scared and I think all of us stood up on on our chairs like you know just you know frightened to death because we knew what 15-year-old boys thought you know and uh and when she was born I remember changing her first poopy diaper and I I picked up the old diaper and put the clean one underneath like I was taught to do and uh as soon as I rolled up the first diaper she pooped on the clean diaper that wasn't even on yet and I did it again and then I so the third clean diaper is now underneath and she pooped on that one and I took the last clean diaper diaper finally and I lifted up her legs to put the last clean diaper and she peed and the pee went up over her shoulders onto every clean you know blanket onesie hoodie like every single clean thing on her bed at that point was now either urinated on or had poop on it and I yell for the nurse I need some help that she's soiled everything on the bed and I'm totally defeated and the nurse just kind of smiles like this happens all the time to dads and I swear that my one day old daughter who didn't have the biological capacity for smiling at that point according to the science winked and smiled at me like this is the way it's going to be and uh it's just a different kind of love you feel in that moment yeah so and my daughter knows yeah I I love her to death and to the ends of the Earth and so um yeah that's that's how that life part of my life changed all right so what's next so I I I move through um the divorce and I start therapy and and I will say that you know therapy was a time of my life of self-discovery that was painful self-discovery I I obviously wanted to figure out what had happened in the marriage but like any good therapist the therapist asked questions about my childhood and so we delved into the impact of you know my dad's death on my life and we delved into the impact of relationships and how for 22 years I had been very transactional in the relationships I'd had with people as an emotional protective mechanism and that was painful to admit to myself very difficult to deal with and I had to then ask myself what are the relationship skills that other people learn at age 12 you know and then 16 and 20 and 24 and 20 that I just didn't have and I then had to go learn those relationship skills and I think there are people in my life that would tell you that I've done a good job of that I can assure you there's probably some people in my life that would tell you I haven't done as good a job as they wish I would have but I've made it my mission to to really understand relationships personally and professionally and then to professionally lean into the impact of good relationships on performance so I could tell you all about performance at work on the non- relationship side I've spent my entire career doing that but I've spent 10 years less on the relationship side and what does that mean and so how does human behavior of relationships impact you know performance over and above just the you know human behavior part of the of the stuff that an individual does as an individual and I think that's made a huge difference in my career by the way for the listeners I think this is a pretty good window into how John's mind works right most people when they have something they just kind of flounder around and they they think oh I'm going to work on this and they they might or they might not but you have you really go in and understand a a subject right and certainly you're intelligent but there's also just a you have a curiosity you're like you're like I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to figure out the best way and then to your credit you don't just figure it out you go execute it and actually work on it and like this is something that like you got years into it right but but you figured out best practices and applied it yeah so it's kind of an aside but for for people listening that don't know JN as well as I do that is a it's it's very different than how the average person addresses a challenge yeah you know I want to learn and I think there was a time that I felt like I had to be the best at something and then there was another time you know later in my life where I recognized I'm not going to be the best at everything I want to be the best at you know I'm I'm 5' 10 and can't shoot a basketball to save my life and so if I wanted to be the starting center of the Los Angeles Lakers I'm a foot too short and I don't shoot a basketball well I could solve the shoot a basketball problem I can't solve the I'm you need 14 more inches of height to get that done and so I I came and that that I don't ever want to take away from the the narrative in the world where people say you can do anything you put your mind to because I think that's a great senent broadly with limitations and so um I want to be really candid with myself about my strengths and my weaknesses and I want to understand the playing field that I'm on very clearly and then I can make whatever decisions I want to make perhaps I want to optimize for one thing or I want to optimize for another I don't optimize for winning board games all the time sometimes I optimize for having fun with friends and a couple of my really competitive friends can't understand that for the life of them but for me it's like my opt my optimizing of that time is for enjoyment of the people in the room at the moment and that's winning to me I have a different scoreboard not to say that I'm going to say that I won Monopoly that day if I didn't but I'm not going to get torqued over it in some cases other times I get pissed and I just want to win the game and I'll do whatever it takes and when I get into that mode I don't know how fun I am to be around I don't know how funny any of us are be around win that way yeah right and it's interesting we live in a country that that we love the winners and the people that you know we we look at a Tom Brady or a Michael Jordan or you know two of the people that come to mind that are unbelievably competitive and you know I mean I know Tom Brady the documentary was you know if you're going to beat me I'm willing to die for this game right so we celebrate that but it doesn't always make the nicest people to be around I think I just learned that there's different types of winning there's different races that can be run and and I think there's um I just want to be clear about the things that are important to me and the things are important to me are not the outcome of Monopoly game they are the relationship that comes with the experience and the shared experience I didn't understand that Randy like when I grew up I was like why would you pay $40 for a concert ticket and go see the music once when you can pay $15 for a CD and listen to it a 100,000 times that made no sense to me now I love going to concerts with people that I enjoy and people ask my favorite things to do as Hobbies it's just about anything with my friends yeah like if my friends want to do it I'm pretty much in yeah within I mean legal boundaries ethical B but my friends would never want want to do those things but like most things they want to do I want to do couple exceptions like you know a couple my friends love H skiing there's a risk set there where I just don't feel like I'm good enough to take that risk at my age and the risk War doesn't work out and you know could I do it at my age of course are there people at my age of course just not no but I I I just think there's a lot of wisdom in that and what games you want to win and that's hard for myself included right sometimes I get in a game and I just want to win but yeah I get hijacked right you get hijack you get hijacked by the desire to win right and you forget what the what's the real prize and for me I think I've been really clear for a long time the real prize for me is the relationship that's um that's the thing that brings me a ton of joy is to watch people have healthy appropriate relationships and I mean that could mean a parent child relationship or a romantic relationship or a friendship or you know but I I've I've been very fortunate to to have made some great friends around that time when I learned this that we've now traveled the world together as single guys now as family members now our families travel the world together and we've had some amazing amazing experiences uh and and those are the like that's that's the what it's about for me on the relationship front Faith aside you know which is the number one most important thing to me relationships would be a close second a lot of wisdom there yeah lot of wisdom there well a lot of scar on that therapy I'll tell you it was expensive and I don't just mean expensive financially I'm talking emotionally like I I feel like I kind of opened myself up to the therapist and he was amazing like the the patience the wisdom the the um the relentlessness with which he wouldn't let me back away from the mirror that I asked him to hold up like that's a that's a gift that I hope to be able to give back to some people in as a retirement job you know like like when I retire that I I uh I I ire to uh be licensed to be able to do that part-time to help give back to society what I was given as a gift in my 30s yeah fantastic well what came next so I think my 30s were about um you know unpacking a lot of that and you dur during that time I had a lot of career experiences where I went from uh you know getting an MBA where I studied um management technology as one of my concentrations and then I studied policy and planning for the other and then I went out and with a couple other people wrote the patents for credit card processing on a mobile device years before the smartphones came out and we wrote the provisional patents for it and didn't have the money to protect it and we by we I mean me I flew the company into the ground and uh and we didn't have the patents to walk away with it uh and then you know years later the iPhone comes out and all this technology starts process processing Mo you know credit cards on a mobile phone without using hardware and it that could have been lifechanging economics for the group that did that but uh we learn we learned the lesson that was the tuition we had to pay for those lessons yeah yeah do you look I mean you and I have talked about I I've had things where great riches have kind of slipped away I mean do you ever think H maybe it's for the best or maybe maybe it's you know maybe I'm in a better place because of it you ever think that I I thought of that a lot before I had um my kind of dramatic conversion to Catholicism which happened in my 30s and I'll talk about that in a minute um so yeah the short answer is yes I did and now I don't now the way that I view it is that the money the things none of it's mine I'm a steward of it for the time that I'm here on Earth I'm not I didn't come onto Earth with it I'm not leaving Earth with it and so none of it's mine anyway and so I have a much health there was a time before therapy that I thought money provided security and look there's no doubt that money provides things people need and there's no doubt that it provides some of our M you know Mas lovian hierarchy of needs physical safety food shelter clothing no doubt money provides those things but money in and of itself doesn't provide security and all you have to do is talk to people who have a ton ofy money and ask them and and every one of them will tell you that money didn't give them the things emotionally they had hoped or thought that it would doesn't mean you don't have to work hard for it doesn't mean people don't need it doesn't mean any of those things and when I didn't have money it was like and I heard those things like yeah yeah well you've got all of it but now I understand it's like okay what you were saying was there's a balance to be had you're searching you know you're searching for an answer that can't be found there money fills the money hole faith fills the faith hole Fitness fills the fitness hole like but you can't fill Fitness with money you can't F you know so yeah I think I think you'd agree with this that having enough money is important right that it life's easier if you can pay your mortgage absolutely you can put food on the table if you can have a mortgage some people have rent right absolutely and then at a certain point it just becomes how big of a mortgage or are we having hamburger or are we ribi there was a time I thought I wanted to have a lot more than I want today and my wants have t tamped down quite a bit in my life I want less because I want I'm chasing time right and I think there was a time in my life where I was trading my time for money and I think now I trade my money for time and I think a lot of people go through that Arc in their career my you know one of my sons is 19 right now and I think he should be in the place where he's trading time for money I think that there's season where that's appropriate for people and then I hope that he makes the appropriate transition at some point in his life where he trades his money back for time okay yeah all right well let's move to the next chapter yeah so the next chapter is mid-30s it's 2007 I'm uh 33 years old at the time driving down a highway in the middle of an ice storm and um I end up the car ahead of me spins and I have to make a choice between hitting that driver broadside in the door at some too fast speed on black ice or trying to maneuver around him and so I try to maneuver around him and I find out that the side of the road has black ice on it as well and I end up uh taking my Toyota forner over a 50 foot wall and straight down and in that moment uh really really important I you know they say that time stands still and it really did and I hadn't prayed since I was 11 and so my prayer was God if you exist not that I do believe it because you didn't answer my prayers before but if you're real let me survive so I can raise my kids I just want and two kids at the time I have three now how wait how old are you 33 33 so 22 years yeah between praying yeah and that was it it was like God you know and I'd gone to church a couple times in college I had you know but never was ever serious about my faith so you you grew up going to the church going to church all the time no I uh on and off but you were so going back to when David is laying in the bed you I mean you were praying and I mean that was some deep that's some deep heavy for a 10 11 year old kid and you lost faith and in that moment it can't I mean what when there's nothing else to grab on to what do you grab on to yeah and so I'm I close my eyes I let go of the steering wheel and relax my body which which probably helped a lot yeah and uh my car goes off this wall and it lands in a way that was late so at the bottom of that wall was a frontage road on that Frontage Road was an a an EMT instructor who taught in EMT at the local Community College wow who watched my car come off the top of the wall and fall down 50 feet onto the ground 100 yards ahead of his minivan with his two daughters in the back and so my car goes over he immediately pulls over and goes to help pull me out of this car I was able to unbuckle myself crawl out of the car and didn't have but you know a droplet of blood on my head um that came from some safety glass that had scratched me you know i' I've had hang nails that bled more than the scratch that I had and I walked away from the accident and uh the ambulance showed up the car was total um you know and they took me to the hospital you know with the the neck brace and the backboard and all that stuff in the ambulance and uh they released me they're like yeah like no issues like like no issues at all and I I invited that guy to dinner a few weeks later and he said you know I've seen accident sites my whole career and I can't believe you're alive the fact that you weren't hurt it's a miracle and so I I spent time uh searching for God I went to different churches until I found the right Church eventually I found the Catholic church and it's a wellp publicized story there's videos online that have like an eight minute story of how I how I found my way there but it um it was like a call you know it was and and I made a promise in that however you know one second or two seconds or however long I made a promise to God that I'd come find him and when he delivered the opportunity to raise my kids I didn't want to back out of that promise like I don't it's I wanted to keep my word you know that was an important one to me and I felt like I've been in the right place ever since and and I don't believe that you know I'm I'm passionately Catholic and uh I I recognize that everyone is in a different spot in their life on their spiritual journey from you know atheist to agnostic to True Believer and uh the way that I've been called to evangelize and help make disciples in the world is through action not through words so I'll use words to talk to you about it here right now but my hope is that my friends my family they they don't hear the words they see the actions you know the people that are around me they see they see the the what's happening more than they hear the words I hope I hope that's been your experience with me for the last 15 years AB absolutely so that's uh yeah wow okay so traumatic experience yeah traumatic life changing yeah right so now where do we go at that point I I'm uh working for a small private Equity Firm called a search fund helping to turn around a manufacturing company which happened successfully and then I go back and uh start working for a bque consulting firm while I'm raising the kids um as a single dad for part of this and um I I have a great experience with this Botique consulting firm really learning a lot more about human psychology and change management and um human behavior becomes a real Focus for me professionally and personally both and so I spend time with you know in different capacities a couple hundred companies over a n and a half year period and uh have again a period of intense learning personally and professionally I get married again have a second divorce uh another child and uh again very fortunate to have a strong relationship with um the mom post divorce um and uh get through a period where at the end of that period the um my mom ends up with chronic disease and um in 2010 she has uh essentially um respiratory failure and I think that she's G to pass away and she doesn't and so we she's hundred days in the hospital and she survives and seven more years so during that whole time period she's got seven kind of free years of life and then and then it so happened that she passed away and I changed jobs all within a couple weeks of each other um met my um my wife Amber at the time uh we'd been dating for you know five months at that point and um so now I'm navigating the loss of my mom at that point too it's a lot of upheaval in a few months oh yeah changing jobs changing changing jobs uh and during that time you know a few years before I had started a company as a co-founder and a a founding board director um as a as a you know a sideline um that we started the company 2014 called sedera Health had a successful exit 2023 and uh in 2017 I then started my consulting firm and started making investments in companies and Consulting with companies and and then uh in 2020 as you know I went back to get a doctorate at USC um and and really that was more about human behavior right so I I I come full circle um Amber and I are married my mother-in-law has a diabetic event ends up in the hospital unnecessarily like could have been solved with good medical care and and uh I get really angry and so I find out there's this program at USC and I apply to the program and I get accepted to go get my doctorate and uh the pandemic hits and I focus on running my Consulting practice and getting a doctorate at the same time and uh in the process we find protocols to wipe out type two diabetes we have 50 patients who are type two diabetes in our pilot study 49 of whom get their diabetes under control within 12 weeks one of whom has a very exotic thing happening that is needs a very special specialist so there was nothing we were going to do with these protocols to help they would have had to go to a special regardless and we kept 83% of those patients out of the hospital for two years and then we and and what for perspective that how good is that what's normal I mean if someone has more than one condition that less than 10% get controlled if his diabetes only less than 15 less than 50% over 14 months so 98% in 12 weeks is jaw-dropping if you can drop someone's A1C with a drug by 1% over a year you've got a billion dollar drug typically I got a lot of questions here but I think we'll save a lot of that for a future episode where we'll get into pra yeah we'll dive deep into and more a lot deeper dive the bottom line is we were getting better clinical results in four weeks than most drugs get in a year yeah and and there's a lot of great doctors and drugs and more so today than when we did our pilot study so it's all great stuff but at the end of the day you know now I've got a way that we're going to wipe out type two diabetes and so I've got the I've got my consulting firm advisory firm that does work and I think that we have a legitimate chance of changing a billion lives there with a couple of very specific initiatives that we have going I think in priscina we can talk about I think there's a CH you know three three and a half billion people with chronic disease I think we can get to A Billion Lives improved within my lifetime and so um you know it's like I've got an amazing family who's incredibly supportive three kids who are just uh you know amazing a wife who is I can't decide if it's a rock star a superhero or both probably both and um I've got friends that are you know lifelong friends at this point and then um yeah I'm incredibly blessed you know and and for all of it I feel like I still need to work hard I've got a lot that I need to get accomplished between now and you know the end of my life and uh I love what I do every day like I I love what I do with my friends I love what I do for my family I love what I do for work um and I don't know a lot of people that can say that I just I feel really really fortunate you know the people like you people I work with I feel like you know I'm friends with you I've been friends with you for a very long time we work together it's true with a lot of the people that I work with and so I don't know a lot of people get to say that I I I'd like to think that's partly by Design because I wanted to design my life that way I think partly it's God's grace um whatever it is I'll take it I think I think it's God's grace and I think it's uh what's that I think there's an old uh Arab proverb have faith in God and tie up your camels and that's right I think you've done a good job tying up your camels and of all of that by the way I I don't think I've ever told you this but you know I watched the first you know the after effects of the first two marriages I guess more and I you joked about it a lot but you could tell there was a real pain in there like like that that was a really important thing and and to watch what you and Amber have now is really really really fantastic so I'm really happy for you for that yeah she's I mean like I said super Hero Rock Star some of both like amazing and uh and we work hard at it too you know we do I mean you're going to be shocked to hear this we have a framework for that you know we of course you do we listen to the Gans who you know um John and Julie gotman are the I think two foremost expert researchers in the world on marriage and so we have read their books and we we spend a lot of time together we have a date night once a week that hardly ever gets cancelled uh we talk about our marriage you know at least once every couple months we'll ask each other like are you happy in the marriage and how are you doing and and then genuinely I try to look out for her happiness before my own and genuinely I know that she's paying attention for mine um before her own and and it's um yeah it's it's a very fortunate chemistry that we have around taking care of one each other and um yeah I I just I couldn't I couldn't be more happy with and it doesn't mean it's not hard some days or whatever it's work but it doesn't feel like work to me you know no it's I just from the outside it's it's really great so it it's pretty great from the inside too yeah good pretty great yeah um again I'd like to ask more questions about priscina but I think we'll get there in a future episode is there anything else that we should be covering that we haven't covered or that you want to add no I think we got to it I think you know this this podcast for me is about uh trying to just expose all of the lessons to people who were searching like I was searching for that you know in the dark times and I've had some really rough stretches I was hungry and searching for stories that would tell me it was going to be okay like that that it hasn't always been okay but I wanted to hear the stories of redemption I wanted to hear the stories of the hard-fought victory I wanted to hear the stories of failure that were then redeemed in some other way later on and so I think my hope as we've talked about this is to share with people not just the tools you know and and the lessons we've learned to make it easier for people to get those things so it doesn't take as long as it took me or you or us to to find but also to to give a platform to people who have a story to tell and then to get deep into those stories so people can see behind the curtain I think a lot of the stories you know they're 30 45 minute 60 Minute stories and we'll tell those stories here too but like how do we take a few people and get really underneath you know the underside of that story so people can see the sometimes hard one lessons the the um the difficulties that go along with it and and then and then how do we share those stories of you know the muscle building and the resilience building that are required uh to get through life sometimes like I think those are all things we hope to bring to the listener as we go through these episodes yeah and and I think for the listeners this is sort of a mini version of one of those um John and I are not going quite that deep in our stories because you will get a chance to find out a lot more about us as we talk you'll get little pieces of us throughout the the upcoming episodes it's not because we're shy yeah happy to happy to overshare great so which that happens so yeah but I think I think yeah for the listeners this is about giving all of that and then and then offering offering a framework for a community where we can have those um those conversations in a way that is mutually respectful hopefully people see between the two of us this um discourse where we agree sometimes we disagree sometimes and we're still great friends even when we have you know radical disagreement we can still be great friends and hopefully bringing more of that into the world and we can model that in a way that is functional most days probably dysfunctional some days and uh raw and real every day I think that's I think that's what this is about as we go through Tales of abundance have a phrase that I've stolen from you over the years that I love is having honest conversations yeah right um and I think the world needs more of that but why don't you before we wrap this up another theme with you know over the 15 years you've talked about Community yeah and that being important it's I think maybe that's a good thing to end on do you want to just kind of give your your thoughts on community and why it's important is as we wrap this up yeah I think we all need community and we need community at different levels we need broad Community with lots of you know relationships that are probably more shallow and then we need a few relationships that are more deep and then we need some you know medium relationships that have some of both of that and so I think what we'll offer to people is a glimpse into what those deep relationships look like and then what those you know more distant relationships look like and how to make them all you know um relationally valuable not necessarily monetarily valuable I don't believe in that but I had a great conversation this morning in fact with someone who was a mentor to me 15 years ago and uh I wanted to make an introduction for him because I think he belongs in this conversation and he said 'w what can I do for you and I said you know that's such a great question I really appreciate it I don't know there's anything you can do for me right now I feel like I'm giving back he's like well I want to be able to to know that I'm helping you I was like well I know and I and I will have no problem asking you but for today I'm just here to help you it was like this arm wrestling a match about who could help who more yeah and I I really appreciate that um but I don't need that like I'm happy to help somebody even if they don't have a way of helping me because so many people have helped me along the way that I couldn't help and so I think that's the you know so hopefully we can provide just a a model of what's happening in that and we can share our stories sometimes that'll be stories that you and I have sometimes be stories with our guests sometimes guests we know well sometimes guests we don't know well but um this will be a place people can come and and engage in those conversations and then maybe we can find a way to engage The Listener maybe maybe there's I I don't know what the right answer is maybe there's a way for us to engage The Listener over time where they can draw into that relationship here and uh and get some of that and we can kind of work through uh destroying isolation and loneliness in the world as some problems yeah well and I look forward to welcoming our listeners into this community yeah um you know focused on abundance and helping them and whatever way we can on their journey toward abundance um you know whether that's listening to this podcast going to our website Tales of abundance.com reading blogs or other whatever level that is they engage could contributing to blogs could be any like entering the conversation we're very open to all of that and so I think that and that abundance will be measured in relationships be measured in faith it'll be measured in money it'll be measured a hundred different ways maybe maybe more ways than there are people and so I think that'll be the joy of uh learning as we go along the journey together yeah for right so yeah I would uh I would like to thank you for for sharing this and being vulnerable I think that's great um listeners I would uh you know love to have you guys join the community as I just mentioned whether it's the website join our Discord uh or however it is that you want to engage download the podcast sub subscri subcribe yeah yeah that's great yep thanks everyone thanks for the time Randy thanks for the great questions I'm looking forward to I know we're going to have a lot of fun conversations in the days weeks and years to come okay talk soon