James Farrin: Ordinary Heroes

0:00They have suffered discrimination for Ascension. They have been mistreated. They need an advocate. You need to just focus on them And that was really a great reminder that when things were tough, it simplified the task. Don't worry about all the risk and the outcome Focus on the process of delivering the best possible results for your client. That's what it means to be a lawyer. Don't be opportunistic Do the best thing for them. That spirit kind of helped me and I think our firm get through that You're now listening to a new episode of gratitude through hard times Gratitude instills humility Gratitude removes evil Gratitude helps empower the best in others around you Our goal is to guide individuals and companies to practice gratitude So you can live a longer happier and more successful life get ahead of life with connection and purpose This is gratitude through hard times with Chris Shembra

1:04Well, good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to another episode of gratitude Through hard times. It's your host Chris Shembra and and today we are soaking up the last few moments of summer It's been a wonderful one in New York City and it's been an honor to and a privilege to bring this podcast to you To all the the loyal listeners on the podcast. It's it's good to see you friend Your support the last 11 years is what's allowed us to continue to do our work And some of my favorite moments throughout the week are when you email in your thoughts questions comments About today's episode guest so keep them coming to all the new listeners of this podcast. It's nice to meet you Friend, I don't know how you stumbled upon our humble cozy little corner of the internet, but we're glad To have you if you came for a podcast about go-to-market strategy or business ethics

2:10Uh, how to hire your thousandth employee you've come to the wrong place Oh, that strategy is important, but it's not the conversation here today You've stumbled upon a wonderful conversation series close to 300 episodes deep of our commitment to bringing on some The world's great leaders to share their stories of how they've gotten to where they are today And how they do it in a human way as you know the skills Rising fastest in the world of work tomorrow not just technical Even though that's what the television says they're human the ability to think clearly and act wisely under pressure The leaders of this episode series or conversation series have done just that So definitely look back through the podcast episode archives and we're gonna invite you to click that subscribe button By the end of this podcast episode without further ado. I am so excited to have today's guest Jim Farron now I grew up in Hilton head island south Carolina and Jim Farron was a household name

3:16Jim is the the founder and CEO of one of the the largest personal injury law firms in the country and it's based out of the carolina as he started it in 1997 and Durham, North Carolina with just one paralegal and 30 Clients you got to get your start somewhere, but today the firm has 60 attorneys 40 office 40 offices across North Carolina and South Carolina and has record billions of dollars for tens of thousands of People if you're from South Carolina or North Carolina you remember the old Law firm gyms james Scott Farron TV commercials TV commercials starring the great actor Robert Vaughan the great late actor Robert Vaughan with a long running slogan tell them you mean business It was a soundtrack of a childhood But Jim is the oldest of five children he lived in 10 different countries across 17 years and he's

4:17truly invested in philanthropy and fighting for those that need a a bigger voice and he runs this company across a series of amazing core values So we're gonna be talking about a human interstory on today's episode of gratitude Through hard times without further ado Jim welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to be here Chris Now Jim before we dive into your journey and story we always have to start with a simple gratitude Question for you now we first asked this gratitude question Around the dinner table on July 15th 2015 When I had a simple bowl of pasta sauce and I gathered some friends to see if it was good or not And that gratitude question has stuck with us 11 years ever since every day And so to kick us off Jim I need to ask you that signature gratitude question if you

5:20Could give credit or thanks To one person in your life That you don't give enough credit or thanks to Or that you've never thought to thank Who would that be? Well, I've Never said it publicly and he's he's dead so I've lost my opportunity, but my grandfather was a hero to me and Very influential and he was an admiral in the Navy man very accomplished second in his class at the Naval Academy was a shipbuilder design ships Was part of Admiral Rick Hovers team that built a nuclear submarines for the United States after World War II Tremendous accomplishment, but weren't really what Chris would stuck with me was he was also a man of tremendous humility He never bragged about what he had accomplished. You had to pry it out of him He was just just humble and you ask if you ask about his career to wish he had done more to know I did where I was meant to do I didn't feel passed over

6:20And he would always say that he was shot full of luck I doubt rising to the levels he did was really a product of luck I'm sure that's that was part of it, but that's you anyway his humility first like he was an achiever with humility and that has you know Would like to thank him for that inspiration Was the admiral's name James James more fair and not Scott fair and James fair and James more fair and What is the word hero mean to you first of all cheers admiral My grandfather was in the Navy as well during the war effort and It's my favorite branch of the military so cheers to the Navy Well, yeah, what is the word hero mean to you these days? You know, I think a hero is someone who is genuinely inspiring who you could look up to as a role model and say I wish I could be like that It's amazing because

7:24Some people think of heroes as these extraordinary individuals that perform extraordinary acts bravery courage etc And I think those people are very important and I believe there's a new appetite in America of finding heroism In finding extraordinary in the ordinary and what I mean by that is the average ordinary every day person Who keeps along the path in an ordinary way I think is a new modern version of heroism in a world where social media says we should do the most epic things to get that like and comment Finding heroism in the ordinary. I believe is is coming back again. Do you see any of that around you? Yeah I completely agree that there's heroism in everyday life and ordinary people everyone

8:26Lives heroically in some way I think at least and here's the way I think about it our clients You know, we have the privilege of representing thousands of people every year each of them begins with Adversity there's some reason they need an attorney to help them with their Injury case or if their land is condemned their condemnation case Something bad has happened to them something they weren't looking for they may be in a lot of pain They may be very hurt they may be and they're up against powerful adversaries and they don't know what to do It could be easy for them to give into despair Just give up or figure the systems rigged against me or But what are what we see is our clients They pick themselves up and they get get some they're not afraid to be vulnerable and get help And they go through a process where over the course of time they get better And it culminates in a result at the end of the case where they can feel I'm really proud of their journey

9:30What they have done what they have overcome and so I think we see it played out Again and again and again these are not superheroes their ordinary people who have overcome adversity through faith and Perseverance and yet maybe getting the right kind of help It's a tremendous thing to be able to zoom out and focus on the learnings of the journey And not just the goal or the end result those things are important the end result winning the case But to understand the journey and the story of the individual We all have our own heroes journey and that's the cool thing about life And I think that you all have to have a tremendous amount of empathy in order to step in the shoes of those you serve And and to join them at different empathetic steps of their journey I want to go back into your journey you certainly had What I would say on paper as someone who lived in the same place my whole childhood

10:32I was comfortable in that journey And you had I mean it had it had its own moments of adversity But you had a different childhood you moved around a lot right? I was good at a young age at welcoming people to My home because it was constant you got good at going to new people's homes moving around 10 different countries in 17 years because your father was an executive at Colgate Paul Molliv What did you learn about yourself and the people around you through that early journey? Well About the people around me it made me much closer to my family Because they were they were the real only constant every year We you know or two years we would move and I'd lose my circle of friends and have to start over again And so the constant was the family and so I learned that they were the ones that I could count on the most and had Long strong enduring relationships through all these stops and starts in new places

11:33I learned it always works out There's always some you know you'll find a new set of friends it may take a little more time here there But there's going to be someone you're going to be thankful for coming into your life You may be sad when you leave them, but I think it always worked out we and we would go to places There'd be a new house a new city a new country a new language maybe and We landed on our feet. We figured it out. We knew how to survive and it never defeated us each new chapter was a new adventure that I think we had confidence would always work out It's cool because when talking about that chapter of your journey I think you taught our listeners two things that throughout moments of adversity whatever that looks like for you watching this podcast a First step find the constants Right in a in a in a world of everlasting change find the constants and savor The constancy around you and two mindset it always works out

12:36Well, what's a third thing you would add to that? You're not alone you know They you know you may not have friends for a while when you move into a new go to a new school And you don't know anybody, but you've got your family. So there there was always somebody you never felt like I was completely Alone I had had help at my disposal and I think it's really really important whatever challenges we face I see this for our clients It's so much harder if you feel like you have you're on your own and you have to deal You've got the weight of your world the weight of the world on your shoulders and you alone are carrying it and finding other people to relate to and who can help I think that's huge fine constants mindset matters and you're never truly going through something alone You know, I think that that's we live in a world that again hero worships uniqueness hero worships

13:39In certain communities And it convinces us that we're the only ones who have been through that experience and therefore we're able to Share a story about or post on social media about that experience it will make us look unique and people will be attracted to that But the truth that that's what social media generation is done to the people But the truth of the matter is nobody's story is actually inherently unique the odds are there are other people around the world that have gone through similar things that you've been through right if you're a founder CEO, you know listening to this call the odds are whatever company you've just built As novel and innovative and pioneering as it is there are actually more people who understand exactly what you're going through Then you give credit to And so there will always be people that are going through that adversity journey with you. Does that make sense?

14:39Yeah Now one of the great great great things That I know you took upon yourself was You took upon yourself a massive massive massive national black farmers discrimination litigation The USDA had discriminated against black farmers for decades and credit and assistance and you stepped up to the task But in in order to do so you had to personally borrow millions of dollars to underwrite the case Can you tell me about that big bold risk and what it took to find faith in the hopeful eventual outcome that ended up becoming to the tune of billions But what did that require you to find out about yourself and your belief system and faith and whatever that may be I mean tens of thousands of people were involved to the tune of billions. This is a massive massive risk It was it was I

15:40went into it probably underestimating the risk I think that as an entrepreneur often you're focused on the end result and the opportunity and you tend to minimize All of the hard steps that it will take along the way I know this because I told my wife at the beginning of when we're getting getting ready my wife probably getting ready to get into the case That I think it's going to be easy and there's gonna we're gonna do a lot of good for a lot of people and we're gonna make a lot of money She was very skeptical Turned out she was right what I learned is where I had but at the beginning I had to make a decision on whether to commit the firm to it It was not a Multimillion dollar ante at that time. It was a series of steps But you know, we knew that this it was a civil rights case based in Washington DC We were personal injury firm in North Carolina. We were a little bit out of our element should we take this on and I remember thinking about it and In the end I committed myself to it because I thought that if

16:42I Didn't do it I would always wonder what would have happened what might have been and so by going out We had a chance to do something historic play on a national stage do some amazing things and that justified the risk So that was sort of my thought at the beginning with quite a bit of naivete In terms of the amount of the the lift and so you know president Obama He sponsored the legislation. He became president. We thought we had it made But the world collapsed economically went by the time he's entered office and Getting funded we need to for this case to succeed with more of a political case than anything else We needed Congress to appropriate money for the black farmers That was what it was all about and the fiscal environment deteriorated remarkably on us and so we had to and we had lobbyists and lawyers and we were you know We were spending money on the case But to get this thing to the finish line we needed legislation. It was hard

17:44It was really hard. We ended up working with a guy named John Boyd who's a spokesperson for The black farmers and he was great at getting media attention We partnered with him and you know kind of the little engine that could we were able to keep the pressure on And there were some other law firms that certainly assisted with us But after a two-year effort We ended up getting the legislation through the anti-kept going up originally a like a $1.2 million dollar commitment and to stay in the game. I had to keep funding it. I had I was sort of the person responsible for funding this case and We ended up borrowing $17 million on this case again not all at once, but over time did add it up and my wife and I had to sign Personal guarantees for $10 million and I can assure you we didn't have $10 million dollars She signed it great credit to her But we got in probably way too deep

18:45I learned a lot about myself is one that I need to be more careful with risk and And maybe listen to cool visor counsel sometimes I also Learned that we were in a bad spot and the own the proverbial only way out was through we had to figure it out And again, maybe his divine intervention resourcefulness a great partner in John Boyd great people who work for me who helped Do all the all the work other law firms that helped us with it, but we were able to put together a team and somehow We got it done But there's one other thing that I really learned along the way and that is at a time of despair I was feeling sorry for myself, you know, we're ruined We have borrowed millions and millions of dollars. There's no certainty This is going we're going to get the legislation through We're in trouble and woe is me and at that moment John Boyd the black farmer spokesperson the guy we worked with head of the National Black

19:45Farmers Association, you know made a good point to me. He said, you know, this is about the black farmers. They have suffered discrimination for Accentuary they have been mistreated. They need an advocate You need to just focus on them and that was really a great reminder that When things were tough It simplified the task just focus on you don't worry about all the risk and the outcome Focus on the process of delivering the best possible results for your client. That's what it means to be a lawyer Don't you know don't be opportunistic Do the best thing for them. That spirit kind of helped me and I think our firm get through that so in the end It all worked out It took seven years We were able to repay the 17 million and clear quite a bit so it turned out to have a happy ending It was a harrowing journey the case of a lifetime. It did have tremendous

20:48significance, you know black farmers recovered over You know there's 1.25 billion dollars appropriated. They recovered about a billion dollars It was a historic case. We achieved some great things. We survived and I learned some some difficult lessons during those seven years Absolute gratitude for those Moments of despair that taught you so much. I mean just to really simplify that exact teaching In moments of despair your instinct as an individual was to feel sorry for yourself And then you had to actually check the facts and realize The people were serving have gone through far worse injustice than whatever despair. I'm feeling right now And so that radical act of empathy as an act of serving others Helps destictize the negative emotion in you and helps you be more generative and creative and how you serve others

21:55Yep Holy brilliance You know folks that are listening to this I um You know, I felt a little bit of a moment of despair maybe maybe two and a half years ago I was on the phone with my dad I just had a traumatic brain injury a mild traumatic brain injury a concussion that I still have you know symptoms of today But I was on the phone with my dad and I was saying whoa is me moment of despair and my dad said When's the last time you asked someone how they're doing? How they are I said I don't know can you just focus on me dad? Why can't I talk about how bad I'm doing He said no go ask somebody else and I walked into the nearest coffee shop And they they gave me the coffee and I said how are you today? He said wow thanks for asking and then they talked and they asked me how I was doing today And I got to talk and two negative starting people ended up talking out what they were going through and realize

23:01We're not alone and it ended up being a positive and so The moral of the story to all you listeners is in your moment of despair Instead of turning the intention attention inwards Turn the attention outwards and remember who you serve and ask them how they're doing. That's called a posture of otherness It's a good thing for motion regulation That's your free and get you out of your own head. Yeah now Jim you are really amazing at having kind of you know Built a whole alternative world within your law firm and it's called the Jsf way And the James Scott Farron way is a collection of 24 amazing codes and core values That y'all stand for at James Scott Farron Core values aren't just supposed to be something that exists on the wall

24:04There's supposed to be this living breathing thing that gives people Purpose and meaning for showing up every day. How did you come up with those And how do they show up in the day-to-day Culture at James Scott Farron law firm. Yeah, well like Almost every good idea we've implemented. I stole it somebody had the idea It was a speaker at one at a a Vistage group that I was at who was talking about here's how you build culture is The thesis was Values can seem abstract you have five values. What do they really mean? Reduce them to behaviors. They're easier for people to relate to and so he said do that And he suggested you as the leader of the organization need to define what you're willing to tolerate and what your behaviors are And go spend a weekend and write them down. So I did I sat down Hen in hand of an old school guy and for one Saturday wrote down a number of behaved things that I believed in and it there

25:07Things like do the right thing always you know this one of them and then it for each you give a you know You're the behavior and then a little description of what that really means and so I did it I came up with a list. I circulated it to my leadership team got some feedback And they suggested a few others and after a while we had come up with these 24 behaviors that we thought represented who we wanted to be And it wasn't always who we are yet, but this is these are the behaviors that we think we need to be the good thing about doing This is I before we identified how we wanted to live. I felt like Culture was defined by the strongest personality in the room And so there was a void and they were just the culture would be who these people have these people were acting and instead We took hold of it grab told of it said here's what we're about and the way we communicated it Was to the whole firm. I now this is for real. It's not Labor of the month initiative. We have to walk the walk not talk the talk

26:11These are the 24 behaviors and what we do and again, this is the idea of the from the speaker I heard is every week we Send the firm wide email about our behavior of the week With and have somebody from the firm a leader in the firm talk about what it means to them It's send out a blog on that and so every week we are putting a fresh perspective on these behaviors And then when we hire people we say the these are our behaviors You know don't come here if you don't like them We train on them We give is part of people's performance reviews self evaluations. It's something that we have Made a real effort to make sure that it's real. I like to ask new employees I meet them on their first day and say have you read the jsf ways? I'd yes, I said well the true test will be in 90 days when I check back in with you Do they seem to be real and invariably people say they are and so you know coming it It's one thing to define things and be clear on who you want to be but

27:12You have to live it and you have to get other people to buy in and so this process has allowed this to happen and we're over 10 years Strong with the jsf way and I can assure you it's taken depold in our organization never and people buy in because they think it's us It's who we want to be and then good people it attracts the right kind of people to want to work with us It's a beautiful thing To know who you want to be. That's a good north star My question to you is have you made a list of who you don't want to be we call that the south star Yes I had I had a we had a meeting yesterday and then somebody asked you know what characteristics bother you the most And I just rattled off a few off the top of my head I haven't gone so far as to write the anti jsf way But these are the thing but if I were I mean here the things that I I can't stand a lack of self-awareness Kind of bothers me self-centeredness really bothers me where people are not you know, they think they're the only person in the room and the only one that exists

28:21Greed really bothers me laziness doesn't work well for us a lack of accountability is is a problem lack of appreciation is another lack of you know gratitude you I think that foolish obnoxious behavior Is another we believe in results the right way we want to fight hard and achieve things for our clients But the way we go about doing that we want to honor a process that is I guess the the right way and so people is so not cutting corners and not making people feel terrible as you're trampling over them on the way to victor Those are the kinds of things that we believe in and conversely that we don't believe in sounds like a great list No, it's a great anti js jsf way the south star principle we wrote about in our second book gratitude through hard times I got a credit Kate Luzio for inventing that term and the anti jsf question

29:25There's actually great Winston Salem North Carolina Company in mar who has They're kind of in mar way is belief standards values There's like five five and six of each and what they did just a couple months ago is they created the anti bsv's And so you get to model are you following the bsv's and are you making sure you're not that other person And so that was pretty cool Interesting idea. Let me just say there's one of there is one of our jsf ways which is a don't And so that showed that will point to a south star and that is don't be a jerk Yeah, in our profession sometimes lawyers can come across that way, so we don't want to be that way now earlier in the conversation You were talking about And I want to clarify when you're talking about your grandfather's accomplishments You and his humility you're very particular to say if we ever tried to compliment his accomplishments

30:26He would say I did just what I was supposed to do And to me it sounded like a a right-sized-ness Thing of like I didn't do more than I was needed I didn't do less than I just did exactly right what I was supposed to do Now I don't know if there's a link here But in a podcast that came out in December 1st 2022 that you were in You talked about that your growth targets are 15% per year deliberately measured Is there a magic number about that 15% I think it's to me it's interesting that You know, I think we live in a world where every company's like 39 000 Let's go three year grow. Let's go and is there something magic about the right-sized-ness of 15% that's deliberately measured Maybe at the time, but not not right now So For years I thought that was a good target because it would stretch us and we were growing But we were also able it was something where we were able to deliver quality work after a while

31:32A few years ago we concluded that the goal was forcing us to sort of out kick our coverage So we could get to a certain level of growth just by spending more on advertising and bringing in more cases But the quality wasn't but we weren't necessarily able to do work that That made us proud to achieve that and so we we ended up deciding Let's step back and do away with that goal. Let's cut it in half and even then let's not measure ourselves by that Let's just measure ourselves by providing high quality work for as many people as we can do so actually I've backed off that 15% We still have grown every year But I think at some point it can become a dangerous target It's something that's very and if you're watching this and seeing my eyes darts because I'm typing in something There's a famous famous economics Principle called good hearts law Good heart law was invented by a British economist in 1975

32:35And essentially It loosely translates to when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure Which means 15% for 15% sake You accidentally out kick your coverage and you actually accidentally do things that don't bring meaning I think it was in that same podcast actually that you said my first five years out of law school I wanted to be successful. I was trying I had ambition, but it wasn't married to meaning And so it sounds like you've given up on the metric for the sake of measurement And you're continuing especially through the JSF way the pursuit of meaning Yeah, I think so I think that's a massive differentiation one is growth for the sake of growth efficiency gains optimization At what cost right what is the cost and the human spirit when you're doing work that's not tied To the purpose of the individual that works at James Scott fair and law firm Yeah, and Chris it's a lesson. I've had to learn and relearn repeated. There's always been attention in me because I'm an achiever

33:38I'm ambitious. I want to do great things You sort of instilled in me growing up, but I also need to Feel good and have find meaning in what we're doing and sometimes ambition takes control And I get a little bit divorced from meaning and then reality You know, I have like with the black farmer case have to come back to the core this here's why you're doing it. So that's kind of been an ongoing Or attention from time to time in my life. I like it was we start rounding the corner of the podcast I like to ask this kind of a broad very open-ended question so to set the scene for the podcast listeners and you I love questions. I mean, I literally changed my job title of my own company in December of 2016 to chief question Asker I love it and but we know that not all questions are equal

34:38We hate we're out of war Against why questions They're too defensive at times they trigger defensiveness and others. We love what or how questions And my five favorite what are how questions are what if helps the stream what's known and gives understanding so what drives context now what prives action what's unsaid gives Voice to help surface An unsaid original thought feeling emotion idea If I had to ask you what's unsaid in your life right now What would you say I don't know if it's a good question Dear I say that I probably don't tell people I love as much as I should how I feel about them that I love them sometimes I let goes unsaid but that may not be what you're asking

35:57Well, I'm struggling. What else is unsaid You know I'm grateful for all of the people who have helped make me and make this firm successful No, you know, there's no man is an island We it's easy to when you hit a certain level of Success and maybe acclaim to take a bow and take a lot of personal credit for it And then there's certainly an element of that but I think through Think about all of the people who helped me get there from my parents Couraging spouse and then most importantly the co-workers who bought in to the dream and make it happen Now I don't work on cases anymore. I just managed to business and other people achieved the results And they've you know, I had a vision and I generated this is who we're going to be come join me and a number of You know people have bought in and made it happen. So I guess Maybe what's the unsaid is how fortunate I am to have had so many people help

37:02Along the way because I couldn't do it myself and back to you know the original thing is when when you're in need You You can't do it alone. You need help when you're successful. You need to realize you didn't do it alone. You got help Oh, did you make that up where did that come from just came from god? I don't know just talking. Oh my gosh Jim That was amazing When when you're in need you realize you need help and When you when you're successful you realize you got help all well We'll get the exact clip and quote, but that was amazing. That was a tremendous thing. No man is an island now we are in a world where I believe there's this seductive idea that's being promoted to the world That you can become your own island right AI is now making knowledge increasingly individual

38:05It's this seductive idea this allure that me alone plus the machine is enough You're Smiling when I say that tell me more about what you see were up against because you just shared with our listeners the passion the joy the gratitude Of having built something Meaningful Together Tell me what you're seeing out there in the world right now Yeah, I think there's a crisis of Aloneness. I think we are social creatures we Need other people if you know imagine Doing something great and then being by yourself in a room thinking about it Maybe there's some degree of satisfaction It really wouldn't be the same as hugging the the one sharing that moment with the people who helped achieve it and

39:05And you know being a part of a community. So anyway, it's I'm convinced that We need people we've always needed people we need a more than ever and you know with AI and social media and all these things that yes, I agree with you that people can be seduced and to think to and to not recognizing that that need is there and it's there We're one of the reasons we want to make sure that for our clients We're not having chatbots or AI agents do the work for them They we they I think our clients want to talk to a human being and have a real human Empathize with them and share their experience to share their experience Thank you for your commitment there. You know, I'm going to I'm going to come up with an original quote in the style of the jsf way. I'm going to say I'd rather I'd rather Achieve little but have good people than achieve a lot and

40:07Not have anybody right? I think the opportunity to invest in more moments of connection with others where we don't achieve anything we just Wastelessly exist together is one of the main beauties of life It's work curiosity and and wonder and awe and gratitude and mystery and serendipity and synchronicity Come alive and those are beautiful joyous emotions that then allow us to return back to work and achieve more So it's actually you can have both You know to close out you're a great You know Jim Collins in a fan. I believe your favorite quote of Jim Collins is where he writes in his book great by choice fire bullets then cannonballs It's a strategic principle of testing small ideas before making big commitments, but my favorite Quote from Jim Collins is that we must step out of the tyranny of the or in into the genius of the and

41:08And I think one of the great ands in this world is pursue success and Gather people that you're unsuccessful with or gather people that you don't pursue success with so pursue success together and Gather people where success is not the goal and I think we need both not or And it doesn't make you a bum to have a dinner party with friends where you don't achieve anything And it doesn't make you a hustler to go on and pursue capitalistic ambition Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah Absolutely If the admiral was on the call here today what words of gratitude would you give him Well, thanks for your example I hope you think I'm on the right course and I'm made you proud From one James fair and to the other I would say he is

42:14Any last words in closing Jim? No, it's been been a pleasure. I enjoyed exploring these these thoughts these concepts. I didn't There's a lot of things I hadn't thought about before so I really appreciate the opportunity to dwell on these things and think and talk about them What's one thing that you'll think about more tomorrow based on our conversation today? Well, you have me stumped with what's unsaid so I'm going to be be thinking about what's unsaid My goal for all of you listeners is to think about that question and in gosh golly if you got a block two hours on your calendar To sit in front of a whiteboard and do nothing and just see what comes see what you draw see what you think see what you dream There is something that is unsaid. I believe extraordinary ideas Lie unsaid within extraordinary people and we just got to create the time and space To let them come to the surface

43:16If you turn a what's unsaid idea thought feeling emotion into a what if question what if I took action on this What if I connected to people around this Y'all that are watching this that haven't found your way yet We're going to find a uniquely human thing inside of you that you can do Tomorrow so search for that and then take action on it Fireable it not a cannonball just get your start start before you're ready. Jim thanks for having Thanks for making the time to come on this podcast. I learned a lot to all our listeners Let's recap a few things no man is In island Be the little engine that could in moments of despair don't feel sorry for yourself instead Focus on the service that you provide for others that posture of otherness thing in moments of great adversity fine constants Mindset that it'll always work out just may look different on a different timeline and number three

44:18You're never going to be uniquely alone in what you're going through If you focus on your beliefs your standards your values what you stand for you will find meaning every day in your So go out and pursue it live large act boldly take risk especially in the service of those who have a voice that needs to be shared Go fight alongside people and let's do great work for the world. Thanks for tuning in if you're new to the podcast I hope you enjoyed what you found if someone sent you this episode It was an action of them saying I see you you matter keep along the path Life is about the journey not the destination. We learned that from Jim's story of 10 countries in 17 years Click that subscribe button join us long for this journey I hope y'all have in a phenomenal day on earth or the South Carolina low country Remember folks it's here world go explore. We'll see you next episode

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