Why You Need to Say It Now Rather Than Regret It Later | Walter Green - EP 773

27:15It was Bob Cummings, who was this movie star with seven kids who looked half his age. And he made$1 ,000. I was making$650 from two jobs. He made it part-time. I said, what are you doing? How do you do it? He says it's a multi-level marketing. I said, well, I'd like to be in it. I don't know if I had the $500. He might've had to lend me the 500 to get in the business. But when they arrived, my 300 square foot apartment was filled with these boxes of vitamins and minerals. And I knew I had to get a sales organization quickly so I could have a place to sleep. So I went to the laundromat, wrote out a sign.

27:52If you'd like to make money in your part-time, give me a call. Now you can't do that today. I'm not prescribing that for anybody. Back then, you could get away with it. So I got a call, took my little audio visual kit, and the person was very excited about it. She told me later she really was excited more about the guy than the business. So that's how I got my wife. So the business was closed three weeks later, but I made the best investment of my life. So that worked out well. And so from there, you went still a little bit from job to job until you found yourself, as I understand it, in the conference event space.

28:35And that's where things really reached a different inflection point for you. Can you talk about that transition and how you became the CEO of that company? So one of the things that, and for the younger people that are listening, every single job I had, I learned something. When I was a kid, I sold men's clothes, women's shoes. I did CPA for a while, three years. I was a financial person in a food service company and a hotel company. But all of these were really valuable because I honed my skills because I actually got really pretty good at what I was doing. And I also learned what really didn't excite me.

29:18So this warmup, there's a whole story behind this, but three years after we're married, had a set of twin boys. So it was time to figure out what I was going to do. And I saw that I had been in the food service, hotel business, financial, and there was a startup company. And I actually always loved education. I never did go into education, but I think if I re-round it, I'd probably figure out I'd want to do that. In any case, the idea of creating an alternative, love the idea that it had never been done before. That's a pattern of everything I've done. Find something that hasn't been done before, deliver it with excellence, and make sure it's aligned with what you're in.

30:00It works every time. In any case, this is a startup operation. The idea was to provide an alternative to hotels with folding walls and stacked chairs and mediocre or food and we were just going to dedicate ourselves to corporations that wanted an ideal place to take their executives for residential meetings their guest rooms dining rooms meeting rooms recreational facilities they were really gorgeous it was never really done before on a national basis and so i joined it in a financial capacity and yeah our twins were one year old at the time it was high risk i made a small investment for a very small investment in the company and the rest is history.

30:42Well, is it history or did the company almost go bankrupt and you were brought in to resurrect it? John, it seems it's ironic, but I've noticed that a lot of times, good times don't necessarily lead to great times, but tough times can lead to great times. Yes. And so I joined this company because I thought the idea was great to build this national network of high end conference centers. Never been done before. Boy, this we had ultimately thousands of corporate meetings at our 10 facilities around the country. But the chairman and the president maybe did some things that weren't in the best interest of building the company.

31:28So the board made a change because it was close to bankruptcy. There was almost no hope for it. And I was the last man standing. It wasn't a big company at the time. I think I was 33 and I ended up taking this almost bankrupt company and operating in three states, 400 employees. This was a big deal. And children, boys, my sons were at that point five years old. So it was high risk. But I had some wonderful people. The concept was terrific and ultimately became a successful company. And that was very gratifying professionally and financially. Well, when you think back at that time, you're 33. There's a tremendous amount of pressure on you because you've got to support your family.

32:14And this company is in major difficulty. You must have felt a lot of pressure then. Like, what was it like going through that? And then how did you know that you were on the way to turning it around? Well, I never really thought of it until you asked this question. But connecting your earlier connection and the conversation with this, I never got into the fear mode that made me ill. I just thought about the pressure was enormous, but it never put me back into the mental state that created depression. I never thought of that because there were 400 lives counting on this thing succeeding, including my own with my kids and my wife, I really worked hard, was really committed to it, got some people who really cared about doing it.

33:06And it took a few years before we knew we were actually going to prosper, first survive, but then prosper. And then you end up leading that company for a few decades. Yeah, 25 years. What are some of your fondest memories during that time? Oh, I love that question. First of all, it's a people business. So always with interesting people. We were probably the largest network of executive training in America, really. We ran 6 ,000 meetings with 150 ,000 executives ultimately at our centers. That was pretty gratifying. We constantly worked on innovation, which was fun. We had a healthy alternative food program, and we really concerned ourselves a lot about how do you make these meetings work?

34:02Meetings generally are a waste of time. Sorry, most of the people are highly unproductive in meetings. We really got a lot of satisfaction out of building a model where meetings really worked. That really was cool. And then, of course, it worked and it was successful. And so that's very satisfying. Now, Walter, I've been the CEO of a few companies myself. And one thing I've learned about the position, and maybe you had a different experience, but for me, it was one of the loneliest roles I've ever been in at times. And I learned that there was a real difference between being admired and being seen.

34:44Did you ever feel that yourself? Being admired. Well, I'll leave the admiration assessment to other people that you can ask that question. I won't answer whether I felt admired, but I want to drill down a little bit on this issue. I do think when you're at the top of an organization, ultimately we had 1400 employees, it wasn't a small business, that you really do need somebody to dialogue with without the implications that it'd be one of your colleagues. So I joined the Young President's Organization very early and have got involved in a forum group, which were 10 guys we met for 22 years together.

35:32Since that time, I've been in three of these for 90 years, probably attended 900 sessions with three groups of presidents. So I know everything about them. They know everything about me. And it was the vehicle that I could use to process things that I couldn't talk about in the company. Now, that is a great avenue to have, because that is something I didn't have. When you're in that position, if you have doubts, you can't really share them with your subordinates because you don't want them to know that you have doubts. And oftentimes you don't want to share it with the board because you don't, maybe you have that board mentor who you can go to for some advice.

36:20Unfortunately, in many of the companies I was in, none of the board members were playing that role. And if I would have shown any weakness, the fear for me was they'd throw me out on the street. I was always looking for kind of that outlet outside of the company that I could talk to people who'd been through this themselves or were living it themselves that you could talk to about these struggles and these impossible situations you sometimes find yourself in where you see a revenue source that's going to dry up and you know you need to switch, but you're struggling with like, how do you make this pivot without creating a disaster by your decisions and bouncing ideas?

37:02So it's great that you had that form. It's something I I always wish I could have had. So I actually was, as I'm sure you were, I was fairly open with my colleagues, but there are some things that they had no experience in. We did some really interesting and essential refinancings. They really wouldn't know what that's about. Sometimes the issue I had is with some of the key people. I can't talk to my key people about my key people. So those are the kinds of issues that you can move outside. Biden. And I also said that one of the things, I love being a resource to the other presidents. So it wasn't just a singular, I go for whatever.

37:43I got enormous. And to this day, I'm still involved in two groups. Just came back from a three-day meeting with one here in San Diego. The idea that one can create, whether it's from an organization like the Young Presidents Organization, or even on their own. My son actually has put together a forum group. He's not in YPO. And it's a very important, it's a life group. It is not a work group. It's a life group. And looking back over how I feel like I may have contributed over the years, I would definitely put those 30 men in the category of people that I made a difference in, and they made a difference in my life.

38:24Walter, I want to go back to your 50th birthday now. So on my 50th birthday, which wasn't too long ago, unfortunately, it happened to be during COVID. So this big 50th celebration that I was hoping to have and put on a party and everything was never able to occur. But my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, did something pretty remarkable for me. She went out to a whole bunch of people who I didn't know she was doing this and had them each create short videos for me about how I had influenced their lives. And to this day, it's one of the most valuable things that's ever happened to me because I never realized up until that point how much I mattered to them or made a difference to them and their lives.

39:18you kind of did this the opposite way. Yeah, I guess I did. And congratulations to your now wife for actually being an advanced person on what ultimately now is known as the Say It Now movement, which we'll talk about later. But going back to the 50th birthday, I was, so remember, I kind of, first of all, it's nice to get back to a happy time. That childhood was a hard conversation, but I wanted to be authentic with you because in order to be helpful to your listeners, I think to package it any other way other than being authentic is not as useful. So I'm happy to get now into the 50th birthday.

40:00I'm now feeling really good. I'm into the time in which I wanted to celebrate them. It was my 50th birthday, maybe counterintuitive, but Lola's always supported all the events, put on many spectacular events over the years. And I said, in my own mind, I said, I don't know. I'm only three years short of 53, which could be the end. And so I brought these, as I mentioned earlier, five good friends, their spouses, my family, and we lived on the East Coast, brought them to New York City and treated them royally. I didn't have a lot, but it was so important to me that we went to the opening week or opening month of Phantom of the Opera.

40:39We had great dinners. It was, trust me, it was a really special affair. But what I most remember, I got chills. What I most remember is when I had the opening reception and I looked at these five fellows who had been, oh, at that point, over 10-year relationships for me. And I went one-to-one about what they had meant to me and their impact on my life. Well, that was like, wow. So it was important to them to hear that they had made a difference, but it was also a tremendous sense of joy to be able to acknowledge that I had those relationships, I had those blessings, and if I did die in three years, they now know how I felt about them.

41:32It's just a tremendous thing for people to hear because I think it's something we fail to do so much of the time. And I found in my own life, I have had very few, very close friends. And as I look at things, I've had a lot of people who I would consider to be more acquaintances than when I think of a really close friend who is something that you can tell pretty much anything to. and you don't have to worry about them not wanting to associate with you or not be willing to go deep. Unfortunately for me, three of the people I have been closest to have all now passed away for different reasons. And once those people do leave you, it's very difficult to get that relationship back, especially if you've known these people for decades.

42:23Yeah, no, that saddens me at your age that you would have lost three of them already. That's tragic. All five of mine are gone, but I'm in my 80s, and I think I was the youngest of them. But to lose them in your 50s, all of three, is a powerful loss. And I think the message there is that just tells you we can't count on the predictable. The same message I mentioned earlier. We just don't know. And I've made a habit of making younger friends. So every friend of mine is basically younger, except for my older brother. I have one or two older friends, but a lot of closer younger friends. And we haven't talked, I don't know, but by the time I was 70, there's a whole couple decades in there of appreciation of relationships, which ended up with a really special year when I was 70.

43:23So it kind of started at 50, it built at 70 and found its maximum fulfillment in my 80s. But it's all the same theme. Well, unfortunately, Walter, I lost those people before I was even 50. So one of them died and we were both in our late 30s from colon cancer, Another one when I was in my early forties from unfortunately suicide and the other one from cancer a few years later. So it, yes, it makes you really wake up that, you know, you've got to live for now because you don't know how long it's going to last. Well, speaking of your 70th, I understand you ended up going on a year long journey to visit.

44:07I think it was 40 or 44 people during that, that journey. What were you really searching for? Oh, another happy time. Happy, not happy, but meaningful happy. There's a little difference. A meaning and it always leads to happiness for me. I never look for happiness. I always look for the way to get happy. If I never look, in any case, I had been working on these relationships. Once I started and found out they're so valuable, I actually mined more of them and became I'm even more intentional if there's a word that I would use for my life. I am really intentional. And when I woke up to the power of important relationships, I just kept on collecting them like people collect art or wine or cars.

44:58I collected really neat people. So I'm thinking now, I don't know if you remember, you're too young probably, but there was a moderator of Meet the Press called Tim Russert. Of course. He was incredible. met Best Moderator in his 50s, had a heart attack and died. Yeah, I remember it vividly. I was a regular watcher. I watched him every Sunday. There you are. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you remember, his funeral had 1 ,500 people there. There were astronauts and presidents and the tributes to him were unbelievable. And that's where I really got this, oh my God moment. the way these people felt about Tim paralleled the way you felt when your friends told you what they meant.

45:48Now, there's one big difference in this comparison. You heard it. Tim never heard it.

46:01John, it makes no sense to me that we will spend so much time and wait till the person passes to let them know what they mean. That is our culture. That is the way most people live. The movement that we'll talk about later, say it now, is breaking that custom. But back to the 70th, I'm now 17 years past this time I thought I'd be gone I'm thinking oh my god I'm still here so I asked my wife I said listen there are a number of people have been important to me I'm not going to want to bring a party together bring every I want to be able to sit down for an extended period of time usually at least a couple hours and I had very specific things that I wanted to tell each one of them about their impact on my life.

46:58And I asked my wife Lola for a year because I couldn't do it quickly. I didn't know how many people. I didn't know it'd be five or 10. And I hope your audience doesn't get turned off by this. It ended up being 44. I don't care if it's one or two. The message is the same. Don't wait. So I ended up at that point saying I wanted to go visit them personally. So I traveled around the United States. Sometimes I was able to see two in the same area. Ended up going to Kenya and Canada and Mexico, a lot of places in Southern California where I had made relationships over the last 25 years. And I sat down with each of those people and told them specifically the impact they had on my life.

47:46It was an unbelievable experience. What it meant to them, we can only assume. Most people I know that are fulfilled know that their life had mattered. Most people that are frustrated and uncertain about why they're here. It's generally related. They don't think they matter. Well, everybody on my journey knows they really matter to me. That ultimately became a book. That was another coincidence. I never plan any of these things, but it seems like the universe will line up if you're really clear and intentional and patient and passionate. Yeah, I love this story. And I wanted to, I'm not sure if you've ever heard of a researcher from Cornell named Tom Gilovich, but Tom studies the regrets of people in their third trimester.

48:44And probably someone that you should look into because he has interviewed thousands of people. And what he has found is very similar to what Ronnie Ware, who wrote The Five Regrets of the dying found as well, is that people regret not ever becoming the third phase that you talk about, becoming me, becoming their best self, like showing the people in their lives how much they matter to them, really understanding how much they matter to other people. And so when people are on their deathbeds, that's what they tend to talk about the most. Why do you think we postpone that for most of us until our funerals?

49:33Well, if I had to answer one, I just think it's a custom. It's a habit. It's a habit. It's the way things are done. And there hasn't been enough evidence that there's any other way to do it. We're changing that. But 20 years ago, that was the way you paid tribute to somebody, was you would just wait till they passed away and really delivered a wonderful eulogy. That was it. It was okay. It was such a missed opportunity. John, I don't want to overstate it. I don't know your audience, but I literally think I found gold when it comes to an aspect of human relationships. I, now we've influenced over 15 million people.

50:18We teach the program in 85 countries. Some schools are teaching say it now. We're changing that. We're having a lot of people realize, I know there's a lot of conversation. I respect deeply those that suggest that we have a life that matters. I got it. As a matter of fact, that's critical. You can be wealthy, you could be physically fit, and you could be very unhappy because you just don't seem to matter. So you can work on mattering, but here to me is the biggest undiscovered aspect of mattering. The whole nature that we don't tell anybody that they matter. what if the whole world woke up this morning and said I am going to reach out to at least one person or all those that are really important to me and be very specific with them I just want you to know John how much you matter to me when you did that and that suggestion and that support was a really tough time in my life, and I'll never forget what impact it had on my life.

51:42And you're thinking to yourself, I don't remember it. You can't believe how many moments of mattering in people's lives the people who provided it had no knowledge of it. And we are the people that have that gift. And if we don't give it, it's like having a gift in your closet that you never give. And Say It Now is about getting that gift, putting a flashlight on a relationship, because I have one I'm doing next week with a terrific guy on a surprise. It's going to give me a chance to put a flashlight on that relationship. Oh, I know I'm very respectful of him. I admire him. He's a great guy. He's done a lot.

52:28I want to be able to review specifically what he did in my life to him. That's putting a flashlight on a relationship. That's what Say It Now is about. Walter, thank you for sharing that because it's really profound. And it's actually a core of what I explore in an upcoming book that I have coming out on October 6th called The Mattering Effect, where it really goes into what you're talking about, what you're talking about is actually the mattering effect. It's, I believe we can change the world if we start doing things like you're suggesting, which don't take a lot of effort, but they significantly change your relationship with yourself and your relationship with others.

53:15And I believe once you pass it on and you share that with someone else, it creates a natural ripple effect where they express that gratitude on to someone else in their life. And that's how it begins. We started this movement five years ago, and we're over 15 million expressions. Once it's discovered, once people do it, you make a couple points. I just want to underline them. Number one, it doesn't take much time. I take out my legal pad, which I'll do this week, and I'm going to list what difference did that person make in my life. Now, I'm going to put the flashlight on that relationship. What will it take me?

53:57Half an hour? Now the question is how you do it. That's up to you. Some people want to write a letter. Some people want to go visit. Some people want to do a video. Some people want to do it with a group. It doesn't matter how, but it does matter now. We cannot wait. We do not know how long the person will be there. And I have to also add, it's free. It doesn't cost anything. It doesn't take much time. And it changes relationships. It changes your life and it changes their lives. I'm reminded of a story that was interviewed, the author of the book called The In-Between. It was a hospice nurse.

54:49And I love this story because it just highlights the problem. In the last six months, it's along the lines of what you just spoke about, but in the last six months of these people's lives, they have this hospice nurse take care of them and make the transition. And almost everyone has this sense, I wish my life had mattered. I'm just sad my life has not mattered. Then, out of respect, she would go to the funeral of these people. And the people would all stand and talk about what that person had meant to them. Can you believe that? We're going to change that, John. That cannot be part of our long-term society.

55:30Can't do that. Walter, I want to ask you a question. Do you think being told how you mattered to someone's life is simply is different from simply being told you're loved? Oh, I, as a matter of fact, thanks. That is, I didn't make it as clear as I want. The question allows me to be clear. Most people know how you feel about them. I don't think they're surprised when something, because nowadays people say, I love you. I say it to my guy friends. They kind of know that. They have no idea of the impact they've had on my life. And only if we can be specific, can we add power to the mattering message.

56:23It makes me think of a teammate that I had in high school who I've never really told this to. So I probably need to pick up the phone and call Keith because we haven't spoken in years. But he was my teammate and he ended up becoming a state champion runner, ran in at a collegiate level, was an All-American, missed the Olympics by hundreds of a second. But he really took me under his wing when he was a junior in high school and I was a sophomore. And he really taught me to care. And because he cared a lot about becoming a better runner. And at that point, I was kind of going through the motions.

57:00And he brought the rigor and the pride and the esteem and in subtle ways kind of made me think I could be a better person. I could be a better runner. I could be I could work harder. I could develop more grit. And I've never really shared that with him. And that kind of carried on with me through the rest of my life. But it's moments like that, that we need to tell those people those things because they probably never even. John, I want you to do that. And I want you to send me an email afterwards and tell me what that experience is like. And I'll tell you a similar story. And I know how powerful it is.

57:34There was a driver of a person who took me to the airport. This goes back a couple of years. And he says, what do you do? And I said, well, I'm actually trying to get people to awaken to the power of acknowledging people while they're alive, not waiting till they're dead. He said, oh, that's interesting. He said, I don't know, he must have been in his 30s, I'm guessing. He said, I had a basketball coach, comes immediately to mind. He taught me so much about life. I got chills again. I said, really, is he still alive? He said, yeah, I don't see him, but he's still alive. I said, well, it's up to you, but it'd probably feel pretty good if you told him the impact he had on your life.

58:19It'll feel good to you. Probably feel good to him. Next time I drove to the airport, he said, I just want you to know I reached out to my coach. I said, really? What was that like? Because there is no income in this, John. I have no business. I was done with business 25 years ago. There is no profit motive in Say It Now. The book profits that I had go back into the Say It Now movement. I have a book coming out next week. Profits will all go back to the Say It Now movement. I have nothing to sell. There is no earnings from this. So these psychic stories, that's why I ask you, I want to hear about yours.

58:56Psychic stories is when he tells me, he says, what was it like? He said, hey coach, I haven't seen you. I'd like to come see you. Why don't we meet in the basketball and wherever they used to play on the court. So he goes there, the coach has a basketball. I said, coach, I didn't come to play basketball. I said, well, what'd you come for? He said, I want you to sit down on the bench. I want to tell you how my life differed because of what you taught me when you were my coach. Powerful. Very powerful. Walter, I'm really curious. Getting into schools is extremely difficult. The bureaucracy that you have to go through, the hurdles, all of this, extremely difficult.

59:37And I know this personally because we can talk about this in a second, but I wrote this children's book because as you explored earlier, so many youngsters today don't feel like they matter. In fact, 35 % of kids four to eight don't feel it. And we've got growing levels of sadness and hopelessness and everything else in over 40 % of our high school students. So there's a real need for this message to get to a younger generation. So it excites me that you have found a way to do this. Yeah. Well, first, the question was, how have you gotten into 80 ,000 schools? I will answer that. But I want to talk to you about why did I go to youth?

1:00:26So this year will be the year of corporations. But this is fifth year. The first four years, I said, what is the most important age group that I want to influence? The older people have lost many of their friends. They're gone. They have a lot of regrets. They know what the pain is. We'll talk to them, but not as a primary market. It's an important market. Your age group, they've got parents still alive in some cases, children coming along, good opportunity, great opportunity, but I'm going to have to unlearn something for your group too. The younger people, they don't know. They don't know about this custom.

1:01:14So I wanted to teach them, practice them, have them have the joy from the experience without having to unlearn the fact that you might have done this or not done this later in life. So not wanting to build another large organization, not at my age, I developed a strategic relationship with an organization that I had worked with the founder of the organization for 25 years. And he was excited about my message. He had spent the last 25 years developing educational materials for schools around the world, he and I have developed a relationship with him, which allows Say It Now to be taught in all of the schools.

1:02:01As a matter of fact, I am so excited this year that we, that the story is told on a documentary. It's called the Say It Now documentary. You can get it on YouTube, get it on my website. I have nothing to sell. The first five months has been viewed over a million times. There's a lot of messages there. Mentoring, how did this idea come to pass? The whole question you ask is how did you get into schools? It's covered in the documentary. That documentary will have a learning guide, a teaching guide, a study guide sent to all the schools so that they will view the documentary. They will learn the principles from it and no promotion here.

1:02:49This is coming out next week. This book is designed for nine to 90. And it's a fable. I just saw your book. This is a fable. This takes you on a journey on a train. And by the time you get to it, you can see it's not a big book honoring people out there who may not like to read big books. This has a big message. You go on the journey, you will understand the expression of gratitude. And a little different book, which was This is the Moment, which was a story about how did I come up with the idea of going to visit people? What did I say? How did I do it? This was more of a, let me help you do your own thing.

1:03:36And let me tell you about mine. This says do it whatever way you want. I just want you to understand the concept. Well, you and I are kindred spirits because you told me that what you have always been trying to do is to live an intentional life. My first book was, how do you build an intentional life? Love it. And then this next one, like we talked about is really how do you make other people feel like they matter? And so doing so, it makes you feel like you matter more in more ways than you can possibly even comprehend. I admire your focus. I support your focus. I'm pleased to have had the chance to share our respective priorities in our lives.

1:04:21Yeah. Walter, one of the ideas I've been exploring is something that I call pass the ripple. And it's a challenge for youngsters, like four to 10-year-olds, that significance doesn't stop with one person, it propagates. So what the whole premise of this is to give a platform, there's no cost similar to you. I didn't do it to make any money, but what it's supposed to do is to encourage people to do acts of gratitude. Because I think youngsters, as we've been talking about, need to realize that one act of recognition can alter how someone shows up in every single relationship after that. How does your initiative build that out?

1:05:09After someone watches this documentary, they get this additional coursework. What have you seen as the ripple effect that then happens afterwards? Well, in the classroom, there's specific assignments to express gratitude to somebody who's been important. That's the teaching guy. The outcome is not just to educate them on the idea. To me, frankly, if we got a couple hundred thousand people who are listening and saying it's a great idea and that's where it stopped, that would not justify my time. If we inspire people to act on the message in whatever way they want, that's where it is. That's the only measurement that we do.

1:05:50We do not do how many people have we inspired. We count how many people have acted on it. I think it's built into the class and those people who have read the book, the people I've met over the years, this thing works. I have never, John, in my business, with 6 ,000 meetings a year, I guarantee you we made mistakes and things didn't go as we hoped. In all of my time on this subject matter, I've never heard anybody say, I'm sorry I acted on that expression of gratitude. Can you imagine? Not one. Now, I'm going to tell you a story. I don't know if we have the time. I'll tell you the story. I thought I was going to have my first one two weeks ago, because I've been waiting for somebody to come up to me.

1:06:40Walter, it's a great idea, but it didn't work. So she, somebody I've known for 20 years, she read my book. She said, did I ever tell you about my say it? They now use the word say it now. That's like, pay it forward. I want everybody to say, have you done a say it now? That's it. Have you done a say it now? She said, did I ever tell you about mine? I said, no. She said, well, I decided to do it for my father. He's getting older. And I decided I would do it. Now I would guess she was late fifties and maybe her father was 80. And there was father's day. So this was last father's day. She said, I decided to do a say it out from my father.

1:07:19But I thought about him and I couldn't think of anything that I'd want to say. I said, oh my God, here we go. Fasten my seatbelt here. I'm going to get it. She said, and then I said, I began to think about my childhood. I began to think about how much he had to do with the childhood that I had. and I started I wrote a letter about the things that he did to make my childhood the way it was and I put it in the Father's Day card and we went over to his house and I said dad there's a card but there's also a letter he read the letter I said what was the reaction he didn't react This is it. I said, my initial reaction was to say, oh my God, this is the first time somebody's really had a disappointing experience.

1:08:11But we all know it's much better to answer, respond with a question before you give an answer. So I said, what was that like? With some empathy. She said, it was one of the greatest days of my life. I said, how's that? She said, I got to tell my father all that he had meant to me. I'll never regret having not told him. And she said, I would like him to have responded, but he's a very private person. And so he chose not to respond. But I was so thrilled that I did it. So I'm still waiting for the first.

1:08:54Walter, I have two last, I think, fairly quick questions for you. We started off the interview today talking about the first phase of your life was knowing me, the second phase was making me, you call this phase that you're in becoming me, who are you still becoming? Well, that's a wonderful question. That's a whole discussion by itself. But I think if we go back in our lives from the very early days, I still remember being a controller, 27 years old, teaching finance to housekeepers and maintenance people. So you'll see a teacher in me, right? You'll see somebody who only seems to be attracted to doing things that haven't been done before.

1:09:45He likes new things, entrepreneurial things, different things. There's a pattern. There's also a pattern that it has to relate to people. So it starts to relate to people. Then I made this kind of discovery of the power of expressing gratitude. I think I am the person I was always meant to be. And it took those early chapters, the experiences, and my clarity. I am really clear. I feel like the kid who's been given an extra time on the test. I was supposed to be out of here many years ago, so I became really intentional. I describe my life as I walk up escalators, but I always know where I'm going.

1:10:34I am really great at deciding what not to do. That's why it looks like I do so much, because I don't do a lot of the things that don't get me to where I want to be. I am in my sweet spot. I'm so glad to be able to have the opportunity to talk to you because I can't tell you how many times I have spoken to people who are in their third trimester of life. And let's say that third trimester starts when you're 60, just to give it a number, who tell me your book about intentionality and how to build a life of significance would have been great when I was in my 20s, maybe even my 30s. but it's irrelevant to me now.

1:11:17And I just look at them and say, every minute that you have is a minute to shape someone else's life and to grow as yourself. So I always think, I hope when I reach 60, that's not how I feel, because I feel like I have two or three chapters left in me that I want to do. So I'm so happy to see how passionate you are about this, how passionate you are passion struck, I would say, to be influencing so many lives that you are. It's a remarkable story. Walter, I want to end with this. For someone listening or watching today who has someone they need to thank, forgive, or honor, what would you want them to do before today ends?

1:12:01Yeah. Oh, thank you. First, I'd like them to think about one person. Just think about one, maybe more. take out a pad. Ask yourself the question, what difference did this person really make in my life? Create some bullet point responses to that question, and then ask yourself, how do I want to do it? And I don't care. As I said earlier, now they have technology. You can speak into a video and send a five-minute video to somebody. It could be life-changing. You can write a letter where they can look at it again. I have letters all over the place. Every time I look at the letter, I relive the relationship.

1:12:58You can go sit down with them in person or any combination of it. You can gather a group of people that feel the same way and really add some more power to it. It doesn't matter how. But put that flashlight on the relationship. It's more than saying, I love you. They already know that. They have no idea how they have mattered.

1:13:28Well, we will end there, Walter. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such an honor to have you on PassionStruck. You're very welcome. And if they want any further help, they can go to the website, just sayitnow.org. We'll give them some help if they need it, but it's pretty simple and it's very powerful. And I thank you for your really good work in this arena, and I appreciate the opportunity to dialogue with you today. Thank you so much, Walter. That brings us to the end of today's conversation. And honestly, what stayed with me most is how many people may be carrying uncertainty about whether their lives truly mattered to someone else.

1:14:07Walter shared something profound during this episode. Many people spend their entire lives influencing others in ways they never fully realize because nobody ever tells them. Sometimes a single conversation, act of belief, or moment of encouragement quietly shapes the trajectory of another human being for decades. And yet our culture often waits until funerals to express those truths. What Walter is challenging us to do is radically simple. Say it now. Not someday, not eventually, not when it's too late, now. And I also think this conversation reveals something deeper about human flourishing. People don't simply want achievement status or success.

1:14:42They want evidence that their existence carried meaning inside another person's life. That is part of what creates belonging, emotional resilience, and I increasingly believe it's part of what heals the growing disconnection so many people feel today. Next week, we begin an entirely new monthly series calling The Connection Crisis, why we feel so disconnected, and how we find our way back to each other. Over the next month, we'll explore why modern life increasingly leaves people feeling isolated from themselves, each other, and the institutions meant to support human flourishing, and what it takes to rebuild trust, belonging, and authentic connection.

1:15:17We began with entrepreneur and author Eric Reese for a powerful conversation about how good companies lose their humanity, why institutions drift away from the people they're designed to serve, and what it means to build organizations rooted in trust, purpose, and human-centered leadership. I think it's one of the most culturally relevant conversations we've had this year, and I can't wait to share it with you. Most organizations, frankly, are lying about what they're all about. They have a mission statement that sounds very lofty. But if you read their legal documents, they have a legal purpose that is something different.

1:15:52Quite often, they have a lofty purpose. Like I tell the story of Silicon Valley Bank. That was my bank before it collapsed. That's why after it collapsed, I wanted to know what happened. They had a lofty mission that was mission statement that was like to advance the innovation economy or to move the innovation economy forward. Something that sounded really good. It made me so proud to be a customer. Oh, yeah, that's exactly right. But their bank, their legal papers are all public and you can read in the documents, it says that their legal purpose is to maximize shareholder value. If you have this divergence between mission and purpose, eventually the hypocrisy becomes too great and the thing collapses.

1:16:25That's what we see over and over again. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with someone who may need it. Leave a five-star rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and explore more at my sub stack at theignitedlife.net. Until next time, remember the smallest expressions of recognition can create ripple effects that last for decades. I'm John Miles and you've been passion struck.