Unimaginable Loss, Unexpected Lessons | Nick Shaw

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the quality of people. you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

0:42And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altachirk. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:25I think out of 1 ,500 podcasts, I can't remember another podcast where I cried in the middle of the podcast. And I have on Nick Shaw. He wrote a book about an intense experience he had and his life after that. The book's called My Teacher, My Son, Lessons on Life, Loss, and Love. Again, it's called My Teacher, My Son, Lessons on Life, Loss, and Love. Beautiful book, but let's let him tell the story. Here he is.

2:03This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

2:19Nick, I was very, I mean, I did not expect this, but honestly, I was crying while I read your book and it was very moving and I'm really sorry for what happened to you. And I'm really glad you wrote this book and kind of got your lessons down. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. That was, uh, my hope is that the book would have impact. That's kind of why I wrote it. So, yeah. And I'll do an introduction with the title and all that. Well, actually this is sort of the introduction. So it's called my teacher, my son lessons on life, loss, and love. And Nick, It's your kind of journey of the loss four and a half years ago of your nine-year-old son in February of 2019 and what's happened to you since then.

3:08And again, it was, I'll let you tell the story, but it was, I was really moved by it. But I don't know where, I mean, I don't know where you want to start. Like, do you want to start with the day that obviously the day your son died was the day that started all of this? And again, it's horrible. I couldn't help but think of my own children and how I would react. And you really, you know, have a brave example here in this book. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm happy to kind of start it that day because that is really where all this journey began. so on a ski vacation in Montana big side Montana I grew up skiing my whole life it's actually a skiing was a big passion of mine and you know a day that started like any other day we're all excited to get out there on the mountain and beautiful day beautiful conditions you know we I took William to the top of the mountain he'd been looking forward to getting up there for a year because we went the year before, but didn't make it up there.

4:16And he was a very good skier, right? He was. Yeah, he skied on the - He was nine years old, but - Yeah, he was nine years old, skied on the local ski team here in Massachusetts. And I took him to the top mountain, had the run of his life. Like, it was amazing, right? He was top of his game. I had the whole thing videoed on my GoPro. And then as we were heading down to the bottom mountain to meet up with my wife and my younger son, Kai, we were on a catwalk. And for those of you who don't know what that is, it's a fairly flat road that kind of winds its way down the mountain. And I was about 10, 15 feet in front of him.

4:51And as I was rounding a bend to kind of follow this road on down the hill, a skier came whizzing past me and said, hey, was that your kid who went into the woods? Because William is a bit behind because, you know, it's a fairly flat road and I'm heavier. So I was my momentum was carrying me. so I quickly stopped took my skis off and started to walk up the hill and and I he was nowhere to be found so at which point like did you start to fear that something happened I mean it was it was a weird it was I mean it's a good question um I was walking up the hill and just to give a bit of the you know the sort of context um off this slope was it was kind of steep off the side of this road and it was heavily wooded with powder snow.

5:37So I walked up the mountain thinking, okay, I'm going to find him sort of buried in powder snow, having a hard time getting out, which is typically what happens when you fall into those types of places. But as I walked up the mountain, he was nowhere to be found. There was no impression in the snow or no marks where he may have skied off. It was nothing. It was like he just disappeared. And it was a bit unsettling because it's like, well, you know, I thought I was going to see him. So I ran back to my skis And then I started to go into the woods, try to find them. But the snow was so deep, I couldn't get much further than five to ten feet in.

6:08And I fell into pretty deep powder snow and got stuck for a while. And eventually when I clawed my way out, someone who worked at the mountain saw me and asked if I needed help, I said, yes, my son's missing. And then a search ensued. and so i mean yeah i was i was in pretty panic mode at that point because i know he didn't ski past me he was nowhere to be found in the woods so i was like you know what i just didn't even know or couldn't even understand what was going on and and there's there was no sign at all where you you could last see his skis the ski tracks no nothing that that's that was the weird thing about it and even when the ski patrol came the first thing they look for is is signs or tracks and they said well there's nothing here he must have skied past you so they sent me down to the bottom mountain to see if i could find him down there and while they continued to look for him and were you in constant communication with them at that time or like yeah so when i went down the mountain they uh hooked me up with another ski patroller a female ski patrol at the bottom of the hill and we she helped me search for him and so she was in constant communication with them via her walkie-talkie.

7:12And then what happened? So I came outside after looking for him inside the lodge, and then I heard her walkie-talkie kind of crackle alive, and I heard the following. He's found but unresponsive. And I was like, that just got punched. I fell to my knees. I just, you know, to hear that your son is found but unresponsive is just, yeah you know so it's the worst thing you can think of but even in that moment you think okay maybe he's unconscious or whatever so they they then took me up the hill about a couple hundred yards up the hill there was a ski patrol clinic so they took me on a snowmobile up there and then I waited for him to arrive and again I still thought okay it's an accident he's maybe he's unconscious maybe I didn't know what the extent of it was so I was just waiting in the clinic and until they finally brought him in and and even when they brought him in again you know you still cling to that hope and I heard a helicopter had come outside and I was like okay well maybe the helicopter's here so they can take him to a bigger hospital so for a while I was still you know hopeful that he was just needing some treatment but then eventually the uh the doctor came out and you know said sorry and you couldn't do anything for your son and like I mean there must have been a million things going through your head like first off when you saw him come in and you saw that he was unresponsive.

8:35What did you think then? Did you think, okay, at least they're bringing him in to work on him? Yeah, so I didn't actually see him because they kind of had me in sort of a waiting area and they stationed a nurse next to me or I think she was a nurse just to kind of talk to me and try to calm me down. I don't think they wanted me anywhere near when he was going to arrive because they didn't want me to have any type of reaction. So I didn't see him actually come in. I just heard him come in. I heard the commotion. Yeah, and then... Again, I'm just, it's just the uncertainty of it all. You just don't know what's going on.

9:07You're waiting, you're waiting, you're waiting. And then eventually you, you, you, you experience what you've seen so many times. I know it's cliche, but on all these different, you know, TV shows, you know, any, any hospital drama, you see these scenes all the time on TV and, and then you're in it. You're actually literally in that scene. You're, you're the parent who's like, gets told the worst possible news you could ever imagine. Yeah. I think you have a statistic in the book. Um, I forget the exact same. It was around 10 kids per thousand, about 1 % of kids ages five to 13, something like that, die per year.

9:42So it's a very small percentage. And as you put it, like now you were in that statistic, that set. Yeah, no, I mean, it's exactly. I mean, we're in the modern time, so child mortality's not as normal as it once was, and particularly when you get to nine years old, right? um so yeah we're at we were we were instantaneously we were outliers and then they tell you and you haven't you were you were by yourself more or less like your wife wasn't there your other son wasn't there your six-year-old son Kai wasn't there it was you and William that were up on the mountain and so again like that moment like what was what was going through your head I hope you don't mind me asking these questions this is what this is what I do but I know it gets no no no I I have no you know i i i'll talk about this to anybody i have no problem talking about it and and i think the experience is a big part of it right so i think it's it's important people understand what happened um i mean instantaneously you go into you go into shutdown mode i mean like you know you you the stability of your life is gone in that moment right everything you thought your life should be how it should unfold that's completely shattered so you go into this crazy just you shut down like I was shut down it was like I was in a fog I didn't quite understand what was going on um that my wife hadn't gotten there she had gone back to the cabin we'd rented to see if William had somehow skied there so she was making her way to the clinic at that point um yeah I was I just it it's incomprehensible and so your mind is trying to rationalize what happened and it's not something that you can even rationalize in that moment and so i'm just there just trying to make sense out of this thing and then i remember one of the first sort of real reactions i had was when i when i kind of realized okay well he's he just died and and then i realized i wasn't alone and i was like that was that was probably one of the worst feelings because the first thing that i thought was was what am i going to tell my son kai Like, how do I tell a six-year-old that a brother's dead?

11:50How do I face my wife, who I was skiing, that I was with Wayne when it happened? How do I face her? And that's just really sent me into, yeah, just an emotional spin and a downward spiral of just, you know, guilt. And just, it was not a great place to be. I can't even imagine all the conflicting emotions because you're right. Like there's how do you tell your six-year-old, how do you tell your wife, not only that her son, your son is not there anymore, but also there's also, you know, and you hate to put it this way, but there's also fear that everyone's going to blame you. You mentioned this in the book, like, you know, you were there with him.

12:35Yeah. Well, and then you hear the horror stories, right? I mean, you hear the horror stories about what happens when this kind of tragedy hits a family. You hear about divorce and all kinds of other things that happen. I mean, your mind just immediately goes to the worst possible places, right? You're just, and so, yeah, it was hard. And I remember that period of time where I was waiting for my wife to get there. It was just like the uncertainty of it all was just like unbearable. And I was just pacing back and forth. And you just didn't know. I didn't know if she was going to, you know, just lose it on me or, and it would have been understandable, you know, if she had done that.

13:14But yeah, it was just yet another period of uncertainty, which was a pattern obviously for the next while in our lives after it happened. Yeah. Like those next few minutes while you were waiting for her and after you heard the news, like, what did you do? Did you just stand there? Were people around you? Like, what was, what did you do then? Because I don't quite. Yeah. No, it's a good question. I honestly, I don't even know. I mean, some of those kind of details are definitely a bit foggy. I can imagine. I think I was just, I'm an introvert, and I tend to go inward as my place of comfort. So I imagine I was just zoning out and just trying to figure it out in my head.

14:04I mean, I was just, the wheels were spinning and turning and going every which way direction while I was waiting for her. And then she shows up, you see her. Yeah. So this is one of the most amazing things that I think I've ever experienced. So my wife comes, she rides to the clinic. And I think we were about 10 feet apart. And I tell her, I said, look, he's dead. and immediately she crumbles to the ground. She's, you know, just a complete, you know, the emotion overtakes her. And so I rush over to her, and I join her on the ground. We're both kneeling and hugging, and then as we both stand up and she composes herself, she kind of put both hands in my shoulders, and she looked me in the eye, and she said, it's not your fault.

14:59And, I mean, I was stunned in the moment, right, Like, cause I was expecting, you know, a different reaction and it's a, it's an amazing thing, right. For, for her to have put her own pain aside in that moment, because she knew that's what I needed to hear. She knew, obviously she knows me, we have a good marriage and she knows just how hard I was going to be on myself through this whole thing because I was with Williams. And so for her to say that to me in that moment, it's, it's one of the most selfless acts that I've ever had done to me. Right. And it set the tone, James, because, you know, had she said something different, it might've set me off or it might've caused friction between the two of us, but that set the tone of how we were going to figure this whole thing out together.

15:44And then you go back to the family that you were vacationing with. They were watching Kai and you see Kai's playing games with his friend. Well, first off, on the way there, did you and your wife have any conversation? Like what's, what's kind of like, what do people talk about in this moment or is there just nothing to say? Yeah. Honestly, there's nothing to say. I don't think we were, we weren't ready to talk things out. I think we were still, we were still in this sort of zombie-like surreal state. maybe your brain's almost protecting you like okay you knew the next task was tell kai the six-year-old you know younger brother of william and you just stayed focused on that like the brain wouldn't let you veer from that yeah yeah perhaps i mean i think that our brains are amazing things and our bodies are amazing things and they kind of they take over in those moments um and to try to protect you from from yourself in a lot of ways and so yeah i think we were both just in going into that protective cocoon of silence and just trying to make sense of this thing.

16:59So not much was said on a short drive from the clinic to the condo where our friends were staying. And so you see Kai, and what happens then? Yeah, we walked into the apartment, and Kai, six years old, he's playing with the kids of our family friends. And it was, you know, here he is, you know, I mean, and I talk about this in the book, you know, you're looking at this, this, this very innocent child and you know that you have to basically shatter that innocence, right? You have to, you have to basically tell them, you know, one of the worst possible things that exists in life, right? It's, it's, you know, the death of a sibling.

17:47and so yeah in that moment it was it was heavy I you know I didn't want to do it but but obviously I felt I felt that I had to do it because I was with William and so we just took him into a bedroom and I sat him on my lap and and you know the best I could come up with is there was an accident your brother won't be coming back and and he's in heaven and and that's that's all I could figure I I mean, again, there's no playbook for this, right? There's no sort of, this is what you say when this happens. And that's the best I could come up with. And, you know, he kind of just looked at me with his big eyes.

18:22He didn't have an emotional reaction. He just, I think his brain was trying to figure it out to the extent that it could at that age. And then he eventually just got off my lap and went back to playing with the other kids.

18:45Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

19:28And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs new AI Assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash altature. post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

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21:06Is there a parallel in your life? Like when you were younger, what's the first close loss you experienced? How old were you? That's a good question. I mean, it was, I mean, probably in college. It was, I don't, I mean, I was fortunate. Grandparents or? Yeah, grandparents. I'd say probably grandparents, yeah. so maybe even closer to like in my 30s to be honest i was fortunate not to have uh been confronted with that kind of loss in my life yeah i for for me it was grandparents it was never anybody close like what what kai was experiencing then and i mean that kind of close and i'm just trying to remember what i as a six-year-old uh was thinking and really i know i know i wasn't as sad as, for instance, my father, because it was his mother that had died.

21:58And I know I was more worried about, I just didn't know what to do. Everybody was acting differently. And I obviously was sad, but I just didn't know what to do. That's the only thing I was thinking. Yeah, it's, I'm not quite sure what kind I was thinking. And, you know, it's, you know, at that age, you're just developmentally in a different place. And at that age, you're still very much focused on yourself. I mean, I think there's a certain age where kids are very self-oriented and that's just a normal part of development. And. Yeah, he was he's he's not a super emotive kid, even to this day.

22:44You know, we went we went to a family therapist and we did all you know, we got all the resources we could to help us through this ordeal. And he just processed things in his own way. And he must have seen over the weeks following, he must have seen, you know, you and his mom upset. And he was probably like, was he, were you trying to still comfort him while dealing with your own loss? Or was he in a weird way, was there any reversal of roles? Like, was he trying to comfort you? Yeah. Yeah. So I wouldn't say he was actively trying to comfort us, but in a strange way, so implicitly he was because.

23:30So there's a specific event that happened, which I talk about in the book. In the days after William died, my wife and I, we couldn't look at any pictures. It was just way too painful. And as we were planning the funeral and all the things you have to do when you when you lose someone, we had a bunch of friends over and they needed to get a picture for the obituary. And so I gave them my phone. I said, go scroll through my phone and find one. And somehow my phone made it into Kai's hands. And so eventually I noticed this and I, and I walk over to him and I'm like, I, my instinct was, I want to get that phone out of his hand.

24:04Cause I don't, I don't want him to feel that pain, the pain that I was so afraid of experiencing, you know, had I been the one looking at pictures, but then I got to him and he had this big smile on his face. And he was, he was just like, he just wanted to see a picture of his brother. and there was this resilience about that in him in that moment that was like wow he's if he's able to do that that's that's kind of where I hope to get to someday and so he he became kind of like my inspiration on you know how to how to move forward and and and move towards the pain as opposed to move away from it um now it didn't happen in that moment took me many many more months to get there for myself.

24:43But just that moment was such a salient point to see this little boy just like holding this phone and smiling and being okay. I guess from like an, like an, thinking about it from an evolutionary psychology point of view, in order for a kid to survive, as opposed to an adult who's, who's developed all of their skills and has, has their place in the tribe and so on, a kid needs to adapt constantly to survive. like for millions of years. I guess that's a muscle. It's easier to have when you're young. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, kids are highly adaptable. They first off don't have the years of formation and programming that we do as adults.

25:27So it's easy for them to sort of change quickly, right? Because they don't have the baggage we do as adults. And I believe that served him in that moment, in that period of time. and then so you know and you you sort of describe this in the book but and i know it's it's personal also but how did you and your wife start getting back on track because like as you mentioned obviously the first thing you thought of even was okay this is going to lead to divorce that's what happens in these situations it's hard to kind of stay together not only because there's pain constantly you're each reminding each other of the pain but there's also potential guilt and anger and and and so on so i i want to mention also that he actually and this this i thought was important is that the doctor told you upon the autopsy or the coroner told you that probably william died instantly or he he thought william died instantly that's right that's right yeah he coroner's report, you died from blunt force trauma to the head and neck, or head and chest, I believe.

26:37And so that was, for me, a momentary relief, because I thought he had somehow gotten stuck in this thing called tree wells, which are these sort of deep holes when there's a lot of powder snow. And I thought he was somehow trapped there and suffocated. So I was obviously going to the worst possible places. So the fact that it was quick, it was pain, it was, you know, pretty much painless was, was, was a small, uh, small piece of relief. You know, over the weeks, months, years since then, how important was it knowing that for your, I don't want to say recovery, but your, your progress, like if you had heard differently, would that have drastically changed things or I don't know.

27:21It's a good question, James. I mean, so before I found that out, I tried to play the events of that day. I mean, I played them over my head constantly. And the biggest question was, well, if I could have gotten to him sooner, would he have lived? right and remember i told you i was stuck and so i couldn't move like the snow was like it was like i was encased in concrete but you know you hear stories of people doing superhuman things and lifting cars off their kids you know adrenaline kicks in and you know so i was like well why didn't that happen to me why couldn't i just power through why couldn't i just find him right so that was tough to to have that as an open question was definitely haunting me and and if i found out he died of suffocation or or whatever yeah i think it might have been a different.

28:09I would, I'd be carrying a sense of guilt with me. It'd be, it'd have been a lot heavier, I would say. Because, you know, you like to think you can do superhuman things when your kids are in harm's way. Yeah. And also you don't want, I mean, so there's two things there. One is there's thoughts that maybe you could have saved him. And then two, there's reliving and imagining what he might've been going through. And so, you know, I guess that's a saving grace here is that it was just like a light switch flipped off in some sense. Yes. So as opposed to him going through some bad experience, you and your wife made use of a support group.

28:49And there was a person there, I remember, who was saying how he was describing his own experience. And after his daughter died, which was, he was older than you. So it was like something like 20 or 25 years earlier. He said he had never experienced a day of happiness again. and you kind of resolved you didn't want to be like that. But when you heard that, what did you think? Oh, it was, I mean, so we were just, we needed to find a support group. So there was one conveniently in the town next, the next town over. So we said, well, let's go try that out. And yeah, this is where we heard that statement.

29:25And this was from like the guy moderating it. And it was, you know, that, it was like, and I use this reference, but it's like being handed a sentence, right? Like it's it, you're doing life of unhappy your sentence is a life of unhappiness and i was like that is i don't know that was the most demotivating sort of thing i'd ever heard right i mean obviously it's terrible to lose your child but you you you hope you hope you'll somehow come out the other side and to hear that from someone yeah it was it was a hard thing to hear and and uh and at the same time i i you know my wife and I looked at each other.

30:03I said, we can't do that. I mean, look, it's funny. A lot of people are like, well, you guys, you're unbelievable. You're an inspiration. And I'm happy that we're inspiring people. That's fine. But my wife and I had this result. There was no choice, right? It's not like we were going to just throw in the towel and then Kai would be at the mercy of whatever happened to him as a result of that. There was no choice. We were going to get through this come hell or high water because you know we had this we had our other son and and and and we came up with a mantra uh it's one that i you know kind of came to me one day you know what would willie want and and william would not have wanted us to to just throw in the towel and and and he wouldn't have wanted his little brother to suffer more than he had already so i don't know why but that That was from the earliest days.

30:54And maybe it started when my wife and I met, you know, when we saw each other in the clinic, but we were, we had this very deep resolution to not let this destroy our family. What do you think would have happened? Or what do you think would have been different if you didn't have Kai, if Kai wasn't there, if you didn't have a second son? It's funny you ask that because it's something my wife and I would have talked about a couple, like we'd say, thank God we have Kai. Right? Because if we didn't have a son, I don't know. I mean, I don't know if we would have survived because what are we fighting for?