2421 - Discovering Purpose and Power Through Life-Changing Challenges with Tom LeNoble

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0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Tom Lenoble. Tom, you are a confidential advisor to founders and leaders. You're an award-winning author. You are the CEO of Academy for Coaching Excellence. You're the host of the Opening Pathways podcast and founder of Opening Pathways Collective. You are found on the web at openingpathwayscollective.com. Tom, when do you sleep, my friend? You keep yourself busy. It's great to have you. Josh, it's great to be with you. I've been looking forward to being with you and your viewers.

1:29Well, thank you so much. And by the way, I should point out, you are in beautiful Maui, Hawaii. You and I got to talking before then. I was stationed there for three years and just absolutely love the Hawaiian Islands, the people. That's where my wife and I, going to Maui, went to Maui for a day. When she was out, she was a tourist. We met at a luau. We hit it off. We started dating every day. And we went to Maui for the day. And that at Maui is when I decided that I was going to marry her. And we've been married for over 30 years. Yeah, I think they put something in that Kaluuya pork at those luau.

2:07Yes, they do. Well, Tom, tell us, before we get going, talking about your superpowers, You know, I always love finding out what leaders do for fun when they're not working. What do you do in beautiful Maui to relax or what have you been into lately? You know, there's two things I'll share with you. One is I'm on the board of a 50-year-old nonprofit here that's a performing arts nonprofit. And we just opened our new theater. So on Sunday, I went to see the production of Frozen and I had never seen it. I have to tell you, I cried at the end. it was so good and the other thing I do which I do when I'm in San Francisco as well is I love to walk in nature um I go in nature no music nothing but me and whatever sounds I hear you know we used to say I think they do them automatically now but computers needed to be defragmented every now and then for me being out in nature is like a defrag for my brain it clears out the the cobwebs and renews me.

3:10And I have a beautiful place here that I get to walk. What a great analogy, because I do remember those days of defragging. And, you know, there's so I got to tell you, thank you so much for mentioning that. I've really committed to, you know, especially I have a little bit of an ADHD brain, so it's constantly wanting more and more input, but it doesn't give me enough time to integrate, right? And that integration time, when you're not filling it with noise, no social media, no news, dear God. You know, thank you so much for that reminder. And what a true joy it must be to walk in nature in Maui, which is just sad.

3:55And I have an avid Pilates practice, which I have done everything you can imagine over my lifetime. And for the last nine years, I've been very into Pilates. And I will tell you, it brings the same sort of clearing that walking in nature does. And so I really enjoy it. I'm very skilled at it. I'm very proud of myself for how I've achieved doing it. Excellent. Excellent. Well, Tom, tell us about your work with Opening Pathways Collective. I'd love to thank you for asking opening pathways collective is the umbrella for everything that I do and you spoke to some of it I have a non-profit I actually am a philanthropist it's why I do everything I do I work with underserved communities youth in the arts first gen students current women's issues of the day other things I'm passionate about it's also where you can learn about my books the one that's out currently my life in business suits hospital gowns and high Heels, which has won five awards.

5:00I'm so, so, so grateful. And I have a new one coming out next month called Morning Ground. You can read about it there. There's also information about my business as it is, TomLanoble.com, where I've been in the media and about the Opening Pathways podcast. Opening Pathways is actually the brand that I do business as, and I love it so much. It's my publishing company name. It's the name of the podcast. So Opening Pathways Collective is where you can learn about all things Tom Lenoble. Yeah. And so Tom, what would you, so, you know, here we are, we're recording this, you know, kind of getting toward the middle of 2026, obviously been working on morning ground.

5:44What are you, what's the main message that, or one of the main messages or some of the main messages that you think that leaders should be hearing today? You know, Morning Ground on Instagram and Facebook every morning, I do something that's less than two minutes. And it starts out before the day asks anything of you, take this moment for yourself. And there's a word each day. It's a reflective word for you to start your day. The book is going to be an empowerment sort of bedside tabletop kind of book for people to read. I reflect on that. to answer your question, because I think one of the biggest things executives can do today is remember to take a moment for themselves.

6:30So many people that I work with, my clients, I see three major things with them. One of them is this idea, and we're all saying it right now, how can it possibly be May soon? And what I found is if you're a busy executive, you need to calendar your own time that you take for yourself because something will always take it away you need to be as diligent about the 30 minutes the hour whatever and I like to say take baby steps before you go full bore but to try and do something so you actually carve out the time if nothing more to get up and move around and move away and look at the sky hear a bird whatever it is for you something.

7:15Even people that share with me that their relationships are stressed because of work and how much they do. I'll coach them. Take some time, put it on your calendar that three days a week for an hour, you're going to spend with that special person or your kids, whatever it is, because quite frankly, as busy as we all get, especially executives today, it's not on the calendar, it's not going to happen. And you have to be committed to it, that it's non-negotiable, just like everything else on your calendar. To someone who might push back and say, no, I can handle it. Do you mind having a bit of a come to Jesus with that individual right now?

7:59I'm sure, because I know in your work, again, you're kind of the secret advisor to a lot of really great leaders. I'm sure you have seen, you know, where that sentiment might be early in that cycle, but you've probably seen the path of where that sentiment leads, I dare say, close to 100 % of the time. We are all human. We all, you know, we've got basic wiring and tendencies and a capacity that, believe it or not, has some limits. And, you know, we need to defragment every once in a while. Yes, yes. You know, I have something in my business called the haystack method. You see, I believe you have your own answer.

8:46I don't have your answer. And people say it's like finding the needle in a haystack. You know, you see people and you look at them and what they're going through and the answer is so obvious to you if they would only well they don't see it that way because of the circumstance they're in so my job is to hold the space so you can clear your hay to find your needle which is your answers so asking questions and reflecting with people like i'll hear from one person that i'm coaching that their marriage ended because of this same issue. They're in a new relationship. They're having anxiety that they're going to go down the same path.

9:29So when they tell me, no, I can handle it, I help them reflect back. I think the other thing I find with a lot of people, Josh, so many people is what I call living in the past thinking. Living in the past as if in life we get a do-over. If it's like the things we watch now, the videos on our phone, where it has the 10 second backup button that we can press and we can go back. Life doesn't work that way. When we're living in the past, we're not experiencing what's happening right here and now. And right here and now is where the magic is. Too far in the future, we need to have food in the refrigerator.

10:09The kids need to be cared for, gas or electric in the car, whatever it is. But let's not forget if you get too far in the future, we got up today. Some people didn't. For somebody who agrees with you intellectually, and they say, you know, Tom, I agree. I wish I didn't ruminate on this quite so much. I wish, you know, I could just let go of, you know, you know, I'll just speak for myself. You know, there was, there was some tough standards for me as a kid and that carried over. And I think, you know, those standards that I hold for myself, and I know that this is very common among most high-level leaders, is they do have incredible standards for themselves.

10:52And that's an asset. However, you know where I'm going with this is I am, historically, I've been incredibly unfair to myself, you know, to the extent of like, oh, because this happened, it's outside my control, Therefore, I feel bad. Now, intellectually, I might not be thinking that, but my shadow self or in my gut or some emotional programming is coming up. And because of that standard, treating myself in a way I would never treat somebody else. And I'm sure you've seen that. many times yeah you know what i i find is many people come to me they see my business background and the where i was an executive at some of these huge companies and high growth startups and they want to bring a business issue to me often the question they come with they leave with a very very different answer because these surface level things that we bring to the table are just symptoms of something much deeper.

11:52And I think that's where working with someone like myself is really, really helpful in exploring a little more deeply the things that we're doing and the patterns. What I find with many people, Josh, is they're simply habits. We say we live by something, We say we do something, we never venture from it, and it's simply a habit. And when we call it what it is and look at it through a different lens, then we realize that sometimes we just don't want to take a risk to change. And if you want to change something, it's going to require a risk. Yeah. And Tom, I want to make sure, because we only, we just have a handful of minutes left, and And I would love to connect people with your work.

12:46So you've got a few books here. You know, your last book, My Life in Business Suits, Hospital Gowns and High Heels, which is great. In Control, Being Controlled, Out of Control. By the way, this is all at openingpathwayscollective.com and then Morning Ground. And you said that this is, is this on Instagram as well that you share? I actually do the morning videos that are less than two minutes on Instagram and Facebook. My life in business suits, hospital gowns and high heels, which I'm so proud is won five book awards, been on a billboard in Times Square. I wrote it because for the reader, I want people to see that who you are today is the some parts of who you've been throughout your life.

13:32In fact, without all those parts, whether you want to keep them private, they're outrageous, or you just think somebody wouldn't understand, you would not be who you are today without them and be willing to look at how those things served you, no matter how wild and crazy or how tragic or trauma-filled brought you to who you are today. So that's what Morning, My Life in Business Suits and Hospital Gowns and High Heels is about. It's a memoir that crosses over into self-help. And then Morning Ground, as I said, is going to be more of a transformational empowerment daily that you get to read. Then I have another book coming out by the end of the year, My Life at Facebook, The Adult in the Room.

14:16I was number 57 at Facebook employee. I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg when he was 19. and when I was there in those early days, it was still in colleges and everybody working there was 20 and 21 and here I came along at 50, old enough to be everyone's father. So I'm gonna tell the story of the early Facebook days through my eyes as being old enough to be everyone there's father. And then there's another book coming next year, but we'll wait for that for another time. Wow, I cannot, if we had more time to talk, I mean, I don't know if you could say this or if you have a long form video or just something like, I would so love to hear that story.

14:54But most importantly, I think what I'd love is, you know, to think about what you think about Facebook today, kind of where it went. You know, I had the good fortune of being there in the wild days, and it's a great story. You can read about it in my book about interviewing Mark at 19 when I went to a little tiny office over a Chinese restaurant in a suit and what I arrived to in that office. And so many things have happened. So many people have changed in the book that's coming up later in the year. You're going to hear about what happened when I saw Mark 10 years later after I asked him that I wanted to see you in 10 years.

15:32And he said, why you're leaving? And I said, because I want to see what happened. I want to see who you are. I forgot all about it. I was sitting at my desk one day and a Facebook message popped up and said, still want to have lunch? And I looked at it and thought to myself, do I want to have lunch with the fifth richest man in the world? because that's what he was at the time, to which I said, heck, yeah, I do. And I'll share about that in that book. But I think today, you know, I look at it and it's an interesting thing. I got asked to comment recently about the lawsuit that happened and the judgment that came through about social media.

16:07And for me, I think what we need to remember in any company, these fast-paced companies, and they're growing really fast and we're in them and it's, you know, we're moving, We're moving and moving that. Remember, when we're especially involving our customers, our users, other people, there's a responsibility there, especially when it comes to young people. And I remember in the early days, we talked about this many times in leadership meetings about how we would approach that. So I think that, you know, as a business, your business, you need to be sure you're watching for that because we get involved and forget about that.

16:43And, you know, I don't like to get political about things because I have no idea. I haven't seen him in many years. You know, sometimes I think that there's many of these big companies that are feeling like they're even in jeopardy. And maybe that shifts how they're thinking. Or maybe people grow up and change. Remember when I met him, he was 19. He's in his early 40s today. And just like all of us, we are different people than we were when we were 19 and 20 than we are today. And life experience takes us down a different path sometimes. But I know the company seems to be doing well in finding its path.

17:21And we're all still, or many of us anyway, are still on Facebook. Yeah. Well, Tom, your website, Tom Lenovo, your website is openingpathwayscollective.com. Now, from there, you've got a great YouTube channel and podcast. You've got access to your books, Morning Ground. That's all there. Anything I neglected to mention that you'd recommend in terms of the content that you're creating or the value that you bring the world today? Yeah. Well, I think if you go to the meet Tom tab and there's a video there, you can watch a real, you get a real taste of Tom Lenovo, where I started some very humble beginnings growing up.

18:07And we even called it the shack fondly to what happened in life. And I've had two life threatening illnesses. I was told the first one was terminal. I've had metastatic cancer for the last 14 years. I've been given six months to live three times. And as you can see, Josh, I'm still here. Heck yeah, you are. Tom Lenoble, openingpathwayscollective.com. Tom, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for the great work that you do and the message that you share with the world. Thank you, Josh. It's been a delight being with you and your viewers today.

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