Latest Podcast:  “Finding Normal Life After Losing Feet & Hands at 18” w/Elizabeth Esthay 

Imagine yourself at age 18, a freshman in college, your whole life in front of you and suddenly you are struck with an illness out of nowhere and it soon takes both of your feet and parts of your hands with it. This was and is the reality for our guest today, Elizabeth Esthay. All of us find ourselves with various challenges dumped into our lives, but hers was particularly acute. How will I walk again? How can I live a normal life? Will I ever get married now? Will I be able to have kids? These are the questions that gripped her as she waited in the hospital for 4.5 months praying for a miracle.  How we can and will respond to traumatic events like this is impossible to know, but listening to how others deal with them can be incredibly helpful and inspiring. Elizabeth’s story is not one she’d wish on anyone; however, in an incredible form of redemption, it set her up beautifully for her career as a trauma counselor. 

🎧 Listen here (APPLE)

🎧 Listen here (SPOTIFY)

Books I am reading: Good to Great by Jim Collins. I am reading it for the second time, listening to it actually. It is one of the most relevant books I have ever read on business and human behavior. 

Things on my mind: Vulnerability - Podcasting & writing are my hobbies, but my main gig these days is actually landscaping. I am a business owner and have been for 10 1/2 years. A huge lesson that I have learned lately in business, and in life is the importance of vulnerability. Just yesterday my leadership team of 6 and I spent eight hours together vision building for who we want this company to be and where we want to go. Over the course of time yesterday, we each opened up, and were incredibly vulnerable talking about our personal dreams and desires, and our vision for the future.  To allow yourself to dream is to be incredibly vulnerable. It’s far easier to protect yourself and to keep it safe and to only think about tomorrow and about survival. But when we allow ourselves to dream, when we allow ourselves to picture what our future really could be, it’s a dangerous, but beautiful act of vulnerability, and the root of true vulnerability is always courage. 

Thank you for reading. Your biggest compliment to me would be to forward this blog to someone else. 

Much love,

Rob