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- [00:03]
Host
Welcome to a very special edition of the Walker webcast. This episode offers a perfect chance to reflect on lessons learned, values affirmed and wisdom shared. We've had the privilege of speaking with some of the world's most accomplished and thoughtful leaders. Today we bring together those voices in a single episode. Stories of purpose, perseverance, humility and self discovery. We hope they inspire you as much as they've Inspired Us. Part 1 Finding Purpose and Direction Michael Levy and Dr. Schwartz show how staying true to yourself leads to a purposeful career. Together they prove purpose is found through action, movement matters. Even without answers.
- [00:51]
Michael Levy
It's also very clear, clear, Michael, that from having listened to lots of interviews and read a lot about what you've done since you've been at Crow, it's been a fantastic match, it's been a fantastic partnership and it's allowed you to do what you want, how you want to do it. But as I've, I've always. We sat around at the dinner table last night with my, with my partner's two sons, one who's in college and one who's younger, and they were sort of like, you know, what should I do with my life? And everyone likes to listen to the Steve Jobs Stanford commencement speech that says, you know, do what you love, do what you're passionate about, but very few people actually have the option to do that. And my comment was, you know, find an environment in which you can be yourself and then find something that you enjoy doing so that work goes from being work to being something that you don't consider being work. And it, I feel to some degree that both you and I, in our professional careers, in our 40s into our 50s, found that in the jobs that we do and, and that is, you know, other than working with friends, one of life's truly great gifts.
- [01:55]
Dr. Schwartz
I agree with, with all of that, but also, you know, we remember being in your 20s, it's hard to figure this stuff out. You know, sometimes it's like for me it was, I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and then it finally clicked. But it didn't click for me till I was like 28. Like, I didn't, my brain until I was 28 was all over the place in terms of what I might, I could never figure out. But I kept moving my one foot forward in terms of my academic progress. I kept focus on something I knew that would continue to propel me forward. And then when I got out of law school and I wound up in training, investment banking, it clicked. But those were Anxiety filled years of figuring out what's important from a career perspective. The advice you're giving is terrific advice.
- [02:42]
Michael Levy
One of your mentors at Mass General said to you, if you want people to rely on you, you need to be reliable. How do you manage that between your personal life and your professional life? Because that's gotta be a really difficult dance.
- [02:57]
Neurosurgeon
Yeah, that story. Just to go over that a little bit more. When I was in medical school, you know, when you think about when you're making the decision to become a neurosurgeon, it's not an easy decision. I mean, it's almost like marrying a spouse. Right. Because you're. I was very conflicted and very torn because I had a lot of interests when I was in high school. I played music, I was a jazz bass player, I loved music, I did sports, I loved sports, I loved reading, I loved a million things. And I knew that neurosurgery was going to take 100% of me and that I was going to have to give up everything else that I did. I was. Have to make all these sacrifices and basically live in the hospital for decades. And even the practice of neurosurgery is very challenging. And the divorce rate was very, very high when I started practicing neurosurgery. And so I remember being in this little conference with Paul Russell, who was the head of transplant surgery, and he made that, that comment and basically saying, look, if you want people to depend on you, you have to be dependable. You, you know, you have to be there, you have to show up. And so I made the decision at that moment that that's what I wanted. I wanted people to depend on me. And, and they weren't going to depend on me if I wasn't dependable. My wife is in the audience, so I will say that I had a very frank. I, I've had frank talks with her along the way during our courtship and saying, look, this is who I am, right? This is the life you're buying into. You may you choose like, because I'm not going to change in terms of what I need to do to be the neurosurgeon I want to be. But that said, I make every effort I can to, when I'm not in the hospital to be 100% present for my family, for my kids, you know, to take vacations, to do what I can. And the way I say it is I'm not to my kids, I say, look, I can't be there for everything, but I'll be there enough.
- [04:46]
Host
Part 2 Discipline, sacrifice and passion. Hilton CEO Chris Nassetta demonstrates that career success and family life can coexist through true commitment. He shows that personal sacrifice isn't always necessary when you balance work passion with home dedication, proving both priorities can thrive together for anyone.
- [05:09]
Michael Levy
Somebody who spends almost as much time on the road as you do. One of the things that I am super conscious of is the discipline that you maintain in your life is on a couple fronts. A waking up every morning really early to read the Wall Street Journal. And second of all, when your daughters were significantly younger, making the commitment to getting home every weekend given the wasn't easy on the.
- [05:31]
Jesse Itzler
I was just going to say that's
- [05:32]
Michael Levy
where I was going to go is given. Given the expanse of help and being in 70 plus countries.
- [05:37]
Jesse Itzler
How. I mean, seriously, I mean, at this
- [05:39]
Chris Nassetta
point, I love what I do, which is why I've done it this long and I plan to do it for a lot longer. And I love my kids. The thing most important to me is my white, my children, my, you know, my broader family, my, my closest friends. And I've always made sure that that's a priority. So whatever it did to my body, you know, I was a dad. I was home at a sock, you know, I would go to Singapore on a Sunday afternoon and I would fly 22 hours and get back to pizza night, you know, Friday night and do soccer games Saturday and Sunday morning and then fly off somewhere else. And you know, in some ways it was hard. But as I said, when you really, when you really love what you do and you get a lot of energy from it, which I do, you know, it works and it's still, you know, it's, I still doing it the same way and it, you know, and it, and it, and it still works. And while my driving purpose is always gonna and always has been my family, I really, you know, and hopefully it shows up. I really do have pat. I really do feel like the work that we do that I'm a small part of really matters a lot too. And it is clearly, if you asked my wife, my children, this is part of my purpose too. Like, this is part of what I do. And there's a, you know, if I think about, you know, like in the last 12 months, we've created 25,000 jobs in the last 12 months. So, you know, part of my purpose is contributing to being a great dad and husband and friend and son and cousin and brother and all of that. But part of my purpose, I think, is also the work we do here and doing It a way where we change people's lives for the good. And I feel like at the scale we do it, we really do make a difference. And I certainly think that our teams around the world feel that way. So that's a very. There's a lot in that. But it does start with the core question is, like, you know, you kind of say, like, how did you do it? Why do you do it? I mean, how you do it? You rag your body a little bit. Why you do it is passion, you know, passion for what you do.
- [07:59]
Host
Part three, Leading with Humility Pursuit founder David Berry proves that true leadership means rolling up your sleeves. By prioritizing humility over titles, he builds a strong culture from the ground up. David's commitment to the work sets a tone that strengthens the entire organization.
- [08:18]
David Berry
So leadership can shine a light and it can cast a shadow. I think if you keep humility in mind that you're no better than anyone else. You may have a different job, you may be the leader, you. You may make more money, whatever it is, but you're no better than anyone else. And so we have probably 18 or 19 different countries and team members that work within pursuit, you know, team members from all over the world. So I would never hesitate to make up a hotel room. I'm pretty good at it. I can get a hotel room reset pretty quick. And I would never hesitate to clean a bathroom or do anything that our team members do because that is our culture. And we have a really simple mission. It is not a mission written by committee. It's not a mission that, you know, McKinsey came in and created.
- [09:06]
Sahil Bloom
It's.
- [09:06]
David Berry
It's, you know, our mission is to, you know, connect our team members, you know, guests and staff to iconic places through unforgettable, inspiring experiences. And notice we said guests and staff, and the reason we say that is that we have, you know, team members from all over the world that come to our locations for an experience. And if you want to be the best place to work, you have to do the work to get there. And so humility is really important. And look around, see how things are working. See what you can do to help. And never be above jumping in would be the way I would describe our style.
- [09:45]
Host
Part 4 Curiosity and continuous Learning. David Berry and Mallory Walker proved that relentless curiosity fuels growth at every stage. By remaining the most inquisitive people in the room, they show that success belongs to those who never stop learning. For them, curiosity deepens with age.
- [10:06]
David Berry
This would be my advice if you're a young person listening. And anyone tells you in your life that you can't do anything, disregard their advice completely. If you decide that you want to learn something, you can learn it. And I'm proof positive of that. I mean, I sat in a room with a bunch of guys that went to Wharton and Stanford and Harvard and everywhere else, and I had no idea what they were talking about. And I had a very kind boss slide a book down the table at me, which was, well, two of them wrapped together. And he highlighted all the chapters. One was the Economist Guide to Analyzing Companies, and the other one was the Essentials of Managerial Finance, where he'd taken a highlighter and he'd marked up all the chapters and all the exercises I should do to familiarize myself with financial structuring and how businesses work from a financial standpoint. Because I was good at managing labor, I was good at generating revenue. I just didn't understand investment math or anything. So, you know, I just went chapter by chapter and just kept working it till I figured out how the thing worked. And. But you can do that. So financial services. I was on a board of a company, and I was an independent director on Trust Company of America. And we had a guy that was struggling running the company, and the board asked me, hey, you're taking a year off. Would you coach, you know, the CEO that we had running the company? And I did, and it did it. You know, we coached him and eventually decided it was better to make a change, which we did. And then the board said, hey, would you run the company in the interim while we do a national search? And I said, sure. You know, I'm riding my bike. I'm happy to do it. And so I did for a couple of months. And then after national search, we decided we didn't really like anybody better than how we were running the company. So they asked me if I would.
- [11:44]
Jesse Itzler
So you pulled the Dick Cheney.
- [11:45]
Michael Levy
You pulled the Dick Cheney and said, I'll do it.
- [11:48]
David Berry
Well, I just, you know, I was intrigued, and I'm intellectually probably the most curious person you will ever meet. And so I just got interested in something that was very different than what I had done. And it was a break. It was a sense of, hey, I've been doing something in a couple of related industries my whole life. This is something completely different that I'm quite intrigued by. And so I learned how that industry works.
- [12:20]
Michael Levy
But what do you think people say was your superpower as it relates to Mallory Walker? What other people say about you? What's the redeeming quality. I'll tell you, it's your curious nature. One of the things that anyone in the room who is at UVA who spent time with my dad, whether it's on the foundation board or sitting at a dinner table, will consistently say to me is your dad has got one of the most curious minds of anyone you'll ever meet. And I think it goes back to what Nassetta said earlier about Chris's desire to continuously learn. My dad for his age, the last thing he does is just say, I know what tomorrow's going to bring. I know everything I need to know. I'm just going to go about doing my own thing. He's got this curious brain that is constantly asking for more knowledge and he'll sit down with my buddies and know nothing about what they're up to in their lives and he'll just sit there and pepper them with questions to understand what's going on in their lives and what they do. And it is really your, your desire for continuous learning is I think, quite honestly a what keeps you so young and secondly, what makes you so such a delightful person to sit down, have dinner with.
- [13:28]
Host
Part 5 Mindset, language and Self Imposed Limits Entrepreneur, Endurance athlete and 29029 founder Jesse Itzler proves that our greatest barriers are often self imposed. By shifting from can to will, he shows that belief and internal language define our potential success isn't what we can do, but what we resolve to achieve.
- [13:54]
Michael Levy
I've heard you talk about the difference between two words, can and will. You back up to the advice that Lou Katz gave you when you were offered to sell a 10% interest in your, in your 10% annuity in your jingle business for 10,000 bucks way back when.
- [14:12]
Jesse Itzler
Well actually it was 10% of all my future earnings. Yeah, I was sleeping on between the ages of 19 to 23, I was flip flopping amongst 18 different friends couches and when I was on couch number 17 someone had offered me. I was in the jingle business. My, my, my business model was go in a studio on, on my own nickel, write a song for like the New York Yankees. I was doing it for sports teams mostly cold call them, try to get them on the phone to get a meeting and then convince them if I got a meeting that they needed this song that I had and try to sell it to them. I had no money to go in the studio anymore. So someone had offered me 10%, $10,000 for 10% of all my future earnings for the rest of my life. And I'm like, I'LL take it. So they, by the way, by the way, Elon Musk money, that would have
- [15:02]
Michael Levy
been the worst deal ever.
- [15:03]
Jesse Itzler
That would have been the best deal
- [15:04]
Michael Levy
ever done for that guy.
- [15:05]
Jesse Itzler
In hindsight, ever, ever. He'd be a really rich guy today. But anyway, he was turning me into a $10,000 heir, like I would. That was amazing for me at the time, but I was living with this girl and her roommate and she said, well, why don't you go talk to my father about it before you make that decision. He's an entrepreneur. And I went to see this gentleman named Luke Katz who was incredibly successful. And he just asked me a simple question. He said, you know, will you make the jingle, this company work without the, without getting the $10,000? And I said, lou, I know I can make it work. And he erupted. He said, I didn't ask you that. He said, I know you can be a millionaire. I know you can run a marathon. I know you can start a podcast. I said, will you, will you make it work? And I said, I will. And he said, well then go ahead and do it. Don't take the money. There's a big difference between can and will. Everybody here can do a whole bunch of, I can ride my bike across the country, I can start a business, but will you do it? And as a 21 year old kid, hearing this guy talk to me about really just the words that I say to myself and the impact that they have to me and my own self, talk had such a big impact on me. And even now with four kids, the words that we speak in our house are so important. And the limitations that we put on ourself are very often self imposed and so important. Part of the reason why Mark and I started 29029 is to take people that had never participated in endurance sports. They were intimidated. They didn't want to, they didn't. Maybe they didn't like obstacle racing or they're not great swimmers or cyclists or runners. They can't do an ironman. We made it. We made the endurance, endurance sports available to anybody that had the will to walk and climb for X amount of hours to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest. And one of the reasons why, why we did it, the why behind it, is that when people leave our event, we always say, tell them, man, go home and double your business plan. Look what you just did. Think about what you came here and thought you could do. Maybe you only ran a 5k in your life. Took you 40 minutes. You just went for 28 hours and climb the equivalent amount Everest, go double your business plan. You know, we were giving people, we're showing people that the limitations that they've been putting on themselves are self imposed. And my whole life's been like that. I go back to my first marathon, you know, running my first marathon and being like, I can't believe I just did that. And then watching people run, going and spectating a hundred mile run and expecting to see Superman at the starting line, but seeing people that look like goat herders and you know, accountants, and I'm like, how are they finishing this? Oh, they're just not quitting. They're not letting the obstacles get in front of them. They are not even stronger than me. They just have incredible will, Incredible Self
- [18:12]
Host
Talk Part 6 Silence, Presence and the Inner Life Polar explorer and philosopher Erling Kage offers timeless wisdom on the power of silence in an increasingly noisy world. Cagay encourages us to find clarity through reflection and presence, proving that stillness is a profound tool for navigating life's constant chaos.
- [18:38]
Erling Kagge
Then I was wondering, is Antarctica changing or am I changing? And of course it was me who changed that. I got a kind of a pause from everything shut off the world. And then I learned a lesson about silence. And silence is about who you are, that you're in the silence. Of course it's about who you are. Well, noise in the sense, of course telephones, sounds, light, etc. Etc. Is about everyone else. And that's why most of us prefer noise, because that's the easiest thing in life, is to escape from yourself. While listening to your inner silence is about getting to know yourself. And of course getting to know yourself is one of the oldest advices in the world. And I think every advice that lasts for more than 1,000 years we should take seriously.
- [19:32]
Michael Levy
So as you're on the ice cap, either doing North Pole or South Pole, and you are with your own thoughts,
- [19:40]
David Berry
what are you thinking about?
- [19:42]
Erling Kagge
Well, that's interesting because, you know, thinking is also kind of a noise because when you're thinking, you're usually thinking about the future or the past. So of course the most important thing when you ski to the poles is to put one leg in front of the other. So technical wise, it's easy. But what's the most beautiful is to be in the present, not to think. And that's happening after a few days when they get into rhythm, you kind of for long periods, you stop thinking. You're just present in the moment. And I think that's one of the most beautiful feelings you can have. And in terms of walking, I think you know from the beauty of walking, you walk because walking is good for you, it's great for you. It should not be necessarily be a means to something else that you should, you know, 10,000, whatever, it's totally okay. But it's, you know, walking is, it's good for health, it's good for your creativity, it's good for so many things. And Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, 2,500 years ago, he said the best medicine will for all times will always be to do a walk. And he said if you not feel better after one walk, you should do a second walk. And his third advice was just make sure that the doctor doesn't give you the wrong medicines.
- [21:08]
Michael Levy
So walking, reading and silence. It was in silence that you came up with the idea for your company. Toss for a moment about how you use that silence to not only be at peace with yourself, but come up with the ideas that you come up with.
- [21:24]
Erling Kagge
No, today's science has kind of confirmed that walking is really good for creativity. But this is something people have known for thousands of years. The reason Socrates kept on walking was not because he wanted to get much more fit to impress his wife, but it was because it was good for his creativity. So they kept on walking. And why did Steve Jobs also kept on walking? Was good for his mind.
- [21:52]
Chris Nassetta
So.
- [21:52]
Erling Kagge
But then with silence too is also very good for creativity. And you know, Blaise Pascal, the French philosopher in the 1650s, I think, you know, he wrote that the origin of every problem for man is that he's not able to sit by himself alone in a room doing nothing. So instead of doing nothing, he will do something. And that's the beginning all the problems.
- [22:16]
Kira D'Amato
Hi.
- [22:16]
Sahil Bloom
When you're not surrounded by thousands of
- [22:19]
Kira D'Amato
miles of ice and you're in the world with constant stimulation, how do you keep a sense of presence and inner silence?
- [22:27]
Erling Kagge
Almost, I think it's, you know, it could be complicated because as I said, it's much more tempting to go for noise than in the silence. But so for me too, I can end up like checking the news three times in one hour, which of course is just total waste of time. And I google something and find it and 20 minutes later I'm still googling. But having said that, I think it's easy to underestimating your own potential for experiencing inner silence, because that silence is there all the time, just waiting for you. And you could find it when you have a shower in the morning, you can find it if you walk a few stations instead of taking the metro. You find it if you do the stairs instead of the lift, you can find the menu, cooking, you can find it when you're making love to your boyfriend, whatever. But this silence is there all the time. Or you better do a walk, whatever. So it's the silence at all times, you can find it, you know, the nicest place in the world, you can find. I think, you know, everyone is born an explorer, so some more than others. Yeah, that's true. But almost every kid who, you know comes out into the world with stretch of the arms and the legs in four different directions and screaming for air, more air and more space. And after a year, the same kid will walk out of the house and start to wonder what's between him or she and the horizon. And soon what's beyond the horizon. So that's, that's how we born. And that's spiritual exploration. I'd never, I don't think it ever goes to zero. So I think everything is somewhere between 0.1 and 99.9. So we all, we all have it. But of course I kept it to a stronger degree.
- [24:27]
Michael Levy
Yeah. How'd you, how'd you get to 99.9?
- [24:32]
Erling Kagge
You know, it's. I think it's very much about curiosity, it's very much about wandering being kind of an engine in life. It's very much about enjoying nature. I think the biggest mistake we're doing today is to separate ourselves from nature. The whole idea that came out like 500 years ago in UK by Francis Bacon, a philosopher, that the human should conquer nature. Of course in Christianity we are both nature, but we're still a part of nature. But he wants us to conquer nature. And the humans didn't need nature. And I think that's the original. So many of the problems we have today, from people claiming to be sad, lonely, depressed, to climate change, and I think that's a meaning of life, you know, you need to fulfill your own potentials. So if you read lousy books, listen to lousy music, see lousy TV, et cetera, you know, eventually you, you get 60, 70, 80 years old and you start to wonder, you know, was this my life? All those days and weeks and months and years passed by and this was my life. So I think, you know, so in terms of reading, I read, you know, great non fiction, read lots of philosophy, great fiction. I was just in Japan with my daughters. I read, I think 12 novels, Japanese novels, you know, the three Nobel Prize winners, but also some other stuff just to get into Japanese literature and. Yeah, and I read, you know, good magazines. I read FT Economists, etc to keep updated. Yeah, not, I'm not, I don't, you know, people need x, Blue Cloud, etc. Because you know, that's the only way they can keep up. But you know, it's, it's, it's not my experience.
- [26:30]
Michael Levy
Do you restrict the amount of time you spend on technology?
- [26:33]
Erling Kagge
No, but I'm good at putting my phone on airplane mode.
- [26:41]
Host
Part 7 Refocusing on what matters Sahil Bloom and Kira D' Amato remind us that fulfillment comes when our actions align with what we truly value. By stepping off society's default path, reclaiming control of our time and embracing perspective Effective over pressure, they show that living intentionally is the key to lasting success and happiness.
- [27:07]
Kira D'Amato
Then I became a wife and a mother and then I learned to bring running back into my life for fun, right? It was just my fun, healthy thing. Like my husband and I would go on running dates or I'd meet a girlfriend, go for a run or someone would say there's a local like race. And I'd be like, hey, I'll show up, let's see if I can win my age group, you know. And it just, there was no pressure and I think just learning how to put running in my life with no pressure really I think is why I'm sitting here today because I still feel no pressure from running, but I have a whole bunch of goals that I'm kind of like, well if I hit them, great and if I don't, you know, I still got my family, my kids, my real estate, like I'm still happy. So it's really brought me into like a pretty like risk free zone, I guess.
- [28:00]
Sahil Bloom
I think the fundamental recognition here is that there are two types of priorities in life. There are the priorities we say we have and then there are the priorities our actions show we have. And oftentimes in life there's a big gap between those two things. I was living that gap. You know, if you had come to me in 2020 and asked me what my priorities were, what I really cared about, I would have said a bunch of great sounding things. I would have said my family. I had a deep love and admiration for my parents. Like I, my dad is my best friend, like you know, has been and I think the world of them. I had a tense relationship with my sister for many years as a result of the competitiveness that had been created mostly due to my own insecurity and issues. But I wanted to change that Because I know that your sibling is like the one person that you really see the entirety of your life through right from beginning to end. You know, my relationship with my wife, my health really mattered to me, all of those things. But then if you had watched me for a week, the third party had come and watched me for a week and actually observed my actions, they would have been completely dislocated from those things that I just said. And so that moment that you mentioned, you know, in 2021, I had at that time spent the first seven years of my career working in private equity, marching down the path to the most traditional version of what we think of as a successful life. So much of that was built upon this idea that I could get enough things, enough recognition, enough money, enough, you know, titles, bonuses, promotions, whatever, that I would wake up and feel that feeling of arrival, right? Like the arrival fallacy. You get whatever achievement it is and you wake up and you feel that, ah, like I've arrived. It's like, I think it was Scotty Scheffler, maybe a year ago in the Open Championship, he gave this press conference where he talked about the fact that winning major championships was no longer fulfilling to him in any way. And all these people were like, what? You know, how can the number one golfer in the world say that? Like, you know, I think he said something like he wins and then he has this moment of like, wow, great. And then he says, what's for dinner? And it's that idea of the arrival fallacy over and over again. Anyone listening to this has experienced this. We build up these destinations as being the point at which we will feel fundamentally different about ourselves. We make our happiness, our contentment, our fulfillment conditional on something, achieving something. And then we get it. We feel that momentary blip of dopamine induced euphoria. And then we reset, right? You feel the feeling of never doing enough. You reset to the next thing. I did that all along the way for those first seven years of my career. And while I was winning in this one very specific domain, making money, building this life around this one, you know, I would say most prominent metric of success in society. Every other area of my life had started to fall apart. All of these priorities that I would have said, said I had were bearing no fruit. Like I was living 3,000 miles away from my parents. I was drinking seven nights a week. I was 40 pounds heavier than you see me today. My mental and physical health were in disarray. My wife and I were in the middle of this two year struggle with, infertility which was creating strain in our life and relationship for the first time since, you know, we had met when we were 15 years old. And it all came at a time where, if you had seen me from the outside looking in, you would have said I was winning the game. Like, from a societal standpoint, I was doing the things that you're supposed to want to do. I was achieving the success in the way that we think about it. I was 30 years old and making millions of dollars. I was doing the thing you're supposed to want to do. And that was the moment when that conversation hit with that old friend. I went out for a drink. This is May of 2021. We sat down. He asked how I was doing, And I said that it had started to get difficult living so far away from my parents. It was the first time in my life that I had noticed that they were slowing down. Like, something about COVID not seeing them for an extended period. And then seeing them, I just noticed things like, my dad was driving a little slower. They were walking downstairs a little bit slower. It was just the most noticeable cross section of change that I had had with them related to their mortality and aging. And that was scary. And so he asked how old they were. I said, mid-60s. He asked how often I saw them. I said, about once a year. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. That was the moment that was the math that changed my entire trajectory in life. Because in that moment, what happened was that gradually, then suddenly change in my life, all of these things had sort of built up. And then that math, that number hit me like a ton of bricks. It was the gut punch that pushed me over the edge to say, I've built this entire life based on actions that are not actually aligned with the priorities that I really have in life, the things that I really care about. I'm building this life by default. Someone else's scoreboard is governing how I am living on a daily basis. And I went home that night, and my wife and I had a very candid conversation about, you know, what our center really was like, what did we want our life to look like? And we took a dramatic action. And within 45 days of that conversation, I had. I had left my job, we had sold our house in California, and we had moved 3,000 miles across the country to live closer to both of our sets of parents. And in that one decision was a very important realization, which is that you are in much More control of your time than you think. We had taken an action and actually created time like that number 15 more times before my parents are gone. It's now in the hundreds. I see my parents multiple times a week, maybe too much sometimes. They're a huge part of my son, their grandson's life. You know, we had taken an action and reassumed agency over our own lives. Actually confirmed to ourselves that we were capable of taking action to build our life around the priorities that we truly had to bring that gap back into alignment. To say, I'm going to live in accordance with the priorities that I really have about my life, and I can do that. You can actually choose to live by your own design. You have the agency to go out in the world and create that change.
- [34:29]
Host
Part 8 Legacy Patience and the Longview Mallory Walker and Erling Kage show that success requires patience and the long view. By embracing grace, gratitude and presence, we build lasting legacies. Their timeless principles prove that staying grounded and kind while staying the course leads to true achievement.
- [34:53]
Michael Levy
But as you think back to anyone else who has a family, company or kids who might be thinking about coming into a family business, what piece of advice would you give to them?
- [35:08]
Mallory Walker
Every situation is different. You can't make kind of universal statements. But I think you were about to ask me a question a minute ago. I thought it was what was. What do I am I most proud of? And I was patient. I saw more than my fair share of competitors go out of business because they were impatient and couldn't see themselves through to the end of COVID To use an example that we've just used. They just basically were running too hard. And so I think that. I've taken the long view. You've taken the long view. Not everybody in business does. I think that, you know, and we're lucky. There are not a lot of businesses that have three generations of one family. We've been quite lucky in that sense.
- [36:14]
Michael Levy
You talk a lot about gratitude in those three moments. Is that the core emotion you feel as it relates to gratitude? Or is gratitude something you get once you've gotten home and are thinking back and reflecting on it?
- [36:27]
Erling Kagge
I think it's hard to get down from the mountain before I felt gratitude. I think, yeah. But I try to feel gratitude every day. I think that's. As I said, gratitude is. It's very complicated to have a good life if you don't feel gratitude. And it's all very complicated to have a good life if you don't try to be generous, unkind, as we come
- [36:50]
Host
to the end of this special episode, we hope these lessons stay with you to pursue your purpose. Stay curious, lead with humility, create space for silence, and take the long view. Thank you for being part of the Walker webcast community. Here's to continued growth, gratitude, and inspiration.
- [37:11]
Neurosurgeon
Sam.