EP248: Strengthening Your Struggle Muscles with Todd Bertsch

Embark on a transformative journey with Todd Bertsch as he explores the vital elements of resilience and the power of embracing life's challenges. Listen in as he shares his profound journey from adversity to personal transformation, emphasizing how struggles are crucial for character development and growth. Boost your struggle muscles, spark personal transformation, and discover the power of resilience in overcoming life's challenges!

Key Takeaways To Listen For

●     Reasons why resilience is crucial in personal and professional growth

●     How embracing challenges can lead to significant life transformations

●     The role of a growth mindset in achieving sustained success

●     Primary impacts of perseverance and character building on personal development

●     Key techniques for developing mental strength and positive intelligence

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

●     Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine | Kindle and Hardcover

●     PQ® Program

●     EP240: Cell Block Salvation with Jason Courtney

About Todd Bertsch

Todd is the Owner and President of Evolve Marketing Team and is a seasoned web design leader with over 28 years of experience and a BFA in graphic design from The University of Akron. Also a Life Coach, Motivational Speaker, and host of The BOLT podcast, Todd is passionate about helping others develop a growth mindset to lead happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lives.

Connect With Todd

●     Website: Evolve Marketing | Todd Bertsch

●     Podcast: THE BOLT Podcast | Apple Podcasts and Spotify

●     LinkedIn: Todd Bertsch

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●     LinkedIn: Nate Salah, Ph.D

●     Instagram: @natesalah 

●     Facebook: Nate Salah

●     TikTok: @drnatesalah

●     Clubhouse: @natesalah

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Nate Salah
Challenges are coming. You know this? I know this. They will hit us right between the eyes. Sometimes we think we're ready. We're not always prepared for it. However, I tell you what we are prepared for. We're prepared to make choices in our lives. How we will address these challenges, whether we address them as a gift and an opportunity or we address them as a woe is me. I am the victim. There's a totally different mindset, and that mindset will have an impact on whether they develop us or destroy us, and, ultimately, how they define us. I've invited Todd Burch on the show. Todd is a speaker, coach, author, and he has his own podcast, the bolt, and he's gonna share. We're gonna riff on some aspects of this journey of perseverance and growth and some nuggets of wisdom, not for just ourselves, but for our families and for our legacies. Todd, great to have you on the show, man. 

[00:00:59] Todd Bertsch
Hey, Nate, thanks for having me.

[00:01:01] Dr. Nate Salah
You bet I absolutely love your story, and I know our listener or viewer will also find it very helpful in the journey of life. We know that change is inevitable. Transformation, we hope, is a part of that. We know that it's not always clean and pretty. Life is full of all kinds of messiness. It may look like it's all put together on the outside, but you know, just as well as I do, and the listener knows that there's no one life that has no bumps, no challenges, and I don't even know if we would want that. In fact, I'm going to pose this to you. I was just talking with a friend just the other day, just a deep conversation about conflict and trials, and he said, Nate, imagine a world where there is no challenge, no conflict, no trial. 

[00:01:59]
Said, imagine not having an understanding of what courage is, not having an understanding of what it feels like to overcome, not having even the mind to see what was and appreciate what is he said, Man, that would be a world I wouldn't want to live in. And I'm like, Bro, that's a bombshell. That's just really consider that, because we want things to be smooth, want things to be easy, but no, get me wrong, there's tragedy that really hurts, and there's that are really devastating in life, and we need to empathize, and we need to walk through that very sensitively. However, at the same time, I don't know that I'd be who I am had I not gone through the trials that I've been through. And I wonder what your position is on that as well. 

[00:02:48] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, absolutely. I love leading with that. You're talking about resilience, and without resilience, really, you're talking about lessons and failure, right? So without failure, there are no lessons. Without lessons, there's no growth. And without growth, honestly, are you living? That's my take on it. Life is all about evolution. That's why I named my marketing company, evolve marketing. It really is. It's all about change, and that's what I'm all about. It's what my podcast is all about. It's building that growth mindset and committing to this continuous evolution of change. Yeah, so, yeah, I would not want to live what I would call a perfect life. 

[00:03:39]
I'm actually going to be having a show devoted to this, because I think it's a great topic. You look at some of those one hit wonders, or those young kids who were stars from the beginning, and they never had to experience any failure, so they never built that grit, that resilience. Where are they now? So if you look at some of the most successful people, which I know you've done your research on, that for sure, those people have been through some trials and tribulations, that's what really made them who they are and why they're where they're at today. 

[00:04:17] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, it's the strengthening of your struggle muscles. I've heard it called that before, and it's this, okay. How strong have I become through struggle? And I think there's a lot of perspective, because we can face a trial and say, Oh, my goodness, this is hard, it hurts, it's painful. I don't know that I want this however, at the same time, what happens when let's talk about it from the analogy of exercise, physical conditioning, right? When we go to exercise, if you've been to the gym, I've been to the gym, it hurts, it's hard lifting that weight. Moment of growth is when you have the highest amount of tension and struggle, right? That's that last set. It's that last push you. That causes the muscles to grow. And at the same time, we look at that like, that's a huge win, right? Yeah, I benched, I spent I went to failure. It's interesting that your muscles grow the most when you get to the position of total failure. 

[00:05:15]
But we don't look at life's trials necessarily in that way. We don't look at trials as, oh my goodness, I am going to the gold's gym, if you will. Of Life moved daily by strengthening. And when you look at even scripture, being a person of faith, there's a scripture in the book of James says, Consider it pure joy when you face all kinds of trials. I'm like, wait a minute. It's like a double down. It's not only okay endure it. It's a flipping of the scripts like now, don't just endure it. Consider it joy, yeah, because it here's what he says, because it's the testing of your faith that produces perseverance. And this what you're talking about, right? This is like resilience and perseverance go hand in hand and perseverance, perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete.

[00:06:02] Todd Bertsch
Bro, yeah, yeah, that's, that's pretty powerful, and that's the sign that's at Gold's Gym. But I've, yeah, I've been working out for years, so I totally understand that analogy and appreciate it. Yeah, you have to go through something. That's the way that we grow, that's the way that we learn. 

[00:06:18] Dr. Nate Salah
And you've gone through some things, and I appreciate your willingness to share some of your story as it pertains to this topic, and it speaks to those who are listening, who perhaps maybe in this season right now that you are in, perhaps on the front end, perhaps haven't experienced it, perhaps on the back end, like you in relationship to this specifically, what are some examples in your own life that you faced through this process of strengthening?

[00:06:43] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, absolutely. I'm a short guy, so I feel like I've been like scratching and clawing the whole time since I've been a kid. I was very athletic, played a lot of sports. I was always the guy that had to compete with speed and then strength. As I got older and started hitting the gym, it's always been for me that rocky mentality, honestly. So I've always been the underdog, and I love the fight. I love the battle. I come from a very blue collar family, so my dad was a janitor. My mom was a waitress. They worked two jobs their whole life to give my sister and I some decent things and but good education. So that was always in bread and me to have that hard-working attitude and spirit.

[00:07:36] Dr. Nate Salah
Your parents embodied that when you were young, did you embrace it? Did you lament it? What was the atmosphere around how you accepted that hard-working attitude? 

[00:07:46] Todd Bertsch
That's a good question. I actually embraced it. So we were a low middle class, very mixed neighborhood, not a lot of great things. If I wanted those, I had to work for it. Entrepreneurial spirits early on. BMX was big back then, I wanted this particular Diamondback bike. And for the Diamondback I had that a Silver Streak or something. I had the jersey, and it was all thing, but I wanted that, and I knew the only way that I was going to get that was to work to earn my own money. I had a paper route, which a lot of people don't realize, and I don't think they even do it anymore. I was creating a business. I learned so much about business back then that I had no idea that I was learning. And that was such a great experience.

[00:08:32] Dr. Nate Salah
How old were you when you had the paper?

[00:08:34] Todd Bertsch
Oh, my gosh, probably 10. 

[00:08:38] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, 11 years old and you were on your bike, riding your bike? No, my

[00:08:41] Todd Bertsch
Dad would actually drive us down. Yeah, we started off close to home, and wasn't great neighborhood, and then we ended up with a really great route in the end, which was about 510, minutes away. My dad would drive us. And then we had a whole system. 

[00:08:56] Dr. Nate Salah
Now, paper routes, a lot of people don't know this. You couldn't be late in the day, right? Papers. The whole idea with the newspapers is it was early morning when people would read their news, right? In fact, Saturday, Saturday morning. Tell me all about it.

[00:09:10] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, so it was all about the weekends. That's when they had to be there early, six, seven o'clock, which wasn't a whole lot of fun as a kid who wants to get up early, although I was that kid that was up early. I didn't want to miss cartoons because you had to, I think eight o'clock it came on, and if you weren't there, it's not like these days, where you could DVR it or Cartoon Network all day long. It was on channel eight at eight o'clock for an hour. You were you're either there or you missed it.

[00:09:36] Dr. Nate Salah
So what time would you get up for the paper route delivery?

[00:09:39] Todd Bertsch
Oh gosh, I want to say probably six o'clock, yeah, and that my dad, yeah, my dad was a saint, though he would have them all prepped and folded. He just, he was that guy. He loved doing that. It was very monotonous work, and then they would be ready to go. So we were the, just the executors.

[00:09:56] Dr. Nate Salah
Oh, yeah. But even that, just getting up on, on your. Saturday, right? Saturday is like the kids day. Hey, I get to sleep in and right cereal, watch my cartoons. But you didn't. 

[00:10:10] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, yeah, they would have to do. I enjoyed it, honestly. The hard part was collecting the money back then you went door to door, collecting that money, even if it was a person. A lot of people were just Sunday only. Hey, do you have 75 cents to pay for this paper that you owe? I can see it hanging in your couch. There's probably 5075, cents. But that whole practice that was rough too, especially in the rougher neighborhoods. You go back and back. But that was really building for me that client relationship practice, which I again, I didn't realize back then, but it was great. Honestly, it was like owning a business. 

[00:10:51] Dr. Nate Salah
It really was. Yeah, I mean, I had a little golf ball business by the same age, and there was a golf course across the road, and we lived on a little bit of acres. My mom wanted to get into farming, so we moved out of the city, and I was in Chicago. We moved out city and moved to a little town called Yorkville, which, at the time, York Illinois, was very small and it was very rural, not anymore. Of course, many things were once rural and now sprawling communities, this huge lawn, and we didn't have a power mower. We had the roll kind of was manual, so it had this drum, and you push the drum and it would cut the grass. 

[00:11:28] Todd Bertsch
Oh, I remember that. That's all. That's like, real old school, old school.

[00:11:31] Dr. Nate Salah
Right. And so I was getting my workout, and at same time as these golf balls were getting stuck in the the blade. So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna take them out and back then cigar boxes were a thing. I don't know why everybody had cigar boxes, but anyway, you toss that scarbox, took them across the street, cleaned them off, and I was in business. I had my golf balls, and I was selling to the golfers. And like you said, there's something to that process that opens up the critical thinking and the analysis part of the brain to begin to take ownership of Wow, how can I be participating, even at a small level, in this amazing experiment called capitalism? And I think for our kids, if someone listening is like it's tougher today than it was certainly 20, 3040, if not more years ago, but it's not impossible to expose our kids to the resilience building and real challenge at a young age. Some kids, of course, there's lemonade stands and whatnot, but there's always different things. A lot of kids want to be influencers today. 

[00:12:34]
They want to be social media stars and things like that. There's nothing wrong with that, however engaging them to begin to think about that. My son wanted to start a business, a video game business. There's a video game called Roblox, and anyone's got kids, they've probably heard of that. And so we went through these iterations of him building out a game, and it was an epic fail for him in terms of monetizing it, which is totally fine because that wasn't the goal. The goal wasn't to make a million bucks. The goal was teach these principles of resilience, of learning, of business. I think they last a lifetime.

[00:13:09] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, absolutely. I love that, and just taking a risk. Yeah? A lot of people are afraid to take a risk. Yeah?

[00:13:15] Dr. Nate Salah
Indeed, yeah. I've heard it said like this, if you've gone through your life, your whole life, not feeling you're not trying hard enough try a little harder, because you need some risks. You need some opportunity, and I think at a young age too, to have some controlled risk, in a sense. And that's not to say that things won't go wrong later. That's not to say that, hey, I've prepared my kids, and I've given them a good life and given them lots of tools. That's not to say that later on, there are struggles that they'll have to overcome in a different space of life. And like.

[00:13:47] Todd Bertsch
I have, yeah, absolutely about that, yeah, life challenges. Yeah, Brother, let's get deep. Yeah. I certainly had my fair share. Like, everybody really depends on where you grow up, who the people are around you, the type of area.

[00:14:04] Dr. Nate Salah
You mentioned in our pre call that you'd heard our episode with Jason Courtney, Cell Block, salvation. And if you're listening, you haven't heard that, definitely go back and listen very powerful, moving story on Jason's journey he was an entrepreneur, how the entrepreneurship world he was in was selling drugs, selling weed. Now, I think you can actually be a legal drug dealer and sell marijuana legally, but he was definitely not in that area. It was illegal at the time. You faced some major issues, and you and I both have been down necessarily, a road where we were in jail, necessarily, but we've been on the wrong side of the tracks.

[00:14:39] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And I would agree that episode with Jason's great I share a lot of the same feelings that Jason has and even some of the paths that we went down. I got into drugs at a young age, hung out with an older crowd. How old were you? 

[00:14:58] Dr. Nate Salah
Probably 15 now? Were they hard drive? Was just marijuana. No, we're talking marijuana.

[00:15:02] Todd Bertsch
And then it did escalate a little bit. It depends on back then marijuana, a little bit of coke, here and there. But it got to a point it was, was fine, it was fun, it was recreational. Everybody was doing it, so it wasn't really a thing. But I have a very addictive and obsessive personality, and I didn't realize it then, like a lot of the younger kids, but it got to a point where it wasn't just recreational on the weekends. It was every day. And then it got to a point where it was I couldn't do anything unless I got high first. And that was a problem, and I didn't realize it then, but it got to a point where I ended up living with a couple of guys in the house, and I knew one of them, I didn't know the other. And it was a drug-ridden house. It was just drugs, weed, and coke, and they were selling it, and I was doing it and contributing to this, and I got into it with one of the guys. And then I left for the evening, and I went out with some other friends. 

[00:16:08]
Close the bars down. My friends dropped me off, and I come home, and I sit down, and no longer than five minutes, these guys come over and just start beating me to a pulp. I don't know what they were on. They obviously had an agenda, and they just beat me to death, really. And it was all I could do to get out of there while one's holding me the other one's the one guy was a pretty big dude. It was scary. And it was that moment after that that I reflected and said to myself, Man, this is not good. This is not me. I need to make some change here. I'm better than this. I have ideas. I was always a creative person, an artist in school, and I made a change so that next week I rolled it.

[00:16:57] Dr. Nate Salah
Hold on, before you did that, how badly were you beat? Did you get to go to the hospital?

[00:17:02] Todd Bertsch
I did not, actually, a lot of people ask. I was so embarrassed. I just took it on the chin. Literally, I didn't even go to the cops either. I was just really embarrassed. Yeah, I was bloody. Still have a chipped tooth that reminds me of it every day.

[00:17:19] Dr. Nate Salah
How old were you at the time

[00:17:20] Todd Bertsch
I was 20, 21?

[00:17:24] Dr. Nate Salah
You were out of the house. 

[00:17:26] Todd Bertsch
Oh, yeah, I had been out. I moved out when I was 18, yeah, and I had been in a couple different homes on my own. 

[00:17:33] Dr. Nate Salah
And so where were your parents in this? Do they know about any of this?

[00:17:37] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, my dad. I called my dad, someone who picked me up. Was that right? Yeah, I remember running out of the house trying to get out, and I ran to a telephone booth, if you remember, if anyone remembers those, and called my dad and said, You need to come get me. Man, I'm like struggling here. Now, my dad was a very quiet guy. Probably didn't want to know all the details, but all I cared about was me and supportive and get me out of that situation. That's all I cared about. Didn't ask any questions.

[00:18:04] Dr. Nate Salah
Bro, that's so huge. And I don't want to, I don't want to, like, just gloss over that because you called your dad. Yeah, you could have called anybody, but you called you dad.

[00:18:13] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, I knew he would come get me. I wasn't far, five minutes from my parents house where I grew up, but, yeah, came to get me, and that was it.

[00:18:21] Dr. Nate Salah
A lot of people can't call their dad, or they won't, or they're so embarrassed that they won't even but you and your dad had enough of a good enough relationship you knew that he was a person that you could count on, and not only just he was close, but sounds like he wasn't going to judge you, he wasn't going to like shame you for that. And that speaks volumes, man, because sometimes, as parents, the first thing that we want to do is lecture our kids. The first thing we want to do is say, Hey, didn't I tell you not to get into this mess? Look at what happened to you. I told you, even though maybe we don't necessarily say sometimes we say it by our actions or just by not saying anything at all.
 
[00:19:01]
And that's huge, because someone listening to dad and wants to have that kind of relationship with their kid to where they're a safe person, even after they're in their 20s, like I love, I would love for my son, if he gets into trouble, to be able to pick up the phone and say, Dad, hey, I'm in a bad spot. I need you. I want to be that kind of dad, and there's a place for us as parents that we can cultivate that relationship, and we won't have all the Andy city dads kind of a quiet guy. Your dad doesn't have the answers. I don't have the answers. You don't have the answers, right? We don't always have the answers for our kids. Sometimes our kid just needs us to be there. Yep, just pick me up.

[00:19:43] Todd Bertsch
Just pick me up. Yeah, yeah. It's funny that you mentioned all that, because I never really thought about it that way. I don't know it's just by default. That's who I was going to call it, but yeah, it is interesting that.

[00:19:56] Dr. Nate Salah
So you've never had any other dad. My dad was strange, like my parents got. Worse when I was a kid, and I've shared this many times on the pro so when I was in trouble, like I got in trouble a lot in Chicago, and I didn't want to call my dad. I didn't want my dad lived across street the police station. At first, I thought it was the worst thing that could ever happen because I was always in trouble. Then I was like, it's the best thing that could happen, because I never had to call him to come pick me up when I got locked up, walk over. I just walk over. I walk across the street, and I'm home three in the morning. Doors unlocked, and I'm like, I don't have to I don't have to deal with that. 

[00:20:29]
However, that was a disconnect between me and the person who was really teaching me to be emancipated from the parenting relationship, and in terms of getting freedom the same time, there's an ongoing relationship that can be very trusting if you cultivate it. And I love my dad, he's passed on, and then we had a great relationship after my teen years. However, there's just something to be said for that, underscoring the value of that and giving you permission also to start to figure it out on your own, because, as you began to share, and I'm really looking forward to hearing it, that was a turning point for you. You major turning point life. 

[00:21:11] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, absolutely. I was living in a fog. Honestly, I was a janitor at a local hospital. I had no aspirations of doing anything else, I was pretty happy. I was going to work eight to five blue collar, and I had my friends doing drugs, getting high, and everything was good. Didn't know any better. A lot of people from the neighborhood weren't really pursuing college or anything like that. So it wasn't really out of the norm, but, yeah, that incident happened, and then I enrolled in college to study arts and found my way into graphic design, which it was just a marriage meant to be that was all me, and I love that, and I had some really great support back there, because it took me six years. I paid for it myself. I worked full time in the evenings and then went to school during the day, and it was a long journey, but that was ready. Graduated with honors and paid off those loans 15 years later, but that was the start of my journey of transformation and change.

[00:22:22] Dr. Nate Salah
So beautiful to hear that you talk about, okay, hey, I'm in a fog, and I have no real sense of purpose and direction in my life, except for, hey, I'm just living for the day. And you have this major shakeup, right? You get beat down, and it's Hold on a second. Where is this going? Where is my life going? And that is the catalyst for you to make some major impactful positional changes in life. And the fact that you graduated honors, same thing for me, like I when I was 21, I dropped out of college, and in fact, when I was in high school. I don't even know what my grade point average was. I didn't even care. I don't know too, but I'm. Same here. Pretty sure you're probably the same boat. Yeah, right. Could care less, and you'd see your counselor. And of course, back in high school, back in the day, those days, you take a test and say, oh, what would you be? It was almost a joke. Oh, yeah, I could be like, I don't know. Mine was Judge. Like, yeah, I gotta go to school for another four years. Then I gotta go to law school, and then I gotta do all this other stuff. Got to do all this other stuff, and I'm a criminal anyway, right? Who am I gonna judge? So it's just such a disconnect. And then I think this also speaks to young people today. We need more mentorship. 

[00:23:32]
We need more people in our absolutely vibes who can speak life. Because there's so much of a disconnect in what people think is possible and what people think is probable, and if it's not probable, it's not possible. In your own mind, is need people in the world to infuse probability? And probability comes from, hey, here's where you are, here's where you're going, here's where it leads. Let's talk about where it can be, because for you and for me, we had to learn the hard way. I was standing in front of a judge, possible five-year prison sentence, and I was nervous. I was like, oh my goodness, what am I doing with my life? This is ridiculous. I'm smarter than this. I'm right. Better this. But I had no direction. I had nothing but the hood, right? We didn't grow up in a middle-class area, below the middle I guess you'd say. And if you weren't doing things that were street-type stuff, you weren't getting by. And so that culture, the environment we're in, has such an impact. You talked about being in that house, man. I was at so many of those houses. Ironically, all the way till 21, I had never had a sip of alcohol never did drugs. 

[00:24:43]
All my buddies, we played spades a lot back in the day, like this part, and everybody be smoking pot and drinking 40 ounces of liquor or whatever else, and I'd be the only one because I just didn't. Now, that's not to say I didn't do it later, but the environment. You can not do drugs and alcohol and still get yourself in trouble like you can still in my buddies’ houses. There were days I missed it one time like you I missed one time where a bunch of dudes came in there and just pistol-whipped everybody. There's blood on the walls, and it was that's the environment. Then you experienced this firsthand. I could have been the guy who got beat down if I was been there that night, but I wasn't right somewhere else. And that's another reason not to glamorize that lifestyle. That's another reason why we need to really speak life into that and say, You know what, it's not fun, it's not cool. It is a hole. It's a dark road that leads to nowhere, and you are ready to make that change and get off that road.

[00:25:40] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, and actually, I don't know if you remember your episode with Jason, what he said, It really touched me. He summed it up. You asked him what it's like to be incarcerated, and he said it's the loneliest place to be with the most people or something like that. So yeah, you have to make a choice. Everybody is capable of change. It's built into us. It's in our DNA, but you have to make a choice. And once you put on your big boy pants, somebody's push you, but you need to make it. It's on you. And there are those that make the choice and commit to change and those that don't.

[00:26:20] Dr. Nate Salah
And we know that, and you probably still have friends, or back in the day, who didn't make that change. I do too. Yeah. I was talking to my son about this just a couple days ago, and about resilience, about change, about drive, about determination. And I've, I've come to equate it to two different kinds of pain. So you have, on the one hand, when you have a major life impact like you did, you're on your face and you're downright, and you have a pain of getting back up. There's a pain in getting up. On the other side, there's a pain in giving up and giving up on life, giving up on the possibilities, giving up on progress and the change that leads you to a better future state. And when the pain of giving up outweighs the pain of getting up, you will get back up. It's a choice, like you said, and each of us, there's a lot of things in life that are beyond our control, but one thing that is not beyond our control is the fact that we can choose what decisions we make. 

[00:27:24]
We can choose, you know, when you're a kid, choices are made for you. When you're adult, you make no excuse, no excuse. It's I know we have all kinds of life situations, but there's no excuse, because the choice we make will lead us in or out of that environment. You say, Nate, you don't know my situation. You don't know Todd, you don't know where I've been. Don't know, but we know this. We've made choices in on at the bro. You were beat down. Made a choice, yeah, and so let's walk that out. So when you decided to enroll. How did you go from not having much from the high school experience of the GPA and to having to graduate with arms? 

[00:28:12] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, that is interesting. I just made a shift. It was a mindset. I was ready. I was done. I was ready to do something. And I'm a very determined person. I'm 110 in, but I'm not going to do one foot in, one foot out, and that's part of that obsessive, addictive personality. So I went from being addicted to destroying my mind to being addicted to growth and learning, and that's all I wanted. I just fed off of it, and I would have nothing less. So I wanted I learned, studied, read, did whatever I could. I wanted to get straight A's, and I wanted to do great work and make great relationships with professors and teachers, and that's what I did. I'm not sure why. It was just I was ready.

[00:28:59] Dr. Nate Salah
Yeah, you and I have such a similar experience because when I was in my late 20s, same thing, my was my head was finally clear. I was not clouded any longer. I went back to school. And same thing, honor, straight A's. And it's that same addictiveness that we're so driven. It just has to be the cause, has to be worthy and will lock on. I think that speaks to so many people today when someone listening is Oh, either yourself or someone you love is okay. How do I give something that is so attractive, so worthwhile, so achievable that we just lock onto that at the same time? It's life-giving rather than life-taking.

[00:29:46] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting. I'm trying to think back to you got me, you got me curious. There was a little anxiety about it, and it had been so long since I had embraced education and Learning. And I was a really smart kid when I was very young, before I started destroying my mind. And I had forgot about that. I wasn't sure if I was actually really capable of this, but I had moments, and I had a few teachers that expressed interest in me and saw something if anything else, the grit and determination, and that's all I needed. I just needed a couple of people to say, Man, you know what? I'm gonna let you into this class. You're not supposed to be in here, but I know you're working full time and you're trying to make things work. And I see your attitude, I see your determination. I'm gonna let you do this. And it was just a couple of moments like that, when I'm still close friends with those people. But that's what I needed. I just needed a little bit of hope and to celebrate a few wins and to get that courage. I'm like, okay, I can do this now. Let's just execute.

[00:30:58] Dr. Nate Salah
That's actually amazing, because it's almost full circle. You talked about hope, and it's even in another passage talks about this idea of suffering or challenge, building your perseverance back to the perseverance, but perseverance it takes a couple steps further, perseverance, then builds character, and then character, hope, and so like this formula for Okay, I got a struggle. Find some struggle. Muscles. Build those. It's going to teach me to build perseverance. That perseverance is going to turn to some character-building. Boy, don't we need that in our society? Character-building hope is like a little ember. It's a flame. Once it begins to ignite, it motivates us because we believe down there's possibilities that are also probable in your case, you begin to to embrace the educational world. And I believe that the true pathway to progress as human beings is always going to be through, number one, curiosity and then two, creativity in learning, be a lifelong learner, whether it's in academia, just in life, right? 

[00:32:05]
Be a lifelong learner. Just does. It doesn't mean consumption of information. We live in a state and age now where people are consuming copious amounts, whether it's YouTube shorts or videos, or podcasts. There's be a time where you apply, not just consume, as you experience education. We're gonna learn and then experience and develop. We need to have margin in our day to take what we're learning, turn around, apply it and use it, teach it to someone else, not just be consumption. It's just like when you're eating, you can't just eat. You need to actually expend the energy, turn around, and apply it. I think that's important in our journey. What are some of the ways that you've utilized or experienced some of the learning that you've had through these experiences?

[00:32:45] Todd Bertsch
Actually, yeah, I want to go back just a little bit to COVID. So I think COVID Was that period of time where it was really horrible for a lot of people, but there was a lot of opportunity there. It was another big milestone for me and my transformation. I ended up connecting with my now high-performance coach, slash life coach, and I hired her, and she started coaching me, but she had me go through this program called Positive Intelligence. Are you familiar? Look at that. Oh, man, you know that? Yes, so sure, Zamin, he's the author. He created this program. It's a New York Times best-selling book. There's a program that only coaches can take you through, and then there's an app. So it's all about because you kept saying, talking about building, building that muscle, this is all about building the mental muscle, and it's all geared towards shifting from a negative to a positive, obviously Positive Intelligence. But what it did for me, I struggled all my life with having a. I was a hot head, I had a bad temper, and it just it really crushed me in sports and then into my professional career. It followed me for most of my life. 

[00:34:00]
I'm 53 now, and it followed me up through at different points, and this program allowed me to build a pause button. So, whereas I used to go one to 10, literally split. No pause, right? No reflection. Now I just take it all in. I take a step back, I come into every conversation, every scenario, with what I call an empty cup, right? That's the best cup you can bring. It's empty. It's open to what is happening. So I'm not having any predetermined notions. I'm not being judgmental. I'm not making any assumptions. I'm just coming in and saying, here's the situation, and what this program teaches you that you're going to love this Nate. It's all about finding the gift and the opportunity in every single situation, and when you start to do that, man life. Looks a hell of a lot different. It really does. And this that program literally changed my life. I am a whole different person. I'm going to end up being a coach of that program, living a positive life, looking at life from a different lens, and finding no matter how tough it is, how hard it is. There is a gift there. There is a gift. You just need to dig you need to find it. 

[00:35:27] Dr. Nate Salah
Huge, man. I absolutely love that. We'll make sure to have those resources in the show notes as well, and I'll make sure to key in on it. There's the gift and the opportunity in every single situation. What a reframing someone listening right now is like, Whoa. That blows you away, because every day we likely will have situations that we don't consider a gift or an opportunity, and we have them every day. And I've had conversation. I just had a conversation with somebody this morning. I was misunderstood in terms of the message I was sending. And at first I was like, I used to be a hot head too. Just it was like escalation right away. It's ironic that people listening or people who know us would find that to be completely foreign today because of the pause that you mentioned. The pause is so important, and sometimes the pause is for a moment, sometimes it's for a day, and sometimes it's for a week. It's amazing when you're in a mood or a moment, and you feel the anger, the aggression, or the anxiety. Just pause. Just put a hold on this emotion until it's subsided again the next day, sometimes just waiting to send a message.

[00:36:33] Todd Bertsch
Recoin this. You'll hear this in a couple of my episodes called the draft box strategy. You just get it down, you put in draft mode, and you come back to it nine out of 10 times. That message that you were going to send the day before is going to be totally different.

[00:36:48] Dr. Nate Salah
Totally different. Or send it at all.

[00:36:50] Todd Bertsch
It's a different tone. So yeah, that's a great strategy. 

[00:36:53] Dr. Nate Salah
Abraham Lincoln, back in the day, similar strategy. Many letters didn't actually go out. And what a great strategy. It works. It helps to put you into the right frame. Absolutely, make wiser choices. This is so far this has been amazing. I can't believe our we've already run through so much time. We'll have to chat again. There's a lot of wisdom in your message, in your own coaching that I'd love to continue to share. However, before we go, there's a question I'd like to ask some of our guests, and when time is permitted, I'd love to ask you this one day, there will be a time, hopefully at the end of your journey, Your Grace, when you're at the very end of the journey, and you'll be able to look and see everything and everyone you've ever been able to impact if there's one thing that you would like others to have said about Todd at that end of the junction this side of eternity? What would that be?

[00:37:49] Todd Bertsch
Oh, that's pretty simple. He cared more for others than he cared for himself. Not that I didn't take care of myself, because I definitely am all about self-love, self-care, grace and growth, but it's about being a servant leader. That's my mission, to help people. Honestly, being a leader is serving so you should be a servant leader. How I think about it? But yeah, he was a servant leader. He cared about others, and he was just trying to help people with the end-of-life game is, I think, if we play that game every day, and I was just listening to a podcast about that this week, it reframes everything. Absolutely. It’s morbid.

[00:38:34] Dr. Nate Salah
But it's freeing. It's a release, and it's also directional, and it's easier to make decisions when we have that focus in mind. You, of course, we love servant leadership and Todd. You are on your way. So appreciative of our time together and your journey and you sharing with our listener.

[00:38:53] Todd Bertsch
Yeah, thanks for having me. You and I have a lot in comments, so we'll definitely have to circle back. Maybe you're on my show.

[00:38:59] Dr. Nate Salah
We love it.

[00:39:00] Todd Bertsch
Good too. But I'm really curious and hopeful to see where our journey goes together.

[00:39:06] Dr. Nate Salah
Agreed. Well, my friend, we did it. I'm so honored you were able to join me on this episode of A Call to Leadership. Now, this might not be for everyone because you really have to be in a certain place in order to take the kind of steps to level up your leadership, and I want you to be taking steps. And for those of you who feel like you're ready for something like this, there's a place you can go. You can go to our website, greatsummit.com. I'll make sure that's in the show notes. But here's the cool thing that we have. We've got a master class. We have all different kinds of events. We even have our Leadership Club, where you can meet other people just like you to go deeper in your leadership journey. You and I all get to spend some time together and really focus on aiming for greatness. I can't wait to see you there. I'm Dr. Nate Salah, and this is A Call to Leadership.