From Law To Life: Todd’s Pivot

What if the title you worked for wasn’t the life you actually wanted? Todd joins us to share a candid story of leaving law, surviving glioblastoma, and rebuilding a career designed around time, family, and genuine service. It’s not a hustle monologue, it’s a field guide for sustainable work and human connection.

We start with a surprise trip home to Colorado, then dig into how Todd balances sales with a mission-driven solution through LegalShield to give small businesses affordable legal protection. From there, we unpack the habits that make relationship-building feel natural: remembering details, following up with care, and letting shared interests like music turn a contact into a conversation. Todd’s approach challenges the myth that you need a certain personality to sell; he shows how authenticity, presence, and respect win long-term.

The heart of the conversation is resilience. Todd explains what it means to live with “the new normal” after a brain cancer diagnosis, and how protecting your minutes through mindset, music, and intentional choices can reshape your work and your life. We also push back on zero-sum thinking in sales and entrepreneurship. Someone else’s win doesn’t steal yours; collaboration and empathy expand opportunities. If you’re navigating a career pivot, feeling boxed in by your degree, or just craving a more grounded way to grow, you’ll find practical takeaways you can use today: simple follow-up systems, mindset anchors, and a fresh lens on what success can look like.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Host Shuffle And Introductions
• 0:56 Todd’s Surprise Trip Home
• 3:14 What Todd Does For Work
• 6:20 Staying In Touch The Right Way
• 10:35 Hobbies, Travel, And Perspective
• 12:49 Surviving Glioblastoma And Change
• 15:38 Culture, Competition, And Authenticity
• 19:56 Finding Your Path Beyond A Degree
• 22:13 Morning Mindset And Music
• 24:01 Contact Details And Closing

Transcript

Host Shuffle And Introductions

SPEAKER_02 0:04

I know we're going under games.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

The whistle of truth.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

Happy Tuesday, everyone. We are back on season two, episode three of the Think of Is podcast. And we have Brett from the cast. Yes, Brett Woods. We have Brett Woods mishap this morning. We will miss him dearly this episode. But instead we have Garrett Hammonds.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Hey! Did y'all miss me?

SPEAKER_02 0:43

There's no response.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Oh, come on. Come on.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Yep, they are just listening.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Um I'm back, y'all. Not uh not full time, but for today.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

And then we also have in studio today with us Todd Hillprint. My good sir, how are we today? Woohoo!

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Doing wonderful, guys. Good to see you.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

And it's good to have you in here. We miss both of you because I don't get to see you at 9 30 club hardly at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

I know. I know it's such a far drive for me. So far.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

We need a little Garrett robot so he can attend it to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

There goes Garrett whining again.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Yeah. You sound like my wife. No.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

It's okay. We'll we'll bring Grace into this a little bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, I can say these things because I know that she doesn't listen to any of the podcasts I'm on.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

So she's listening to the clear.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

That that you do that you know.

unknown 1:39

That you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

Well, Todd, my good sir, we will be interviewing you today, and we have a little different format for season two. So tell us a little bit about yourselves before we get into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

Well, I sorry. I just got back from Grand Junction, Colorado, where I grew up, had this awesome opportunity to fly home on an inexpensive plane ticket to surprise my mom. Got my dad involved in it, and so flew home. My dad told her he had to pick up a package at the airport. Not sure why that wasn't a dead giveaway, but it wasn't. So when I walked out of the door at the airport, I got to see the look on my mom's face in the car when she realized the package was me. I am an only child and I was spoiled by my parents as a kid. I just love them dearly, so I'm happy I got to do that.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

How big of a box did you have to come out of in the airport?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Well, you know, they did have like a life side now. That would have been fun, wouldn't it? If I had been flown home in like a UPS box or something.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Oh man. The the shipping cost, y'all.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

That would have been only terrible. I can imagine, yeah. I I shipped the box. Yeah, man, it's like fifty bucks to do anything.

What Todd Does For Work

SPEAKER_01 3:04

I I mean, and human-sized box, I just UPS. You'd have to give it to us for free or something, but it's for a good cause. Well, tell us about what you what do you do for work on the day-to-day basis? Yeah, this this sick vacation you just went on, got to go see the family.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

On a day-to-day basis, what I do is I am on the sales team right now at Leaf Filter. Uh when I moved here to Oklahoma, sorry guys, this may not be great podcasting, but I'm a stream of consciousness guy. And so when I moved here to Oklahoma, I decided not to practice law anymore. And so I wanted time flexibility so I could do stuff with my family. And so kind of piece together a lot of stuff. Right now, um, I'm on the sales team with Leaf Filter and I was promoted from marketing, but those details don't particularly matter, do they? And the cool thing for me who wants time flexibility is basically I can spend a lot of time with my family, and if I get a lead, I go out and I run it and can make the commission. So the thing I care most about, though, in my day-to-day life is I'm a legal shield representative. And what legal shield is, it's a really cool way to protect yourself legally because who has the thousands of dollars to you know have an attorney on retainer? And so legal shield is a monthly membership cost, and so you have access to a team of lawyers. And if you have any questions, if you need to be protected, if you're like our good friend Dirk and pick up a whole bunch of speeding tickets, you can get protected in court. So it's really cool. I love Legal Shield.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Excellent. Yeah. Well, and that's kind of how we're gonna start structuring the season two again, is just get a lot of compliments about our 9 30 group and OKC at 3810. I I feel like there's some shots being fired right now.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

What did I do to deserve this, Nolan?

SPEAKER_02 5:09

Look, you just left a really down-to-earth, according to other people, not me, other people say this. Down-to-earth, really fun, but still practical business networking group, right? And so so that's what we do for a living, Todd. We work with legal shield, we do some commission work. So then my next question for you is would you mind teaching our audience something that really helps you and your business that could apply to anybody, any industry? What is it that you do on a day-to-day basis that other people could benefit from?

Staying In Touch The Right Way

SPEAKER_01 5:41

Well, hold on, Todd. Before we jump jump straight into the question, I have to say Todd is my legal shield rep, and he is amazing. Legal Shield, so we're a we're a small business that you know my my wife and I run, and you know, we have have very few employees, and so exactly what Todd is saying, like, you know, we we could have a legal retainer with some sort of local firm, but it just cost-wise doesn't make any sense as compared to what Legal Shield has to offer, and it's so so useful. And so that's my small testimonial. But okay, now teach us something, Todd.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

You know, I think the best thing you can do in terms of being an entrepreneur or a small business like we are, is just stay in touch with people and you know, if they need your help, help them. That's why I think Legal Shield's great. And I I I do have the background of being a lawyer. So if you have a legal question that Legal Shield can't answer, well it can answer, but I'm always happy to provide whatever insights I have as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Now that follow-up process, a lot of people struggle with being able to stay in touch and making those business relationships also personal and meaningful. How is it that Todd does that a little differently?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

I don't know if I do it differently. I mean, I just, you know, I try to remember things about people and just follow up with them as best I can. You know, you gotta you gotta read the person you're making the relationship with. And so if they're you know into music, like I know Garrett is, I talk to Garrett a lot about music. I know, and so we we have communicated talked a lot about his favorite bands, we share favorite songs if Garrett remembers. He looks like he doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Well, no, no, no. We have we have a a Spotify mix that we have together, and we also connect heavily with the Munford and Sons, just everything. So no, I'm I'm here with you, Todd.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

You're you're you're looking a little bit like Marcus right now with uh the beard.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Yes, for for all of those who can't see me right now, which is all of you, my beard has gotten a little unruly. So beautiful, maybe it is garretanque.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

I would I wouldn't say it's unruly as someone who also has a beard all the time. I'd say it looks beautiful, Garrett.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Maybe we'll put like a picture in the the link it in the show notes or something to where y'all decide. Put in the comments, how is my beard?

SPEAKER_00 8:22

Beautiful, unruly.

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, don't say anything mean though, because I can't I can't handle that. So he can do it. We'll we'll teach him.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

We'll walk him through this teaching moments. But so, Todd, you are just in general, you care so much about the people you come across, even strangers a lot of the time. What does Todd do to care about Todd though?

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Well, I I love hiking, which moving here from western Colorado, there's not as much hiking here. I like my wife and I love watching, you know, the TV shows on streaming, like walking our Boston Terrier, I don't know. Just fun stuff with my family. And we like to travel a bunch too, and so one of the reasons I appreciate time flexibility is we do like you know, flying internationally. So we've been on some amazing trips. We went to Munich most recently. Munich was amazing. My favorite European trip we went on is we went to Prague at Christmas time. And so I landed, we landed in Prague, and Emily, my wife, was tired and jet lagged, so she took a nap, and I just kind of went out and wandered around, and I didn't realize the first day we got to Prague it was Krampus Day. And so there were all these like and I wasn't all that familiar with Krampus, I didn't see that horror movie Krampus. But so I was walking around and I saw these devil Santa Clauses all over the place and had horns on, and so I thought it was kind of wild. But I don't know. I think if you uh are able to go new places and meet people, that's just the best way to learn about the world and you know, develop empathy for people. And that's something that I think is really important. Understanding everyone's kind of fighting their own battle, going through their own experiences and just trying to be a good friend and be there for people as best as you can.

SPEAKER_02 11:17

Yeah. Well, and Todd, you have a good number of things to say about that personal experience coming from being a lawyer and now transitioning to sales commission work, working for legal shield, things of that nature. What is it that you can tell entrepreneurs that may be having to transition between industries as to what they can expect from that transition?

Surviving Glioblastoma And Change

SPEAKER_00 11:38

You know, if if you had told me I'm also a glioblastoma brain cancer survivor, so it's not like I meant to stop practicing law. I just don't have all the stress anymore. But, you know, I think you just have to, if you go into sales, if you had told me, you know, before I got sick and had to kind of transition that I would be in sales, I wouldn't have believed you. And honestly, I don't think I'm a salesperson. I've had to really kind of find my own way and I don't know, just trust yourself, listen to people who know what they're doing. And I think the the biggest lesson I learned, and it was really hard, is ask people for help. People do want to help you, people do want to support you, and so I think that's okay. It's okay to ask people to help and ask for their advice.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

That that really resonates with me. Uh there's so many times that we get caught up in these feelings of, oh, I just need to I need to push a little bit harder and then work a little bit harder and I'll I'll get it done. And it's it's uh you know very very focused, but that entrepreneurial grind, it's it's gonna wear you down eventually unless you ask people for help and you you recognize that there is others who want to support you, exactly what you're saying there. And I think you have a really unique perspective based on your life experiences that does have this special Todd empathy that comes out. And I I wonder if you if you could speak to maybe what that that process was like a little bit when it came to having to navigate a a big change in life and how that did uh really impact who you are as a worker and as as a human being today.

Culture, Competition, And Authenticity

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Sorry, I gotta think about this. This may not be a perfect podcasting. You know, I had to learn to show myself some empathy first and also be okay. I think if you survive something like a glioblastoma, people talk about the new normal, and it's really hard, it was really hard for me to come to terms with that. It was also really hard for me to come to terms with not practicing law anymore. But you just you just have to show yourself empathy and I don't know, make the best of, you know, a situation. I think that there's there are a lot of ways to look at something. You can look at something as the worst thing to happen to you, which certainly being diagnosed with a glioblastoma, which you know has less than a 1% chance of survival after 10 years could be. Or you can look at it as, you know, you can't change what happened to you. You can just make the best of the situation you're in. And when I first learned that statistic, I was bleeping pissed off. Like I but then at some point, pretty early on, I I believe God came to me, and my and I basically just you know, you can be every minute I was mad about that diagnosis was a minute that I wasn't taking advantage of the time I had. It was yeah, and and so like let's say you know I was gonna die after five years, like a lot of people with a glioblastoma do. You know, it didn't do me any good to be mad about the diagnosis. That was just time I wasn't spending with my family. And you know, I didn't think that was gonna happen to me, but you know, but you just need to focus on what you can do in the moment and you know, do as much good for yourself and for others as you can, is kind of what I look at.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

I don't know if that answered your question, but absolutely well, and it's not just a good answer to the question, Todd. It's it brings up another problem that I see amongst all business owners that I've met over the past three years. And you know, you and I we've had one-to-ones, a lot of the think this one-to-ones, they'll start off as just, oh, we're gonna meet for 30 minutes and say hi, learn about each other's businesses three hours later, right? It can get pretty deep, it can get pretty personal. And what is it that a person should expect having to transition into entrepreneurship from the culture right now?

SPEAKER_00 16:26

You know, I I I think one of the things I I'll just talk about sales and marketing, at least with Leaf Filter. When I was on the marketing team, you know, I think people are we're trained as Americans or people to be competitive with everyone else. And it that always confused, I I just didn't understand it. Like someone else's success doesn't mean I can't be successful. Supporting someone else and being a good being a good person doesn't mean that you know they can't be it's just people I think are unnecessarily competitive, and so that's that's something that I just noticed in sales at Leaf Filter, you know, and there are a lot of good people who are entrepreneurs, you're gonna find them. I think for me, I'm just myself, and I want to try to I do. I always want to try to make the world a better place. I what I say to myself, I always want to make someone's uh life better after I meet them. You always can find a genuine compliment to give anybody, and so sometimes I drive people crazy. If I'm in line, like at Qdoba, you know, and I see the person behind the counter, there's something that I can compliment that person about or something I can talk to them about to make their life better. And I just feel like too many people I don't want to make it sound like I think I'm great, but too many people don't think that way. And I don't know what I can say about making the transition to this new career is I just am myself. And my feeling is like business coaches and other people would think that's not the way to do it, but that's the way I can do it. So I always wanna, you know, I want to talk to people and you know, encourage them and be supportive.

Finding Your Path Beyond A Degree

SPEAKER_01 18:29

I think I think that's exactly how if if there's a business coach teaching you not to be yourself, I would say you need to find a different business coach because the the environment that we're in today, people crave authenticity. We we want real people, real real things in front of us. There's so much so much that's changing with technology and you know, we have deep fakes that are you know, everything with AI, you know, there's so much that that is inauthentic. And so if we can't be ourselves, you know what what really drives us and in our humanness? And so i that's that's exactly what we have to do in sales and and in life in general. So I appreciate you speaking to that because it's such an important thing nowadays for us to focus on.

SPEAKER_02 19:35

Well, and not only that, Todd, but you really break away part of one of my biggest annoyances in business culture. And that's well, a certain personality type or a certain type of person will fit this job. And how you're describing just being a good person and caring about that other individual on the other side, it breaks down that requirement for Todd or Garrett or Nolan to be a specific type of person in order to do good work. And so what would is what would you tell someone, say they had their dreams, they've gone through college, this is a thing that happens a lot now, is they've gotten a degree and they can't find a job in the field they got their degree in. What would you tell them about who they are as a person that doesn't need to change in order to do good work?

Morning Mindset And Music

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Well, I would I would tell them to, you know, just because you can't find a job in your field, that doesn't mean you're not a good person. Doesn't mean you can't good do good work. Sometimes you just need to look at things differently and find something that really you just need to find something you're passionate about. You know, and I I I do think you can you can do good work and really whatever you decide to do as long I mean and at least for law with me, there was a period of time where I grieved his loss. But you know it uh Get better on the other side, and just just be okay with change. Be okay with things not working out the way you thought they were gonna work out. One of my favorite sayings is what is it? Life is what happens to us while we're making other plans. And that's that is life. And so there are so many people who think life is gonna work out some way, and they get stuck and angry that it doesn't work out that way. But just be happy with how it does work out. I mean show yourself and other people lots of grace because everyone's just trying to do the best they can with what they have and make it through a make it through life, which can which is always beautiful if you look at it the right way.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Most definitely.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Well then, my good sir, to kind of round this off, a little bit more practical. Is there anything that Todd says to himself in the mirror every morning to actually maintain this attitude? What is somebody else listening to this podcast? Can they turn it off and then start talking to themselves a little bit better in the morning?

Contact Details And Closing

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Well, I mean, I think one of the one of the things I I learned, you know, if you're not in a good place going out into the world, you know, you probably shouldn't go out into the world. And so I've got certain songs I can listen to, certain, you know, quotes I can look at. You know, someone that I met while I was going through my cancer journey said that you know he would watch you know Jimmy Valvano's speech of the Espies if you're familiar with that one. The the one that you know cancer. Yeah, I mean, there's just you just find something that's gonna motivate you and put you in a good headspace, you know, and music does that for me. And so uh, you know, you yeah, so music does that for me. So I had a playlist before radiation, and this was back when Imagine Dragons radioactive was big. So I listened to that before radiation, you know, just find a song that can bump you up, and I think that works for me. Awesome. Go out into the world at a good place.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

I'll throw out just just my own little suggestion. I can't speak highly enough of pygmy hippos. If you can find videos of pygmy hippos, it is like joy, just pure joy in video hippos. I gotta look at that right now. I mean it's uh there's one that I anyway, pygmy hippos. Pygmy hippos. Her name is Moodang. She's a star of pygmy hippos, okay?

SPEAKER_02 23:41

Name her.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Say her name. Okay, the pygmy hippo I watch is actually named Mars. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Yeah, you're a Mars fan. Fine. Moodang all the way over. But Todd, how can people get in touch with you if they need some assistance?

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Well, I'd be happy to talk to people about Legal Shield or any of the other stuff that I do. Best email me at tdhildebrandt at gmail.com or just shoot me a text. It's 970-210-2238. Thanks, guys. Looking forward to helping you out.

SPEAKER_02 24:18

Thank you. And now, Garrett, we always have to remember to stay sharp and think biz.