E9 - Gregg Daly

Gregg Daly is a Deacon at Good Shepherd American Reformed Catholic Church, Owner/Operator of Fibrenew Jersey Shore, and former Senior Managing Director at Bear Stearns. 

Experience Gregg's 30-year career in finance being ripped from his life on St. Patrick's Day, what it was like at Bear Stearns when the wheels fell off in the 2008 financial crisis, the events that put him on a spiritual path for life, how he became the first Goalie Coach in RFH High School history, and so much more.

If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, and comment. We love hearing your thoughts. 

Host: Kurt Bruckmann
Co-Producer, Associate Director: Alex Fabio

Transcript

Hey, Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Core Energy Experience. I'm your host, Kurt Bruckmann. I hold my mastery in Core Energy Dynamics.

I'm a certified global coach. I am an internationally acclaimed best-selling author in an anthology, 'Ready, Connect, Grow'. I continue to write for Brainz Magazine as a senior contributor, which reaches 65 plus different countries. I am with my partner, Alex Fabio. He's our associate director and our co-producer, a very integral part of this whole production.

Today, happy to announce that we have a close friend of ours. His name is Gregg Daley. Gregg is a former stock exchange trader, also ended up with owning his own business, and now has become a deacon in his local church. Very special man, a very special friend of ours, and we're happy to have him. If you would please like, subscribe, and comment, we'd appreciate it very much to help boost our podcast.

Thank you all for being here. We appreciate it. Hey, Gregg. Good to see you, my friend. Same here, coach.

How you doing? I'm I'm doing really well. How about yourself? I'm doing great. Great.

The world's getting crazier and crazier, but as we, go through our stages, but we're here to talk about it. So Absolutely. Looking forward to to catching up with you, Greg, and, hear more about you. You know, there's a lot in there. We discussed a little bit about our ventures together, but you certainly have been on a lot of ventures, and a lot of experiences.

So if you don't mind, to the audience, can you, sort of lead us along the way of Gregg Daley? Sure. It was starting with sort of the present here. You know, I and I I was just thinking about it, Kurt. You know, we've known each other for about twenty years now.

Yeah. So currently, the the the current me is, well, I we just celebrated our fortieth anniversary, our wedding anniversary. Congratulations. That's huge. Yeah.

Huge. We also she and I have three grandchildren. And so that's a big, big part of our lives right now. Fabulous. In the years that I since I've seen you, I you know, since the Wall Street days, I I started and bought a company years ago that basically, it repairs and and, and rebuilds leather, vinyl, things like that.

So car upholstery, boat upholstery, furniture, things like that. So I've been doing that for about fifteen years. And recently, recently, my, church, the church that I'm a member of, last November, I was ordained as a deacon. We'll talk about that, I guess, at some point, which is a real big part of our our lives right now. The church and the spirituality as aspect of it has been really a game changer for us in in many ways, and I'll explain some of those.

But, in the last seven or so years since we've been going there, it's made a huge difference in our lives. So that's the current situation. You know, you and I, of course, go back to I was just thinking about this as well. When our sons were in the learn to skate program and then the learn to play program and the Red Bank Armory, you and I were just there hanging out as a couple of dads watching our boys and, you know, striking up a conversation about, you know, what do you do? And then I found out you're in the financial business.

I was in the financial business. Our boys obviously had something in common at that point in time. And, you know, you and I just sort of hit it off instantly. We became almost fast friends. Then, of course, it wasn't really long before, after that that you were talking about how you were involved in the Rumson High School hockey program.

And I, having been a goalie, you you had mentioned to me, you know, maybe this I think the school could really use a goalie coach. Now, you know, the the old fashioned goalies, Kurt, the first time I heard of a goalie coach was when I became one. We didn't we didn't have that back in the day. I mean, you're you just like stood in front of the net and let people take shots at you. That was a goalie coach.

But, that was our introduction to, you know, to, to get together into coaching, which were great days, great days. I was thinking about, you know, the aspects that made you such a good coach. And it wasn't just the fact that you had a great hockey knowledge, but I was thinking how, okay, so when our boys were young, that's a different level of coaching. Then you get to high school kids, completely different animal you're dealing with, which of course is different than college or professional levels. You were able to sort of get into that mentality with those kids.

I'll never forget that. You had this relationship with them where you sort of they couldn't put anything over on you. You would play the game with them to a certain degree, and then it was okay, boys. Let's get down to business now. And so I always had a very large respect for you how you were able to do that with these guys.

I learned a lot from you, me. I was watching how you did it because that was my first foray into coaching, actually. So you were a very, very big help for me back then. We're very kind about all that, Greg. And certainly, we don't do it alone.

And having you there, with your support and the way you were handling the boys as well, very similar. We jived. So it was a great tag team, you and I, in that time frame. And I, to your point, I agree. I think the the, students and the athletes really appreciated us because we were raw with them as much as possible.

But being stern, they understood when it was go time go time. So back to your your foray as a, high school, goalie coach. It was by fortune that to your point we had met early on and I knew that you were a avid goalie player and you played at a at a really pretty decent high level. Right? Mhmm.

And, your knowledge is fabulous. Gold tenders in hockey are very different thinkers. There's no toys about it. Gold tenders are usually some of the best skaters on the rink, if not the the best skater. And we all know that the goaltender is a leader of the team, whether he's silent or in his action, however that is.

So when I looked around the other high schools and saw there was no goalie coach, and to your point, there really had not been. That's not a wasn't a wasn't a routine yet. It becomes more so now. But you were it. You were sort of the icebreaker.

And Will Hewitt and the other goalies that you coached, you took them under your wing. And it was so it was wonderful to watch. Wonderful to be a part of. They bought into you. You were their everything.

Not just their goalie coach, but you were their mentor. You were a friend in certain means. You were like a uncle. You were like a lot of things. So I wanna thank you too for doing that because we did have success with the boys in those years.

A lot of it was from the understanding of of what a goalie means. And with that being said, Greg, let's go there a little bit because there's a lot in there. And you and I discussed that the core energy consists of four concentrations, leadership, performance, well-being, and transition. All of that's part of a goal. So if you will describe that, to the audience, that would be great.

Appreciate it. Yes. Currently, the the first thing about that, Kurt, was that, you know, one thing that had been sort of not really necessarily neglected, but not really paid attention to very much, you know, the physical aspect of any sport is the fit the first thing that people concentrate on, whether you're coaching, whether you're playing, whether you're whatever you're doing, it's like, okay. How good are you physically at this? But the position of goaltending, it's it's unique in that there's a strong, strong mental component to it that people tend to overlook a lot.

There's a lot of there's a lot of burden of responsibility on the guy who's standing between those pipes and and feeling, you know, well, this team relies on me to not make any mistakes. You know, the the strange thing about that position is that if you're a forward or defenseman, you can make mistakes and get away with it. You know, somebody can cover up for you or, you know, make the play instead that you didn't make or should have made. But when it comes to being a goalie, you make a mistake and the puck is in the back of the net. And that's a huge responsibility mentally for, you know, the person playing the position.

So with these young guys, one of the things I try to instill with them is the confidence, you know, that, all they're asked to do is try and make the first save and do the best that they can because their teammates are supposed to also be there to bail them out. So, in addition to the technical aspects of it, which are very important, obviously, positions, where you stand, how you move, how you follow the puck, and things like that. The thing I really like to stress with those, especially because they were young guys, was listen. The mental part of this is every bit as important as the physical part of it that you're getting trained in. So that was my that was my, I think, connection with him.

You mentioned the connection to those guys. I think that they, appreciated the fact that somebody's finally got that and sympathize with that aspect of the position, whereas a lot of times, it's sort of overlooked or neglected. I think they're really appreciated like, hey, coach. Thanks. I mean, because it is sometimes mentally difficult, you know, to to maintain that level of competition when you know so much relies on it.

Reverence goes out to all goaltenders, you know, for sure. Those of us who have been fortunate to play contact sports or have goalies behind us or to be one very, very special. And as part of the reasons why I think you and I became so close, you know, when I played, I did not respect the goalie. I was a forward. I respected my own goalie one hundred percent knowing getting near him, but, you know, not the other ones.

But always at the end of the game, the first thing for I would do, go talk to the opposing goalie saying thank you very much and give him the gratitude because you guys are very special people, 100%. So thank you for that and all you've done in that arena, Greg. Let's go to a bit of transition now. Let's go back to our days in, finance. And if you don't mind, to explain to the audience how you were in finance in a deep way and how you were forced to transition out of it into something else.

That was a big thing in life. I know that. Yeah. There's a there's a lot to unpack in that regard, Kurt. I actually got to Wall Street, I wouldn't say by accident, but sort of, you know, in a in a very roundabout way.

When I graduated from college, my my goal was to become an illustrator or be an advertising in some fashion. And, of course, you can't come out of school. At that time, Rutgers didn't have any official, you know, formal, advertising program. So I became a major, a psychology major and an art major thinking I can get into the business that way. After not being able to make any headway whatsoever, I had a roommate who worked on the floor of the American Stock Exchange in the summer times for his brother, who was a member there.

And he said, listen, Gregg, I, you know, I know this is not necessarily what you're looking for, but my brother's company is looking for somebody to be a clerk full time down there after the summer is over. Would you be interested? And I said, you know, I don't know anything about the stock exchange, Tommy. I said, the last time I was at the New York Stock Exchange, it was for a field trip in my junior year of high school, and, we were so disruptive a bunch that they didn't even let us come in and and look at the trading floor, so we never even got in there. So sure enough, I went down on, some, you know, September afternoon, met, with the boss of this company, sort of, like, hung out there for a week.

I had no idea what I was doing there, Kurt. The language was different, than anything I'd ever seen. The crazy activity levels were nothing I was ever prepared for. There's nothing you can study. I don't care how many economics courses you take or business courses you take that there's nothing that prepares you as you know, for the insanity that goes down around on the trading floor.

But there was something about it that I just, I took to and, I was hooked almost from the beginning. I, I just love the, I just love the, the, the intense nature of it. I just love the, the it's almost like the competition of it. The, the, the oh, back then the open outcry of buying and selling stocks was something that was just so foreign to me. You mean, there's no money changing hands.

There's no documents signed. It's just your word with another person's word, which is a huge, a huge departure from the normal way of doing business, of course. But I just, you know, I just gravitated toward it. So after, you know, I was there for a year before I even had my first week's vacation. And at that point, I didn't even know if they thought I was doing a good job or not.

And as it turns out, a year and four months after I started there, I became, at the time, the youngest member of the American Stock Exchange. I became a a broker for this company that I was working for. Yeah. It was big back then. Wild.

It was still a sort of an older man's game, still very much a male dominated game, obviously, but, it just it just happened, again, the right place in the right time. And that was the beginning of my career. That was 1978. I became a member in '79. And and that's where I I lived on the American and New York Stock Exchange for the next thirty years.

So I was there for, well, everything. The the first World Trade Center bombing. Obviously, I was there for 9/11. I was there through ups and downs of the market, the crash in '87. Crazy, crazy times.

You know? Every one of them sort of preparing you for what comes next. And, definitely a business where you had to think on your feet. You had to think fast. You had to make decisions, you know, that involved a lot of other people's money.

It prepares you in so many ways for other aspects of your life, Kurt, you know, just your ability to sort of stay calm in in tough situations. So that all that also translates to, you know, your day to day life when things start don't always go the way you want them to go. There's, you know, there's that ability to say, alright. Let's let's break this down and let's let's calmly look at what's going on here. So, I I owe a lot of of who I am to those thirty years that I spent down there.

You know, you hit on a bunch of things, Greg and I agree with you. For me, it was life lessons too. It's one of the things that kept me on the floor, the activity of it all and that energy and the multitasking and seeing how people dealt with it or couldn't deal with it. You know, we saw all different types down those floors, you know it. Between you and I, we must have seen thousands, maybe more, come and go because it was not for everybody.

It was very difficult. And, you know, in that in the middle of chaos is that calm to your point. And you're hitting on a metaphor that I like to use when I speak about the core energy and the dynamics of it. And one of it is, you know, our environment and you just described it, can be very noisy, can be very distracting, not just in the trading floors, not just on the ice rink. And I I think also ice for you and I, it was another life lesson.

Certainly, we got a lot of takeaways from that as well. But overall, in life, there's so much going on around us, and it's sort of like a a hurricane of noise, of energy, right? Massive, massive, massive amounts. And then when we look at it, what's in the middle? Is that calm?

Is the I? You know? So when I start talking to that about people working with, they get they get more understanding about, oh, okay. That does make sense. How how do we get there?

So let's go with that, Gregg, for a minute. You and I can take liberty there. How did you find your ability to find calm in the middle of chaos, to find calm in the eye of the hurricane or noise around you? Well, you know what, Kurt? It it it part of it was I don't wanna say it was a reward process, but when you I learned at some point, and I don't know exactly what it was, but I learned at some point that if you could be one of the cooler heads in the midst of the chaos, you usually prevail, in terms of the better business decisions, in terms of even the better relationships with other people on the floor.

Because remember, there's, you know, there's a thousand brokers you're dealing with in this huge cavern of, financials building. And if you wanted to if you wanted to be respected, if you wanted to be good at it, you almost you almost had to you've had to be a bit humble. You you had to be, you know, one of the people who people could look to and say, listen. This guy doesn't lose his cool. He doesn't lose his head.

He's he's easy to deal with. And I always say this I I say this to my wife. I say this to so many people. I said, you know, I used to think that everybody liked me that I worked with, but, like, I'm sure we all do. But, you know, in any business, you know, no matter how how professional you try to be, no matter how much of a gentleman or a lady you try to be when you're doing your job, there's always gonna be a few people who don't like you no matter what you do.

And that's okay. You know, I learned I learned a long time ago that I didn't need to be liked as much as I needed to be respected. And and I didn't I didn't ask to be respected. I always try to earn that. So the calm the calm part of it was part of the, I guess, the, the mental aspect of trying to be successful, because I you know, you you've seen it.

The people who are in those situations in panic don't usually do very well, and they don't usually last very long. So I think you and I both learned that at some point, if you really want to, you know, rise above the rest of everybody, you're gonna have to be a a cooler head than they are. And I think that's I I think that came with experience. You know? There's no again, so much of what we did, you don't you don't and can't learn that in a textbook.

You can take as many, you know, economics classes and self business classes. It doesn't matter. You don't learn how to to to stay calm. You don't know how to have, you know, a demeanor that people respect, you have to you have to learn those things, and then you have to earn those things. Yeah.

You know, it's so interesting that you were built, throughout our educational careers to study, to, you know, get into books and to delve into them and the takeaways that the professors like us to challenge us on and and, how we are receiving the understanding, how we get we push it back out there, all fine and dandy to your point. But the real lesson in life is in the now, where we are in the moment, wherever that might be. And we call that what street smarts? That's how we would call it. Right?

Right, Greg? Yeah. We have plenty of us down there that did have college degrees, but, certainly in the commodity pits, it was mostly, did you know, I came in through uncle Vinnie or, you know, uncle Anthony or some relative or some friend that had not been to college. And it was part of the reason why it was justifiable and enabled people to to succeed in those these businesses was because they didn't have that outside interference of how it was supposed to be. In other words, it wasn't that micromanagement because we were in the street and we had to work with everyone around us and all sorts of different walks of life too.

Right? Wasn't that part of the beauty? Great point. No. It it really was fabulous.

So, thanks for summing that up, and framing that, Greg. That was great. So if I'd like to if you don't mind, is will you take us from when you were, if I may use the word, forced off the floor? Yeah. How that happened, why that happened, and, what that transition how you took that transition to move forward.

Okay. This is interesting too, Kurt, because I don't I don't know if you remember, but you and I were actually together the day that everything went bad for for me in terms of the, you know, of the of the world of the stock exchange. Previous to that happening, we were just we as a as a country, we're just getting into the the the bottom of the housing market when it was when it was just on the precipice of crashing, if you remember, in 02/2007, '2 thousand '8. The company I worked for, Bear Stearns, I was, you know, at that point, I was sitting pretty. I was, a senior managing director there.

I was a governor of the stock exchange. I was, you know, at the pinnacle of my career. And in addition to that, the the job that I did as a as a broker, as a floor broker, was was already starting to go away because electronic trading was starting to, you know, quickly advance down on the trading floor. So that the open outcry system of brokers going in to trade physically with one another, to, you know, to trade by verbal contract and so forth was becoming less and less and less prevalent. And it really got to the point, Kurt, where every single day, I would go down to the floor.

Now you you have to understand, as you already know, the stock exchange floor, you're you're in competition with other firms doing the same kind of business. So you, you know, you've got Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns and First Boston and all these companies do their their competitors on the floor. And just like in professional sports or any kind of sports, a lot of those guys who are your adversaries on the floor are your best friends. You know, you go to dinner with them and their wives. You're that you work for different companies, but you're best buddies, you know?

So in the arena of the exchange, your competitors, when the bell rings at the end of the day, your best friends. And every single day I would go down there, there'd be another friend that I'd had for years and years and years, shaking my hand saying I was just let go today. You know? We we don't you know, we're getting rid of brokers. We don't need brokers.

And so it every it it it sort of became like going to somebody's funeral every day. So toward the end there, the jobs that, that we did were already starting to disappear. But it was just more and more depressing to say, you know, to see people come down from their, you know, upstairs office with a Manila envelope that had their last paycheck and their severance stuff in there and shaking their hands and saying goodbye for the last time. It was really, really difficult. So I knew that hard.

It wasn't like it wasn't like we just jump into, like, to your point, to another firm because it was happening throughout the industry. So it wasn't like we were in banking or or working in marketing in a different industry. We could go somewhere else perhaps. We had no out except for out all the way out. Completely true.

Completely true. There wasn't like, okay. I'll just go to a different bank and do the same thing. That job was not it was not gonna be around very much longer. And, every time I go in there and see somebody else, you know you know, their their their last day and, again, these are people I I grew up in the business with and became friends with.

Just became so difficult, Curtis. So so then I finally, at one point and I didn't even I didn't discuss this with anybody. I didn't talk to my wife about it, my kids about it. One day on a Friday, I just decided, you know, there are I there's a lot of young guys working for the firm right now that are just getting their feet wet, just starting out and buying homes and having families. And I thought maybe if I because I had some time coming to me.

I was a senior director there. I decided I was gonna just step away for a little while, maybe save a couple of jobs, at least for the little while. And as it turns out, it wasn't very long before that didn't matter. Everybody was the the whole floor was closing down. So here we are.

You and I are it was Saint Patrick's Day, and I'm telling you, March is not a very good month for this Irishman. There's a lot of there's a lot of things that have happened to me in March that are not necessarily the luck of the Irish. But you and I, as I remember, we were going out for Saint Patrick's Day, and it was February when the news hit that Bear Stearns was literally out of business just like that. I mean, they were heavily, heavily invested. Yeah.

Closing the doors. They literally got bailed out barely by JP Morgan. They were forced to buy the remnants of the company. But, you know, Bear Stones was heavily invested in, like, mortgage backed securities, and many of them are very high risk. And, when the when the floor fell out from those investments, they were done.

And it was almost like a run on the bank that you in 1929, right, when as this when the market collapsed. But that was that was that March. And it's just crazy because I'm I was thinking everything that I now I will say this, that a lot of our compensation back then was in stock and in options for the company. So previous to that, things were, like, really looking good for me. You know?

It was like, wow. This is a couple more years of this, and I'll be good. And then that day was the day that the rug was literally pulled out from underneath, and everything was gone. I mean, everything. I mean, the stock went from a hundred and $30 to 0.

So Oof. Yeah. So in addition to there not being any job to go back to, there was no company to go back to as well. So that was that was really the end, the abrupt end of my, of my days on Wall Street. 30 Years.

You know, thirty years almost to the day. But, just just the way that it happened, and I'll let you go on, but I just wanna jump in real quick. You're this is the epitome of energy. How how do how do we deal with something like that? And when we talk about our core energy, it's our work from within.

Right? And we make conscious choices. But when something like that happens, like you said, everything's taken out, your means of income, the reward from owning stock, which you watch go to zero. You know, where where do you go? What do you do?

The energy is just tremendously difficult to manage, but because of who you are and because I know you are a man of faith as well, but also you serve. You understand servants. You'd said it before you, pink slits pink lister got yourself out of there, let's say, you finally left. You did it because you wanted to help save other jobs possibly for, younger people. I mean, that is phenomenal.

Not many people would say that, Greg, but this is part of who you are. And again, you did the same thing when we were together in in the ice rink, always looking to serve. I know Greg as someone who is a man who will serve to the nth degree no matter what it is, and you believe in all that. And, I think that's a wonderful thing. So let's go forward with that and what was that transition at the end and what did you do about it all?

Kurt, I would love to sit here and tell you that I just shrugged it off and and went and got on with my life. But, honestly, it was it was a a time of trial and tribulation because I didn't I didn't know anything except what I had done for thirty years in terms of profession. And and the skills and the job that we did on the floor, as you already know, it's not something that's transferable to another industry or business. I mean, it was a very specific skill set when you're a trader on the floor of the stock exchange or a trader in the commodities exchange. So it's not like you can take that skill and just walk into a different, you know, aspect of business.

So I I I tell you, I I was definitely sort of a fish out of water for a long period of time. The one thing I I was sort of proud of is that I didn't spend a whole lot of time. I'm I'm not saying I didn't spend any time, but I didn't spend a whole lot of time feeling sorry for myself. I I felt, tremendously disappointed and, of course, nervous and worried about things. In the back of my mind, I knew it was gonna be okay one way or another.

But, the most difficult part of it was now what do I do next? You know? How do I how do I take the only thing I've known for thirty years and and and do something else? So I I And looking at your family. Yeah.

I had a family. Your family. Your family you're young. The family was young still. Yeah.

And thank God you have your beautiful wife, Debbie. She's a fantastic woman as you know. Yeah. So that that's tremendous pressure there. But, anyway, I'm sorry.

Go ahead. No. No. It was. And, you know, my girls were both college age at that period.

And my son, Jake, that, you know, is is your son Kurt's, age, he was just in in middle school at the time. And, I I just said, alright. You're gonna you're gonna have to go in a completely different direction now. There is no taking what you've done and doing that again. You're gonna have to find a different direction.

So I started researching franchises initially on my own. You know, the Forbes top 500 franchise and so forth. Thinking maybe something like that, a business that I could do on my own, would be a a possibility. But it took me a while to really get my, you know, my bearings with that. I I looked at You have to have to learn another language.

Right? Yeah. That's part of what you were pointing out earlier. You know, our language is no of no use anymore. It was a massive use for for the world at one point.

And now all of a sudden, it's not useful at all. Absolutely true. Absolutely true. So So so when when I'm sorry. I interrupted.

I shouldn't let let your flow a little bit. But Oh, that's okay. You know, this is part of your zone. This is part of who you are and your ability to, you know, make that transition, which you've been doing all the time as a trader, constantly trading, all the time as an athlete, a distinguished hockey goalie to boot. So it's really part of who you are.

But it just goes to show that and you're pointing this out. We all have the ability to do this if we decide to take on the challenge, which is what you're getting ready to talk about. You know? Yeah. Emotion is is really just sort of something that happens to us, but courage is a decision, you know, and that's what you did.

Instead of letting the emotions take over and put you down that rabbit hole as we call it, you know, oh, woe is me and you have any right to do so for sure, you didn't. You took that road of courage and that's who you are. So, go ahead and and keep working through, that transition because it's really important for the audience to hear it all. Okay. So, it it wasn't that I honestly I didn't feel especially courageous at the time as much as I felt, like, desperate because I needed to do something.

I needed to make some changes, obviously. I needed to support my family. I needed to find a new direction completely opposite or away from what I don't known for all those years. I then started working with a a, a franchise consultant. And she introduced me to Hope.

The the the thing I wanted, I think, more than anything was the autonomy of how I'm gonna do a business on my own. I wanna be able to do it on my terms. I wanna be able to answer to nobody but myself. I wanted to do something that was hands on because I'm kind of a hands on guy. I like to do things physically and so forth.

And, so I started researching all these franchises with this woman, and she showed me all kinds of businesses, anything from locksmith businesses, window washing business, and none of them appealed to me. But this was also a point in time where the economy was so soft in the country that I saw this franchise that repaired and and redyed and recolored and, like, and and, you know, repaired, like, furniture and car seats and boat seats and so forth. And I thought I said, wow. I've never heard of anything like this. And I thought, you know, once a piece of furniture is no good, you throw it out.

Once your car seat is ripped and torn, you get rid of it and get a new one. You know, once, you know, your boat seat is is is shot, you just have either get new seats, recover them or whatever. But there's this business that reconditioned them, refurbished them, repair them. And it's it was hands on. So the short version of the story is I bought this franchise.

It was based in Calgary, Alberta, went up there for two weeks for intense training, came back and jumped in with both feet, started doing it. And I've been doing it for fifteen years. Now I'm at the point in time where I'm Debbie likes to say I'm semi retired. So I'm not I'm basically doing it. Now summertimes are busy for me down here because we're in a we're in the area where there's a lot of boats and a lot of marinas.

So I get a lot of phone calls this time of year, to to make a So you don't know is down in down in, South South Jersey. Yeah. The LBI? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So we're that's a this is a big time of year for me. But, for the last fifteen years, it's sustained us and, and, you know, it's gotten us through. And, and and here I am. So again, I I did a lot of it.

I'm I'll be honest. I did a lot of it out of desperation. There was a time pressure involved, as well because, you know, there was a period of time where money was not coming in and we gotta do something about that. But I like, as you said, I I'm I'm very spiritual, especially now. I wasn't necessarily so much then, but I always I always believed that there was gonna be something.

And and, you know, having a great wife makes all the difference in the world because, you know, she she said, listen. We're gonna get through this one way or another, and she was right there through all of it. And she wound up getting a career herself that she's been involved in the last fifteen years, again, in service to to people. She works with, disabled adults and has been doing that for fifteen years. So, I mean Fantastic.

Yeah. While we were lucky in a lot of ways, you know, a lot of it had to do with my big thing, Kurt, it's my it's almost my mantra now is that there is no such thing as coincidences. There's no such thing as accidents, that everything happens for a reason, and it might not be something that we understand at the time. But, I mean, you know, it's just the way I met Debbie was, like, crazy. I mean, it it shouldn't have happened.

It was so far fetched. But, I mean, nothing is nothing is, is is done by by mistake or by accident, especially the good things that happened to you. So if you have the faith that everything is gonna be okay, that that goes a long way. Tremendous. So and and part of the core energy, dynamics, Greg, there's a process, and you're gonna identify with this right away.

And this is what helps all people to be prepared to be in their moment, to be able to let it go as you say, to be able to realize that there's gonna be more changes, that life is not a one way street, there's many different avenues, many different pathways to it and we go on those pathways but it sort of goes like this so we can empower ourselves from within. First is the awareness, then it's the acceptance, then it's the validation which opens up opportunity for us which puts us into choice. Now we profess to take conscious choice, not just choice, that knee jerk reaction. And then with that being said, we are now into what you are starting to discuss. After we choose conscious choice, we can now start trusting our process.

And in trusting our process that'll bring us firmly into our transition because we're all equipped now with all the things that we just mentioned and once we reach that transition we now are going into our transformation and as you know transformation happens in many different ways, we just don't transform once, we are a continuum of transformation and this has to do with, you know, it's important for us to understand that there are influencers in our lives and in the the core energy dynamics we have six influencers, physical, environmental, mental, social, and spiritual. Spiritual is a very large part of it. And that being said, you know, I talked about this briefly, we all have our spirit. We all are born with our spirit. No one else's but it's our spirit and we're attached somewhere along the way.

Remember we're all like people but we are different people and when we understand that our spirit is part of our driver to who we are, that helps us work with all the stresses out in the world, all the differences that are there, all the things that we think we should be prepared for. But we are already because it's already given to us. It's already within us. It's just our ability and our duty, our self duty if we choose to make sure that we can polish all that off and understand what that means, taking it from inside, and we deliver it to the world as it is. So with that being said, and I know you get all this, Greg, but I want to put that out there for all the audience as well because they're getting a lot out of this.

Now, with that being said, if we may make another transition because you've been filled with so many glorious transitions into your transition, into your becoming a deacon, which I think is fabulous. Well, it started it's it started seven just a little over seven years ago, Kurt. Now, you remember when we were coaching together, I lost my brother, in 02/2007. My older brother, he was 54 years old, lost him to heart disease. Then, my younger brother was diagnosed nine well, it's now it's ten years ago with stage four prostate cancer, where he was given about a year and a year and a half to live.

For the next next nine years, he flourished. He he found this church. It's a it's a it's Good Shepherd American Reformed Catholic Church. It's it's we were raised as Roman Catholics, my whole day the whole daily family, all five of us. But eventually, as we got older, we became less and less involved in the church because it wasn't resonating with us as adults anymore.

You know? We went I went to Catholic grammar school and Catholic grade school and raised our kids initially as Catholics. And then once they made sacraments, they were they were done with it as well. So my brother Terry found this church in Toms River, and it it was just different than anything he had ever seen before. He he went there and started as a parishioner and worked his way up to being a deacon.

And this church, Kurt, kept him alive for nine years. He was not supposed to live more than a year and a half. But, being involved in the church the way he was and and the spirituality aspect of it and the acceptance, of the church gave him a reason to be. And so my sister, Ronnie, and I, it sort of started as a joke. She and I were having a typical daily celebration one Saturday.

She was visiting from Virginia, and we got a little banged up, you know, on Saturday night. And so I said, what do you say we go check out this church that Terry's talking about, you know, all the time? And she said, well, we'll see how we feel in the morning. If we feel up to it, we'll go. So sure enough, the next morning we got up and we went, and we sat in the very last pew of the church trying to be unobtrusive and not be noticed.

And, I'll never forget, Kurt, the pastor gave this homily, and and and just the whole vibe of the church was so unbelievable that I came back every single week after that. And that's where I I found this renewed spirituality. So, it's been a huge part of who we are now. And then my my brother passed a year ago February. And, I can tell you that I know personally that this church kept him alive much longer than anybody expected him to be.

And then when he did pass, he was completely at peace. He was ready for it. He told me many times, Greg, I'm not afraid to die. I know where I'm gonna be. It was the and I was with him when he passed, and it was the bravest thing I've ever seen.

So I can attest to the fact that spirituality, the spiritual component of people's lives and I don't mean religion, Kurt. I don't you don't have to be a religious person or, you know, know the Bible inside out or go to church services all the time. But, you you know, you almost have to believe that there's something bigger and better than us. I mean, we can't be that we can't be that narrow minded and egotistical to think that we are the be all end all. We're not.

And when you realize that, that's your first step in a spiritual journey that sustains you when things aren't always gonna go your way. And just as an aside, you know, in so as I was saying about March not being a lucky month for the for me, in March of twenty one, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. And, it was 09/11 related, apparently. And again, I mean, it was my family and my faith that got me through it. And, you know, I'm I'm perfectly fine now.

You know, I had great doctors, surgeons, great care. And, you know, and part of that is the faith that you have ever and I I I say this all the time and I I really mean it. And sometimes I don't think people believe me, but I was never afraid that anything was gonna that I was gonna die from it or anything was gonna bad was gonna happen. I always knew I was gonna be fine. And I don't know if that's just because of faith or because of the combination of the faith and the people I have in my life.

But if without spirituality, it wouldn't have made a big difference. I can tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're a testament to all that.

And, you know, I'm on board with that and that's part of what we push out with the core energy understanding and having more and more people are starting to talk more about that now, Greg, more than ever in our lives, perhaps we're hearing more and more of it. You know, the the it was difficult for the transition from the analog world into the digital world. The pandemic came along. And as you're pointing out, there's been many fallouts certainly from the Back East here from World Trade Center as far as health issues are concerned. But, having said all that, people more and more now are seeing that, first of all, we don't succeed in isolation, that we need one another.

And if we need one another, then we're to approach one another with two things out of the gate, kindness and respect. And if they don't come back right away, well then perhaps we adjust ourselves. But again, it's it's part of believing in ourselves and in others and in something bigger. And that's what service is about. Right?

We're we're not here for ourselves. We're here to help others help themselves, to help them serve. And serving, I have found, as you have and many of our listeners, I know have found that service is a very empowering thing. And when we do so with full heart, we can come together within ourselves and help perform these miraculous things, recovery from your prostate cancer and recovery from, being on the floor and having job taken away in the fashion that it did, losing your siblings, losing people you and I have both lost together hundreds of people from the nine eleven, you know, the first attack and then the second because you are survivors of both as you pointed out. But having said that, one thing that has gotten me, going about the core energy and the reason why I'm here and, Alex, Fabio is here with me.

He's a special part of it. He understands. He's younger, but he gets it. And it's more and more of that. And we're trying to get out to all generations.

That's why having you on fabulous because you point out so much about what core energy is about, and you're a testament to the success of being and you said the word be. And it's interesting because when I when I write the word be, I might have done it with you. I capitalize it now automatically. Everyone should be Be who they are. Everyone has value.

Everyone is, has something to contribute to the world. And how do we do that? We do that with co creating with others, with collaborating with others, and believing in ourselves and believing in our spirituality and trusting our process. So thank you for letting me go on with that, Greg. But anyway, you and I resonate in so many ways about so many different things, and this is why I knew you'd be a very special guest to come on and talk about yourself because you are talking about very deep things that have worked and will continue to work.

So Greg we have a few more minutes and just a couple other questions if you will, maybe a bit entertaining. You know life is as we mentioned it's gotten very quick very fast, the younger generations are struggling to find consistent employment, the AI scare has got everyone on pins and needles and again fear is just something that's out there. We learn how to deal with that and that's part of understanding our core. You know fear is a temporary thing. Fear is an alarm clock.

It's there to let us know something's coming. We can't stop it. So what do you wanna do with it? You wanna hold it and harbor it and live there and let it let it take you down, get that catabolic, dump of cortisol and not work ourselves out of it? Or do you wanna get, proactive and work work ourselves out it?

Get to that anabolic energy, the the dopamine fills, the the constructive, being instead of, just waiting for something to happen. We are people in action. Time changes. This is part of our savior is that we're always going to be transitioning. We're always going to do what time does change.

So adopt that. Don't force. Try try to stay away from not accepting change. Change is our friend as well. So what we start to talk about in the core energy language is neuro linguistic programming, and that's how we talk to ourselves and how we're gonna behave after we talk to ourselves.

Talk to ourselves kinder. The words I think need to be shifted a little bit, Greg, and I want your take on that a bit in our generation because we were told such limiting things that we had to do this, it had to be this way. Well, that doesn't apply anymore. And I you know, as a parent, what your parents taught you and I how we should raise our children is very very different now. It's out the window as a matter of fact you know.

So back to the change and understand that fear is just something we acknowledge and work with, don't harbor it. And that change is gonna help us through our times and in our moments, our continual moments. So with that being said, Greg, with all that's going on in the world now, how do you see things as far as the development of generations coming into the world and how should they be best prepared to work with what's going on as we see it now? Well, first of all, Kurt, I wanna say that you could be the next deacon at Good Shepherd because everything you've just talked about are things we actually just discussed this past Sunday, and and one of the topics was fear. And, my take on it is that the fear, of course, is a primal instinct.

Fear is a is a fight or flight instinct that that goes back to when people had to worry about saber tooth tigers. But now the the fears are obviously of a different nature. And I've I've come to find out that the, the the antidote or the opposite of fear is not courage. The opposite of fear is really love. And you were just talking about, you know, the the self talks.

How many of us look in the mirror and and say, you know what? I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy. I don't know. Oh, boy.

I made such a terrible mistake. I hope nobody ever finds out about that. Our self talks are not very positive as a human race. We if we if we start with that, if we start changing the way we look at things and can look look in the mirror and say, you know what? You're alright.

I like I love you, actually. You're the guy the guy in the mirror. I really love you. And also, we need to remember that we are not the products of things that have happened to us. We are not the products of what people think or say about us.

We are our own individual, unbelievable human beings, both physically and spiritually. Now, as far as the future goes, I have to say that there was a period of time where I was really worried about it, where I'm thinking, you know, what's gonna become of this world? The shift is exact is real. You know, people are raised differently. They're more to themselves.

They're less I mean, social today means you're, you're on your phone with somebody or you're texting somebody. You and I grew up, we were like outside, you know, playing together. We were, you know, riding our bikes. We were, you know, face to face. And especially our business, it was totally face to face.

There's not much of that anymore. So I do worry about that as aspect of it. I do worry about the AI aspect of it where it's taking less or taking more of the humanity out of the equation and substituting it with technology. But I will say that I have I have come across so many young people who are genuinely good people, industrious, hardworking, you know, socially, you know, socially connected. They've got ambition, they've got goals, they want good lives for themselves.

And that gives me hope. I'm sure our parents looked at us a lot and said, Oh man, these, these kids are, they're, they're, they're lazy and good for nothing. And, they're, they're they're gonna be sweeping streets for a living and you know? So I know every generation worries about the future ones, but I I have to say that I've seen, like, a lots of glimmers of hope in what's, what's gonna happen. You know, there's too much of a concentration on the negative aspect of things going on.

And I think that's a big problem. And the media has a lot to do with that. And social media, especially, likes to for some reason accentuate the things that aren't so good. But I'll tell you, Kurt, you look around, you know, and you know, you work with kids, you see it. Like, some of these kids are are, like, people to be proud of.

And so I I feel a lot better about the future generations, just because I've seen so many examples of it. Well, that's that's that's, that's good to hear. You know, a man of so many experiences and so profound that, you're pointing it to that way and it doesn't surprise me that you're spinning it to a way that there is opportunity, there are gains to be made always and, you know, it's it's interesting pointing something out that I I like to talk about a lot and that is we're all better than we think we are. Isn't that interesting? You know, the inner critic is can be so brutal and damaging and this is where I've picked up the understanding of the NLP, the neural the understanding of how we speak to ourselves is gonna influence our behavior.

So speak kinder. In other words, goal oriented. You know, I'm gonna lose 10 pounds in a week. That's my goal. But I only lost eight.

Ugh, the cortisol dump. I didn't get it done. Well, if we if we, substitute goal, it has to be all the time, but in certain circumstances with intention. My intention is to lose 10 pounds this week. Well, I only lost eight pounds.

You know what? That's great because I lost. I did something, you know, and this is a large part of what we have to, we need to adjust ourselves to and understand that things are okay. We have all the tools in our experience with toolbox. Right?

Like to refer to the experiences are neither good nor bad. They're just growth because that's the other thing. We're always growing. And you're a testament of that today. Greg and all that you spoke about all your transitions all your life experiences constantly growing and you're not gonna stop you pointed that out and I'm with you.

I believe that we grow into our last breath and that's just how it is. So, you know, adopt it and and and enjoy it. And I just wanna say one other thing about, you know, collaboration and, being with people, how important it is to communicate properly, not just to ourselves but to others. And, you know, it's really about the understanding that the more we can collaborate and the more that we are willing to work with others, the more we learn. In other words, everyone we meet is our teacher and our student too.

Mhmm. Isn't that so true? Mhmm. Absolutely. So these are the different languages that we we need to get out there and talk to.

And I I've talked about I know you're doing it as a as a deacon and, I'm man I couldn't be more proud of you in so many ways my friend. You truly are a beautiful friend in every way and I'm so fortunate that when we do connect we can talk like this automatically and if we don't speak for weeks, months, a year, whatever it might be we automatically go back to this means of talking because we've experienced the depths of what we described and everyone I want to thank you all for joining us and Greg certainly you what what a what a extreme pleasure I want to say for having you on and please we'd like to have have you back on sometime in the future if you will come. It would be an honor, Kurt. And I I just wanna say that I hope I hope your message gets out to more and more people because it it resonates deeply with me, obviously. You and I, you know, find so many things, of a like nature that we agree on, and, I think that has helped make us who we are today.

But peep more people need to hear this message. I hope you'll continue to spread it. I hope you'll continue to do what you're doing. It's good work. It is in the service of other people, which is I mean, it's my favorite thing to hear.

So, you know, like, really, god bless you for what you're doing and how you're helping other people. I know it makes your life a lot richer, and I know it makes other people who you come into contact. I know it makes their lives richer as well. So I I really appreciate that. You're wonderful for saying all that, Greg.

You really are. And I'm just gonna leave it leave you with these this one word and you've been using it and, I want you to know it and I think you do. I have love for you and I always will. And that comes with our respect and our kindness for one another, but it is true love, Greg.

The same goes for me. Thank you for that. Everyone, I would just like to thank you for having been here today and, joining us. We had a great conversation with Gregg. I hope you all enjoyed it.

Please, whatever platforms you are on, please make sure that, you hit that button, whether it's on Spotify, YouTube, and finance even on LinkedIn, and and Apple, but all the platforms. Please hit it and give us a like and, subscribe if you will, and we enjoy the comments very much. So again, everyone, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. And one last thing, everyone, stay empowered.