Friday's w/ Dan #10

This week’s Friday’s w/ Dan goes deep. I talk about Augie Nieto, the impact he left behind, and why his story hit me harder than I expected. I share my own connection to ALS through my fraternity brothers, the work we did, and the people we lost. I take a moment to reflect on Lou Gehrig’s iconic speech — a reminder of what real courage looks like. Then I shift into a conversation about leadership with Kurt Bush and the E + R = T framework that’s been shaping how I think about growth. We close with a prayer for everyone touched by ALS and a reminder to lead with presence, gratitude, and heart.

https://open.spotify.com/show/2ZHWgVJf5Dadq6c1jHFrNC?si=e3894247f5214852

https://podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1768323039635344d43bab5cf

Transcript

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Alright, we are live, everyone, with Fridays with Dan. And I'll be honest, today's episode surprised me. I started the week listening to Augie Nieto by the band Five for Fighting, and it hit me harder than I expected. And then I had this great conversation with Kurt Busch, the certified internal family systems practitioner and leadership coach, not the NASCAR driver. And suddenly everything connected. Augie's story, Kurt's words, and then my fraternity's ALS work, it all pointed me in one direction, and I want to walk through that with you today. So I want to start with Augie Nieto. Because if you don't know who he was, you can't understand why this hit me the way it did. Augie Nieto was one of the strongest people you'll ever read about. And I don't mean physically, although he built his entire career on strength. He founded Life Fitness. He helped shape the modern fitness industry. He was humble, a leader, and a guy who lived his whole life in motion. And then at the age of 47, he was diagnosed with ALS. A disease that takes your muscles, your voice, your independence, piece by piece. Most people get three to five years with that diagnosis. Agi lived 18. 18 years of fighting, advocating, showing up, and refusing to disappear. He didn't just survive ALS. He led through it. He created Agi's Quest, which has raised tens of millions of dollars for ALS research. He became the face of the fight. He pushed for treatments. He pushed for awareness. He pushed for hope. And he did all of that by losing the thing he built his identity on, his physical strength. And that's what gets me. Because leadership is easy when life is easy, but Augie led when life was cruel. He led when his body betrayed him. He led when every day took something from him. He didn't choose the breaths he had left. He chose how he breathed. And that's why this story matters. That's why that song hit me. That's why we're starting here. And if you haven't heard the song Augie Nieto by Pfeiffer Fighting, I really encourage you to take a few minutes after this episode and listen to it. I wish I could play it. I don't have the rights to do so. But the song captures something about Augie that's hard to put into words. The strength, the fight, the humanity, the way he kept showing up, even as ALS took more and more from him. It's one of those songs that doesn't just tell a story. It makes you feel the weight of the person behind it. And if hearing about Augie moves you the way that it moved me, I'd encourage you to go a step further. Look up his story. Learn about ALS. Support the organizations doing the work, talk about it, share it, and keep these names alive because ALS is brutal. And the people fighting it, patients, families, caregivers, they deserve to be seen. Augie was a leader in every sense of the word, even when his body wouldn't let him move. And that's where all of this started this week. And so talking about ALS brings me back to something a little closer to home for me. I was in Phi Delta Theta in college, and our national philanthropy was ALS. Every year, our chapter hosted a golf tournament to raise money for the cause. And look, we we weren't raising millions, we weren't running national foundations, we were just a couple dozen of 18 to 22-year-old kids trying to figure out life, school, friendships, and who are we who we were becoming. But every single year we raised over$20,000.$20,000 from a bunch of college kids who barely had 20 bucks to their name. And at the time it felt pretty freaking cool, and it still does. Because when you're at that age, you don't always feel like you have that much to offer to the world. But for one weekend every year, we got to show up for something bigger than ourselves. We got to help families dealing with ALS breathe a little easier. And for me, it's even more personal than that. I've lost fraternity brothers to ALS. I've watched what this disease does. I've seen the strength it takes from them, from their families, from everyone around them. It's brutal, it's unforgiving, and it makes you realize just how much support, awareness, and research matter. So when I think about Augie's story now, it hits different. Because we weren't raising money for a charity in the abstract. We were raising money for the people like him, people like my brothers, people fighting a brutal disease with everything they had. People who needed support, hope, and community. And that's why all this connected for me this week. And so while while we're on the train of ALS, I wanted to take a quick aside because if if you've never watched Lou Gehrig's Luckiest Man speech, you need to. Standing in Yankee Stadium, knowing he has a fatal disease, knowing what's coming, and he calls himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. It's two minutes long, no music, no production, just honesty, gratitude, and courage in the face of something unimaginable. And when you've seen what ALS does, when you've lost people to it, when you've watched families fight through it, that speech hits in a completely different way. It's not just a sports moment, it's a human moment, a leadership moment, a reminder of what strength really looks like. So all of that aside, Augie's strength, my fraternity's connection to ALS, the brothers we've lost, it set me up for a conversation I had with Kurt Busch earlier this week. And just to be clear, I'm not talking about the NASCAR driver. I'm talking about Kurt Busch, the leadership coach, the certified internal family systems practitioner, the guy who spends his life helping people understand why they show up the way they do. What struck me in our conversation is that Kurt talks about leadership in a completely different way. Not as a title, not as a role, not as something you earn after a promotion. For him, leadership is internal. It's emotional. It's about presence and honesty. It's about the parts of yourself you've ignored or pushed down or tried to outrun. And one of the things he's known for, and something I really wanted to make sure we touched on, is his framework he uses at his company, Brimstone Coaching Group. E plus R equals T. And that stands for encounter plus reflection equals transformation. And the way he explained it to me was so simple and so true. Every leader, every person really goes through those encounters, hard moments, unexpected moments, moments that challenge who you think you are. The encounter alone doesn't change you. It's the reflection. It's about what you do with it. It's how you sit with it, learn from it, and let it shape you. And when you put those two together, the encounter and the reflection, that's where transformation happens. And as he was talking, all I could think about was Augie, my fraternity brothers, and the families fighting ALS, and how leadership shows up in ways we don't always recognize at the time. Because Augie had the encounter, he had the reflection, and he became the transformation. And that's what Kurt is trying to teach. That leadership isn't about being in charge, it's about being awake to your own life. So I want to share our Bible verse of the week. It is from Matthew chapter 20, verse 26. Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. And what that means to me is that's leadership, not the spotlight, not the title, not the power. It's showing up, carrying what you can't, and choosing presence over ego. Augie lived that. Kurt teaches that. And honestly, it's the kind of leadership I want to grow into. The kind that's measured not by how loud you are, but how you breathe through the moments that matter. So let us pray. God, today we lift up Augie Nieto and his family. We thank you for his strength, his courage, and the way he chose to live, even when life was unbearably hard. We ask you that you continue to bring comfort, peace, and healing to everyone who loved him and everyone still fighting the same fight. We also pray for every person living with ALS right now, and for every family walking that road with them. Give them strength for the hard days, rest for the exhausting ones, and hope that carries them through uncertainty. And God, I also want to lift up my fraternity brothers, the guys who showed up year after year to support ALS through our golf tournament. Again, we didn't have much as college kids, but we worked hard to find sponsors, alumni, and community members willing to give. Thank you for the impact that made and for the heart behind it. And we pray especially for the brothers we've lost to ALS. Be with their families, be with the people who miss them, hold them close. And finally, we pray for Kurt, for the work he's doing, for the people he's guiding, and for the way he teaches leadership from a place of honesty and presence. Give him clarity, strength, and the ability to keep helping people grow into who they're meant to be. Thank you for the examples of leadership you put in front of us. The loud ones, the quiet ones, and the unexpected ones. Help us learn from them, help us reflect, and help us transform. Amen. So again, thanks everyone for spending some time with me today. As always, hold your people close, breathe with purpose, and I'll see you next Friday on Fridays with Dan.