Stories Across the Table

LANCE SCHIFFMAN: CEO says to STOP making this mistake. Why Kindness is a Superpower!

• Steve Ramona & Bridget Cook-Burch • Episode 3

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0:00 | 26:18

LINKS: www.Genshai.com

AUTHOR: The Genshai Effect

In this episode of Stories Across the Table, Bridget Cook-Burch and Steve Romano welcome Lance Schiffman, CEO of Genshai and a man who has spent decades turning his own lowest moments into a mission of radical kindness. Genshai is more than a nonprofit. It’s a calling, built around one unforgettable idea: never treat anyone in a manner that makes them feel small, including yourself.

Lance traces that calling back to his teenage years, when he had to grow up fast and move out at seventeen, and to a defining moment at eighteen when a skeptical Utah governor looked him in the eyes, believed in him, and changed the course of his life. Decades later, struggling again and pedaling through his pain on a bicycle, Lance received the word Genshai from a mentor, and something in him shifted for good.

What follows is the story of how one word became a movement. Lance now travels the world sharing silver Genshai coins, engraved with the word’s ancient meaning, as a way to help people honor the mentors who once believed in them, and to remind themselves that they are never too small to matter. Bridget shares her own connection to the word through author Rebecca Musser, whose courage in the face of cruelty became a testament to its power.

This conversation moves through vulnerability, gratitude, fatherhood, friendship, and the quiet bravery it takes to tell someone, while they’re still alive, exactly what they meant to you.

Pull up a chair for a story about turning smallness into strength, and discovering that every person you meet, including yourself, is the gift.

BIO: 

Lance’s endeavors read like a roll call: philanthropist, entrepreneur, adventurer, investor, author, speaker, consultant, coach, humanitarian, advisor, and closest to his heart a father to three beautiful girls, grandchildren and a young son.  

He has served as the angel investor to companies grown to multiple billions, created wealth in real estate, healthcare, repaired his body after intense cycling incidents, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Elbrus among many peaks, authored books, serves on various boards.