Emerging From Hiding and Living a Life that Matters || Calvin Bagley

Ep 41: Emerging From Hiding and Living a Life that Matters || Calvin Bagley

What are you hiding?

In this powerful episode of Pebbles of Light, Anne Maxson sits down with entrepreneur and author Calvin Bagley, whose early life was shaped by isolation, lack of formal education, and deep personal struggle. As a child, Calvin literally hid from the school bus because his parents refused to send their children to school.

But that’s only the beginning of his story.

From teaching himself to read to earning a GED at 21, attending college, becoming a successful entrepreneur, and eventually writing the bestselling memoir Hiding from the School Bus, Calvin’s journey is one of resilience, faith, and transformation.

In this conversation, Calvin shares:

• What it meant to grow up hiding from the school bus
• How learning to read changed his life
• The turning points that reshaped his faith
• His unconventional path to college and entrepreneurship
• The process of healing from trauma and learning that “the storm is over”
• Why telling his story helped him—and others—stop hiding

This episode is a powerful reminder that our past does not define our future, and that transformation often begins the moment we choose honesty and courage.

About the Guest

Calvin Bagley is an entrepreneur in the healthcare and financial services industry and the founder of multiple companies serving Medicare beneficiaries across the United States. He is also the author of the bestselling memoir Hiding from the School Bus, which shares his journey from a childhood without education to building a life of purpose, leadership, and faith.

Connect with Calvin:

Calvin’s Book, Hiding from the School Bus - https://amzn.to/4scqYoQ 

Website - https://hidingfromtheschoolbus.com/ 

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/calvinbagley/

Instagram -

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

What you hide is what you fear, and what you hide from is what you fear. And it's internal, external. There were internal things that I feared and external things that I feared. Internally, I feared that I wasn't good enough. Uh, and I'm still in healing. I'm still in recovery, believe me. But it took me a long time to open up my heart and look inside and say, I am okay the way I am, I'm good the way I am, and I can love myself.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to Pebbles of Light, where we highlight the everyday people who bring hope, comfort, and light to others. I'm your host, Ann Maxon, sharing meaningful stories to help you find light in your journey. If the messages shared resonate with you, please follow, share, or support the podcast through Patreon to help keep the mic on and spread the light even farther. In the last episode, we talked with Jay Setchel about his mantra. If it is to be, it is up to me. This phrase has been rolling through my mind a lot this past week as I've gone about daily activities and chores. From little things like those dishes that need to be put away to getting caught up on emails and overdue tasks. If it is to be, it is up to me. Jay's insights provide a masterclass in leadership, perseverance, and mindset. The pebble for that episode was to choose one area where you've been tempted to quit and take one small step forward this week instead. In today's episode, we hear the remarkable story of Calvin Bagley, who shares about personal resilience, from hiding from the school bus as a child to discovering purpose, healing, and transformation. My guest today, Calvin Bagley, knows what it means to build a life from nothing, self-taught, self-made, and spiritually restored. His journey shows how life's hardest pivots can shape our deepest purpose. Calvin, thanks so much for being here. Please take a moment to introduce yourself. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

I really appreciate you having me. My name is Calvin Bagley, and today I'm an entrepreneur in the healthcare space, particularly in financial services and insurance. And I was raised in a different kind of world. And we'll talk a lot about that, I'm sure, where I was homeschooled and denied an education until I'm in my 20s, essentially. And so yeah, that that's a little bit about me to get us started.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

You wrote a book called Hiding from the School Bus. And when you look back at that idea of hiding, what did that mean to you as a child and and what did it cost you in your childhood?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

Yeah, I think starting with hiding is is the right place because everyone's hiding from something. And you know, if you're listening to this, you kind of ask yourself, what am I hiding? What am I hiding from the world? And what am I hiding from in the world? And for me, I started at a very young age with hiding from the school bus because my parents told me we were homeschooled, and they said, don't let the school bus see you because if they do, they might take you to school, and school is an evil place. We hid from the school bus whenever it came by in this. We lived out in the country in this very rural area in Utah. In fact, actually, until I was about maybe four or five years old, there was no school bus. We lived so far where I was I was born and brought home from the hospital, was so far away from anything that there was no school bus. And that's actually when my parents started homeschooling. And so it started out of necessity, and then it turned into this kind of righteous, holier than thou sort of a familial institution where we were withheld education and literally hid out of fear that the school bus would see us. And so I started there, but as I got older, I hid because I realized that I had no education, that I wasn't, I didn't wasn't as smart, quote unquote smart as the kids that I met at church and things, and I didn't know very, very basic things. And so, you know, that's where my hiding started.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Yeah. And so what did that absence of formal education do for you? So when you were younger, there was kind of, you know, you weren't necessarily aware of what you were missing. But as you got older, you started to recognize what you were missing. And was there an inherent just kind of desire to want to learn and understand things?

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Yes. I was hiding, you know, man, it's such a setback to not have education and to not be at least knowledgeable as to what your peers are saying. So I'd go to church. The place that I would interact with people was a church. So fortunately, my family went to church on Sunday. We would go to church on Sunday, even though my parents had more extremist religious views and were not really mainstream religious, you know, they were my my dad's some of many of his best friends were polygamous, actually. And he didn't practice polygamy, but he associated with this more extreme group of people. And so my parents had a lot of really extreme rules. And so I would go and interact with people with kids my age at church, but I realized that I didn't know the things they knew. Like uh they would read. And I I couldn't, I couldn't read until I was almost seven years old, is when I learned to read. My sister taught me to read. And um I couldn't do so many things. And so I began to, what how it affected me is that is that I began to feel like I wasn't intelligent, that I wasn't as good as other people, that I was, and I began to realize that I didn't have what they had, and I and I had to hide it. I had to pretend like I was, and that then you overcompensate and you do things that make you really an outsider. And so I just became more and more and more of an outsider, even with this small group of kids that I knew at church. I was the weirdo. I was very strange. I didn't go to church on, I mean, I didn't go to school, they they didn't see me on school bus. They knew that something was different and strange about me. And so I would overcompensate in in every way I could, making the matter worse and worse and just making me feel like I was an outcast. And so I I desired at that age, more than desiring education or understanding, I just desired to be normal. I just wanted to be like the other kids or what I thought was normal. Little did I realize that probably all of those kids also just wanted to be quote unquote normal, right? Yeah. But for me, I knew I was very different, and that was very hard for me.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

So at what point did you start to question that story that Shane was telling you and that idea of I may be different, things may be different, but I can still find my place in the world?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

I was I got a lot of confidence learning to read. When I when I was about seven years old, I I asked my mom if I could read, and she said, Well, I guess you're about old enough now. And she assigned my sister, which is what my mother often did was assign one of my siblings to to do her parental duties. In fact, when I was born, I came home from the hospital and like you know, three days old, and my mother handed me to my 14-year-old sister, oldest sister, because there were nine of us, and I was number seven. She handed me to my to my 14-year-old sister and said, according to my sister, the quote is, This one is yours. This one's yours. And that's and my sister raised me as her child. In fact, there was a lot of trauma happening in my household of expanding all kinds of different strange abuses. And so my poor sister raised me like I was her own. So when I was seven years old, she had gone, she had left the house. And when she left, I felt like I had lost my mother. I really went through this major abandonment, not understanding that until I was an adult, that I had been abandoned by what I believed to be my mother. And my my third sister, my fourth sister actually, is was a reader. She loved to read. And so anything she could get her hands on, she would, she loved to read. And I should tell you that up until from my first five siblings, they did attend some school, but by the time I was born, there was no school. And so some of them received some education. And so they had some some foundation. Well, my sister, Kate, who was the fourth of my older siblings, she's taught me to read. And I had wanted to read because I wanted to be normal, right? And there was the alphabet across the top of our living room that my parents had left there because you know, we were quote unquote homeschooling. And I had tried to memorize the alphabet, but I wasn't sure which way it started. And so I inadvertently memorized it backwards. So I memorized the alphabet Z-Y-X-W-V-U-T-S-R-Q-P-O-N-M-L-K-J-I-H-G-F-E D C B A.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

And so my sister then helped me to learn to read. And that was kind of a, that was a really a point of pride for me because my some of my older, my my older brother, I had two older brothers now, they they kind of struggled to read. And so, you know, we would go to church on Sunday and open up the scriptures. And I was so proud of myself that I could like, you know, read through a verse now in class. And my brother, just older than me, couldn't do that and really struggled. And he was very embarrassed. And, you know, I look back and I feel bad a little bit that I would actually put on some showmanship and and probably humiliate him. And it's I'm not proud of that. You know, that for me, that was a point where I said, oh, you know, I can, I can start to learn things, even though I didn't have access to any way to learn.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

Yeah, I was gonna ask about that as far as if you were limited in what you were allowed to read or what you had access to. Because I remember when when my kids started to read, I got teary-eyed. And because I was like, the world is open to you now, whether it's, you know, reading fiction books and your imagination and all these different things, or or nonfiction, learning about whatever you may want to learn about. So, what was that like for you of just the knowledge that becomes available as you start to read?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Well, there were a lot of books in my house. A lot of my parents had a large collection, I'm not sure where they got it from, of books. Most of them didn't interest me. We did have a an Encyclopedia Britannica. And so I would go in there and look at things and what have you. So there was something there. But we didn't have any school books. We started out when I was very young. My parents did provide us some school books, although they would never check and see if we did them or if we followed through with anything. We were just total self-study. And we would stay in the house during school hours most of the time while my dad would be out working in the garden because we lived on a farm and we grew most of our own food. Imagine growing up like it's the ninth 1905, but it's actually 1985. That's kind of how we were living. You know, no, no TV in the house and things like that. And so um, I didn't have a lot of books to read or to study. So I would learn things from encyclopedia and stuff like that, but I really didn't learn much. I just learned enough to get by. And my real learning didn't come until I was in my late teens and went on a mission. And so I went, I went through these all my teenage years. I actually, when I was about 16, really kind of declared independence from my parents. And enough of my older siblings had rebelled and had run away from home or had had you know gotten girlfriends pregnant and all those types of things that that my parents, you know, the worst, what my parents considered to be the worst things that could happen. Their their older, my older siblings were rebelling, leaving, leaving the faith, throwing everything out, running off with boyfriends and girlfriends and stuff like that. And so everything, you know, there was just complete rebellion. And so by the time I was about 16, I basically said, I'm gonna do it my way. And if you don't like it, I'll run away. And they knew that I could because, you know, everyone else had. And so so I stayed home until I was 19. And when I was 19, got a call to go on a mission to go to Brazil. And so my point is that during that time, I could have chosen to go to school and I could and I could have forced it on my parents because they were weakened enough by my older siblings. But I at that point I knew I couldn't. I I didn't know basic things like I couldn't do, I couldn't, I I could maybe give you times tables, but I could not multiply and divide a fraction. Um, I I had no clue about, you know, how to how any anything related to advanced or not even advanced, like intermediate mathematics and other things. So I just or science or anything, I just had no foundation for anything. And so I realized I could not go to school or I would just make a total fool of myself. And so I just didn't. And when I was 19 years old, I received a mission call. My parents weren't sure if I would be able to go because, you know, they thought that I was, that I was already messing up all over the place. But I was, I was gonna do it for myself. I was doing it my way for myself. And I got my mission call to go to Brazil and I was so excited. I told, I remember I opened it up, I read Brazil. One of my friends was there that night, uh hit Garth from the ward, you know, from church. And I said to Garth, I'm so excited that I'm going to Africa. And he was like, I think Brazil is in South America.

unknown 12:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

So anyway, going to Brazil taught me English. I had to learn Portuguese. So I went to the missionary training center in Provo, Utah, and I studied and studied. And the way that I that I, the way to learn Portuguese is you got to learn English first. You got to learn what a verb is and what a noun is and how to conjugate, you know, verbs and how a sentence structure works and things like that. And so I learned English by learning Portuguese. And that was the first experience of my life where I was actually in a classroom learning something, and it was at the missionary training center.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

So were you the first of your siblings to go on a mission then?

SPEAKER_01 12:44

I was not. I have two older my oldest sister, the one that I said was like my mother, she went on a mission. While she was on the mission, she decided that she did not want to be a part of the religion. And so she she left the church on her mission. She was in South Africa and she came home. It was very interesting because I, you know, from there's they say that it's a spiritual gift if someone is given to believe. I just felt that from the time I was very young. I felt the spirit of God at church from a very young age. And I could, I could separate that from my parents' kooky ways of doing things and beliefs and things and the type of abuse and things that were happening at home. I was able to separate that out, and and it was always true to me. But she came home and was very, very different and never participated in the in the church or anything, any organized religion again. And then I had one older brother that went on a mission and he did complete his mission. And he and I, as to my knowledge, I think we're the only because I I'm not as close with all my siblings all the time. I don't know what they're doing all the time, but I believe the two of us are the only that ones that continue to attend church on a regular basis today.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So for you, it seems like there was just kind of always this desire to believe, and you always had your own testimony. You weren't necessarily relying upon mom and dad because their testimony was somewhat distorted to what was right. And and could you tell that? Could you tell, oh, what mom and dad are doing isn't necessarily aligned with my belief system? And how would he reconcile those two belief systems then?

SPEAKER_01 14:15

It was a very gradual thing, you know, with little things breaking along the way and and realizing that, you know, to I remember one point when I was a very, you know, maybe 14-year-old teenager, my first time ever going to the temple in Provo, Utah. Our bishop took us out there and I rode with him and spent time with him and just I just admired him so much and thought he was an incredible person and looked up to him. And um, and you know, he did things that my parents would not approve of. For example, on our drive when we were there, we had a hamburger. Well, that's my parents did not allow us to eat red meat. And he drank a soda and we listened to to current music on the radio and and things like that. And just these things were things that my parents absolutely abhorred and would would, you know, they they would actually, we I would come home from from church on Sunday, maybe a primary class when I was very young, and my parents would ask me what the primary teacher had taught us, and then would correct things that they thought were incorrect. And so there were just these gradual things that broke along the way. And I write in my book about this experience I had as a missionary where I was with one of my mission companions and he gave this lesson. We were teaching someone about the gospel of Jesus Christ. And he gives this analogy about Star Wars and that they that the kids can relate to about good and evil and and what have you, and temptation and sin and whatever. I don't remember what the analogy was about, but I remember that it had Star Wars in it. And when we left, I said, Hey, elder, you shouldn't use Star Wars in your teaching. You know, Star Wars is it perverts the whole nature of God and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, What are you talking about? I love Star Wars. And I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute, my dad told me Star Wars is bad because, you know, there's you can't, because the force, it was my my dad's belief was that the force distorts things. And maybe to a certain extent you could argue his case, but it distorts things because there can't be two sides of one force. There's either good or evil. And this makes it look like you there's one force and you can use it for good or evil. And so he was really anti-Star Wars. And of course, we didn't watch any, any uh movies of the day. And so I, you know, it was like a, I didn't understand Star Wars. And so my companion, he goes through this whole thing to kind of to challenge what I was saying and what I what my father had said. And it was one of those moments on my mission at 20, you know, 20 plus years old where I thought, wait a minute, I'm just I'm parroting the things that still that my parents said and believed. And I need to find my own beliefs. And it really was, you know, even though this happened gradually over all of my say teenage years, that was one of the defining moments where I said, I really need to reevaluate. And when I say something like I believe it, I I need to know that that's from me and not not something I'm just parroting.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

And then years later, you had the opportunity to serve as a bishop. And so how did your experience as a child and your relationship with those church leaders who had such a great effect on you, how did that play into your role and the ways that you served those in your ward?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah. So I, you know, fast forward through a lot of things, I I become a I became a bishop in my, uh I guess it was my early 40s and served at a in in my ward here in Las Vegas where I live. Man, I tried really hard to be a good youth bishop and to spend all my time and effort on the young men and young women and do things for them that that just would have an impact on their life. For example, I was reading through the handbook one day and I realized that it says that that you could that there are such things as ward and stake youth conferences. And I went to my stake president, I said, Hey, the handbook says you could have a ward youth conference. And he was like, Oh, it sure does. And I said, Yeah, I I want to have a ward youth conference. And he was like, Okay, you can do that. And so I had all these kids, and I uh the the the ward that I was in had a mix of of different, you know, socioeconomic sit circumstances. And so I had a bunch of kids that had heard about the pioneers and all this stuff and people coming to Utah, but had never been to Salt Lake City and they lived in Las Vegas. And I was like, we are going to go to Temple Square. And we went to all the different sites. We went to the temple and we went to the Family History Center and we went to the This is the Place monument and what have you. And just these kids had the most incredible experience. And so, yeah, so to answer your question, you know, I I really poured myself into the youth of my ward because I realized that I could relate to how important that time in life is.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Yeah. And it was probably kind of cathartic, right? That that idea of being able to give back the things that maybe you wish you would have had in more abundance within your home than what you did. So let's back up a little bit. We we fast-forwarded really fast there to Bishop. Let's let let's fill in the blanks a little bit between going on mission, learning English, and then all of a sudden you come back to Las Vegas. And what did that look like as far as formal education for you?

SPEAKER_01 19:15

When when I was finishing up my mission, you know, I had looked forward to my mission all throughout my life, through my, especially my teenage years, and I didn't know what was going to happen after. That was my end goal to achieve that. And I'd done that, I'd learned another language, I became very proficient at Portuguese, and I felt like this is something I can do really well. In fact, that was the one confidence that I had coming back from a mission is if push comes to shove, I could find a job where I need to learn languages. I know I can do that, you know? And so at the end of my mission, all of my mission companions and friends and everything on the mission who were from the United States, they were all talking about going to BYU. Back then it was Rick's College instead of BYU Idaho and Idaho or some other school. I had one companion that was going to Stanford, a really, really smart guy. And so they're all talking about these places they're going to go. I don't even have a high school equivalent. I don't even have, I've never, I haven't even graduated from high school. And so I decided after that two years in Brazil that I could do anything. You know, I kind of fortunately had a little all of a sudden had this little bit of a Superman complex, like I can do this, you know. So I came back to my little town. My parents at this point were living in a small town in outside of Vernal, Utah. It's a town of about 400 people. I came back to that town and I decided that I was going to study and get my GED, my general equivalency for a high school diploma. And so I studied for a few months. I I bought uh some study stuff at a at a store in Vernal, and I took the general education exam and I got my GED. I was almost 22 years old when I got my GED. I was late 21. And I was very proud of that. When I was studying, my dad looked at that and he said, What are you doing? And I told him I was studying to get my GED. And he said, What do you need that for? Do you need a piece of paper? Do you need them to tell you you're smart? And so he did not approve of that. But uh I did it anyway and got my GED. And then I said, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to get into college. And at the time, the ACT was kind of the big college entrance exam that everyone took. And so I said, I'm going to take the ACT now because I I passed the GED and I was so proud of myself. I don't know what my score is. They don't give you a score. They just say pass or fail, you know. So I got this really big, thick ACT study guide. And I stayed up nights. I was I was working in the day. I was working at a pawn shop, which was a hilarious and fun place to work. With the it was a pawn shop owned by uh members of the, like this guy who was a bishop and member of the church. So it's like the on most honest pawn shop you've ever heard of. And it was, I had so many fun experiences there and had such a great time. And I was so I'd work in the day and then at night I would study. And I studied and studied and studied. And I took the ACT exam. I went into I went in to take the exam. It was in the it was so it was given at the high school. So I went to the high school, and there's all these kids, you know, 16, 17-year-old kids around me. And at this point I'm 21 plus. And I was so intimidated. I I took I took the exam. Long story short, I scored so low. I that so then I tried to apply to schools, of course. No one would take me. I got denied by every school, the USU uh extension service, Utah State University, the local one, USU. My brother was living in Las Vegas. I applied to UNLV, I got denied. I got applied to College of Southern Nevada, which back then was just a two-year college. I got denied. There was just no one would take me. And so my brother invited me to come live with him in Las Vegas. Said he he had he was married at the time, and he's been married many times, but at the time he was married to a woman who was a registered nurse, so she was educated and she offered to help me. And her name was her name is Julie. And Julie was an angel for me. And so I came to Las Vegas and Julie went with me to this store called Learning is Fun in Las Vegas, which was a store for, you know, like teachers. And we bought all of these books for math because that was where I was really, really weak. And she would, she would open the book and say, Hey, do you know how to do this? And I would say, No. And she'd go down a grade. Do you know how to do this? No. And we went all the way down to third grade math. And we had third through 12th grade math books, and I would work on them at home. And she would teach me stuff when she came home from her 12-hour shift at the hospital and would help me through stuff and got me to the point where I had some confidence. And she also encouraged me and helped explain to me how school works, you know, and how college works and stuff, got an appointment for me to meet with a counselor, an admissions counselor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. And so I went in and sat with the woman. I explained to her my history. I told her about my lack of education. I told her about going to Brazil and learning to speak Portuguese and how I got my GED, you know, at 20 on the last year when I was 21 and all these things. And the woman was very kind and said, you know what? We will give you a chance. Here's what we'll do. I'll give you a chance, is what she said. I'll give you two semesters as a non-admitted student auditing classes. So you'll audit the classes, but you'll get graded. And if you get passing grades for two semesters, we will admit you to the university. And so I started, I started, you know, with uh math 97, because I couldn't take 97. I had to take 97, then 98, then I could take 101. I took some English classes, I took a Spanish class and some other things. And in my first in my two first semesters, I had a perfect 4.0 and was admitted to UNLV. And that's how I I eventually made my way into college.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

What do you think was the trajectory your parents had in mind for you? And did they celebrate when you chose a different trajectory? Like you you had mentioned that your dad was like, why do you need that? What was he thinking your your life would look like?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

My dad had was always had given people monikers. Like my brother was supposed to be a mechanic. He was very mechanical. And my my oldest brother, the one that also served a mission, my dad said he was going to be a laborer. And he had given us all titles of who of who we what we were supposed to be. And for me, I was supposed to be a salesman, which you know I am a salesman. So he got that right, I guess. I've I've talked, talk, talk. My brother-in-law, who was not as kind to me, always said that I was going to be a weatherman because all I do is talk and never say anything. So yeah, I was, I was supposed to talk and do sales and whatever. And so I guess I'm not that far off from what he said because I am social and things. But at the same time, when I went to school, he did, he did not approve of that. And when I graduated from UNLV, there was a long, long road for me. I didn't, I didn't, you know, I got through those first two semesters and I didn't, I didn't stay because I was not used to the structure of school. You know, when I when I was 22 years old going to UNLV for the first time, it was the first time I had attended a lecture, other than the Missionary Training Center. First time I'd ever attended a lecture. I had never taken a test before. We used Scantrons for testing. I had no idea what I was doing. Like someone had to explain to me how to use a Scantron, you know.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Fill in the bubbles. Fill in the bubbles. You know, I'd never filled in the bubbles. I had never, you know, they told me to bring these certain types of books and stuff. I, I mean, thank goodness for my sister-in-law, she helped me through so much. But the structure of school was really difficult for me. And so I got admitted to UNLV, I went to summer school, and then I quit. And I ended up taking this deviation where I became a flight attendant and I moved to Chicago and I started flying all over the world, which was such an important part of me growing up and uh, you know, growing my own ideas of opinions of life and things like that. And so I ended up in Chicago for several years. And I was in Chicago when 9-11 happened. I was on the tarmac at uh O'Hare Airport when the planes went into the World Trade Center and we were all stopped there. And you know, that's a whole story unto itself. And I write a lot about that, that whole experience in my book. But after that happened, I decided I need to return to school. And I came back to Las Vegas and went to UNLB and became and got serious about it. By the time I graduated with my degree in business administration, which, you know, that they say, what do you call someone who goes to school for 10 years? You call them doctor. Well, in my case, I went to school essentially for those for 10 years and got my degree in business administration. I was 33 years old when I graduated and married. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

Yeah, we had kind of a cool connection when we were talking earlier because you're September 11th. Everybody kind of knows where they were. I was in Chicago as well. And it was my first day of graduate school at Northwestern University. At the time, I was studying cancer biology. I coming from northern Minnesota, Chicago was a very different place and was just kind of trying to find my way. Ended up reaching out to a friend who I'd gone to high school at while I knew it from Bible Camp. We'd gone to different high schools, but we kind of kept in touch throughout the years. And he had moved to Salt Lake to work on the Olympics. And so I reached out to him and said, Hey, I'm starting this grad school program here in Chicago and not necessarily sure if it's the right thing. What did you decide to do with your math degree? And he's like, Oh, that's funny. I moved to Utah and I'm working on the Olympics. And while I've been here, I've been going to a different church, and you should check it out. And that that was kind of about it for me to want to learn more. And so I started learning more about the church and decided I was going to switch from graduate school programs and do toxicology instead. And so I switched to University of Rochester in upstate New York. And so then I I transferred up there. And then eventually I decided I didn't necessarily want a degree that would require me to get government grants all the time for my job. So I ended up quitting that PhD program as well. And so similarly, it took me a while. I eventually, so I after I'd quit that PhD program, I felt I should serve a mission. So I served Mission West 25. And then um eventually decided I would finally get a doctorate degree. And so I went to pharmacy school. But um it it took me a long time as well, a little bit over 10 years. But I did eventually get the doctor title.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

But you are doctorate, so that's good.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

That's a cool connection that we were both in Chicago at that time. I mean, it was as we were talking about it. It was such a surreal experience and just to be there in a place, you know, a large city, which also carried with it some fear that there could be an attack there as well. A beautiful, you know, America's second city. I always say that they're only I only think there are three you real cities in the US. There's New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Those are like the only three places where you could feel like you live in an urban, like live in an urban environment, a true urban city.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah. And I I I still love Chicago. It's one of my favorite places. And I think part of it is because it was so formative in my decision making and the trajectory of my life, really. Because choosing to just follow through on that friend who's like, you should check this out, has definitely changed everything for me.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Wow. I love Chicago too. And for me, it's the same reason. It was, it was a place where I was, where I was formed. And, you know, even though I had served a mission and done all these things, I think Chicago is where I really began to decide if I was going to live the gospel for, you know, my for myself. Because the mission's over. I've accomplished the thing that I had already set out to do. And now you start, you settle in and you say, wait a minute, am I really going to do this for the rest of my life? Do I really believe it to that extent? And I had all these friends, my flight attendant friends were so amazing. I have wonderful, wonderful friends that I still have to this day. I read about Tammy and Hector and some of the fun things that we did and the life that we were having. It was, it was an incredible, and you know, I I would equate that to most people's college experience when they go off to college and make friends and make these lifelong connections and things. That was that was Chicago for me as a flight attendant. But at the same time, you know, my friends, they didn't, they didn't have my faith. And so I was put in many situations where I had to decide, am I going to continue with my faith? And um, and and I had some I had some challenges during that time of my life too. And, you know, trying to balance out, hey, am I really going to live this? And it was so, so important. And so Chicago to me is all of those things growing up. It's like, like you said, my formation years of my early 20s.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Yeah. And then you finish your degree, and then now you're an entrepreneur. How did that come to be, that transition there?

SPEAKER_01 31:30

My wife and I were married when I was 31. And um, and you know, at that point, I had been working for Bank of America and I was a branch manager for Bank of America. And so many people going to school in business management, I was doing business administration. They're hoping to someday have the job that I already had. And I had worked my way up as a teller. I started as a teller because I heard they had tuition reimbursement. So when I came back to UNLV, I was like, oh, I need that tuition reimbursement. But I kept getting promoted and promoted. So by the time I graduated, I was I was a branch manager. And I almost wanted to give up because school had been so difficult so long. And I was taking night classes now. And my wife, who who is, who was who was finishing her graduate degree and getting ready to do her PhD was like, oh no, no, no. She was she was teaching at UNLV. It's funny because sometimes the tellers who worked for me, they would work for me in the day and they would go and take her her class at night because she taught business uh communications at UNLV. And so I'm, you know, my wife's a professor uh and uh I'm and I haven't graduated yet. So it was like, okay, the pressure's on. So I I did I did finish that degree and I'm very, very proud to have done that. But I kept moving up at Bank of America and became a regional manager for them, and then eventually wanted to start out on my own and took the opportunity that that that came to me to move into more financial services and insurance. And because inside of me, I have never, you know, so we're getting to the point where I can sort of connect the dots and say, hey, why am I who I am today? And so many people wish they could go back and change the past and regret things and what have you. And then and if I just focused on the individual things that happened in my life, there's so much that I could either regret or be angry about or want to change. But if I did, I wouldn't be here today. And so I have, you know, reaching this point in my life where I'm saying I embrace everything that brought me here. All the good, the bad, the abuse, the neglect, the lack of education gave me the drive to be different. And I am different. And it's and one of the things that makes me different than everyone else, and everyone has something that makes them different. One of the things that makes me different is that I I want to do it on my own, my way. And I just have this really strong entrepreneurial drive. And so I moved out on uh onto my own and started my my first company. It was called Sun City Financial. And the reason it was Sun City, the idea was that it's for seniors, you know, to serve the the needs of people who are going into retirement. And and then multiple startups have evolved since then. My most known company is Nouveau Health. And Nouveau Health is primarily in insurance for seniors. And we have multiple companies that are under that umbrella, the Medicare store, which has physical locations where people can come and get help with their Medicare throughout the Southwest, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. And we and then we have we have PlanFit, myplanfit.com. And with PlanFit, we service seniors all over the country and help them to make decisions about their about their health care. And it's not just like getting help, getting health insurance when you're a senior, making sure that it works. And so we have a 30-person service team that just helps people to when they have problems like like balanced billing or erroneous billing or or you know authorization issues with their HMO or whatever it is, we help them through those things. And we now have helped 75,000 people to with their Medicare or health insurance across the United States. And so it just sort of started with one thing and it then it turned into more things and more things and and grew and grew. But, you know, for me, my success in business goes back to the scrappy grit that I wouldn't have if I had didn't have to do it the hard way that I did.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Yeah. And I I love that your company works so hard to provide service to support people who may not have the needs that they have. I mean, obviously there's a financial component as well, but I feel like there's also that service side of trying to reach out to those who may not have the capability of being able to handle the things that are being that's are being thrown at them with their insurance and billing and all of the things.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Absolutely. And with Medicare, we we help everyone, all the way from, you know, the the most wealthy who who can pay for everything down to the people with Medicare and Medicaid who have welfare and can't afford anything, all of those, the whole strata, we we help all of those people with their with their Medicare uh issues and concerns.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

I love that. So the title of the book is Hiding from the School Bus. And then instead of hiding, you've you've written the book about it. And so you've come out of hiding. And what was that like for you to be able to say, okay, hey, I'm I'm recognizing, maybe going back to what you were just talking about, I'm recognizing how these hardships and these difficulties have blessed me in their own way. And now I want to share. I don't want to hide anymore. I want to share that so that I can help others recognize the similar things in their own lives.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

Well, you know, I we started with asking the question, what are you hiding and what are you hiding from? And I've realized that what you're what you hide, what you hide is what you fear, and what you hide from is what you fear. And it's internal, external. So there were internal things that I feared and external things that I feared. Internally, I feared that I wasn't good enough. And it took me a long time, and I'm still in healing, I'm still in recovery, believe me. But it took me a long time to open up my heart and look inside and say, I am okay the way I am, I'm good the way I am, and I can love myself. And so for what I was hiding mostly from the world is that I didn't think I was good enough and I didn't love myself. What, and then what I feared on the outside and what I was hiding from was uh approval. I was afraid I was afraid that I would not receive approval from people. And people pleasing is is very dangerous. And you get to the point where you don't know who you are and you become fractured into a million pieces. And I've been there in my life where I have been fractured into a million pieces and have tried to satisfy everyone around me because I want their approval so badly. And I want to fit in or be normal or whatever it is. And so hiding from the school bus for me is kind of uh a pinnacle at that time in my life. And I hope that there will be more peaks that I continue to reach. But at this, at you know, at 50 years old, this was a pinnacle for me to open myself up and to share my true journey with the world and with everyone. And when I did that, some of my close friends, you know, I have my one of my closest friends, Wayne. I write about Wayne in the book. He's like my brother, and we were roommates in my in my late 20s, and we still go on family vacation every summer. We take our his, he has kids the similar age to my kids. We're both older dads, you know, I'm 50, but I have an eight-year-old daughter. So we we take our kids and we we go on vacation every summer together still. So we're close friends. But when he read the book, he said, Oh my gosh, Calvin, I just didn't. I've known you for a long time. I've lived with you for years and years. We've talked about a lot of things, and we both have come from crazy families, and so we can relate on things. I had no idea. I didn't know so much of this. And you know, it's it's hard. Like, how do you tell someone all of this story? And it's actually not as hard as it sounds. It sounded hard to me, but this was the point in my life where I could be completely open and could share where I came from with the world with it with a couple of different hopes. I hope my first hope is to um is that it can be something that my my own family and the people close to me will understand. And I can and I've documented my journey and me breaking this this cycle and something they can be very proud of. And then my second hope, of course, is that someone else can be can be influenced and can say, you know what, I you're right. I'm gonna take a little risk and I'm going to let out what's inside of me and not hide it anymore. And I have found in business that this has been very beneficial to me. In personal relationships, this has been very per very, very good for me. So just opening myself up has allowed people to see me as a person and to connect with me and allowed me to also uh let down b walls and barriers. So it's been um an incredible experience to share my story with the world.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

Thank you. What you were saying there got me thinking about a song lyric, and so I had to look it up because it's something that I've related to. We've talked a little bit offline about how we have similar but very different experiences in our lives. And there's a song that I was thinking about that it just popped into my head while you were talking. And um, so I I'll just read a couple of the lyrics. It says, Listen to the music. I want you to know that the storm is over. You were feeling clueless, but it all it took was finding a four-leaf clover. And now you're home. You're safe right now, and your family is happy. Your family you have now, right? It goes to show that nothing lasts forever. I wish you knew of what was waiting. It's all for you. Don't feel so jaded. You made it to June, and the sun is coming out. Look at you now. You're alive. Look at you now, you're all right. And what songs is amazing. It's called Look at You Now by Gabriella B. It's a pretty kind of unknown independent artist, but yeah, it's something where when I first heard, I was like, wow, this it ties in so much with my childhood. Can you read that first line again? Yeah. Um, listen to the music. I want you to know that the storm is over. Yeah, right there.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Cause that's where I've been at the last three or four years is realizing he says, listen, the storm is over. And the thing that happens inside of us is that there's this great book called The Body Keeps the Score, where it talks about how the body reacts to trauma and it keeps, it doesn't realize that the storm is over. The more and farther and farther I would go, you know, with with every measure of quote unquote success, I became a bishop for the church. I became an entrepreneur, became successful in business, had bought a wonderful place for my family to live, a beautiful home. And, you know, I'm I'm having, and now I have my family and I have the success of a wife who loves me and two children who adore, I adore and adore me and look up to me, and we have this wonderful life, but my body thinks we're still in the storm. My mind is racing like we're still in the storm. And it it took me a while to wake up from that, and it took some professional help as well, to wake up and say, wait a minute, the storm is over, but I'm acting like I'm still in the storm. And that's kind of the place that I have been the last few years is to, you know, I can look at the full journey and say, wow, I'm so far removed, and it's incredible how far I've come and I'm and I'm and I'm but I but at the same time, I keep running and I keep running and I keep running like I'm like I'm still being chased or like there's something bad right around the corner, you know. And uh that's the internal part that you have to struggle with and to find ways to help your body realize that the storm is over.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

Yeah. Exactly. In the dedication of your book, you say that and to the boy who hid from the school bus, you were always worth saving. And I love that. What else would you tell that young boy?

SPEAKER_01 42:53

I would tell him that he's perfect the way he is and that he's not efficient. So when I wrote that that dedication of the book, I cried. I mean, that I felt like those words came to me almost as divine, where God was telling me that that, hey, you you were you were worth it. Every one of us is worth it. But, you know, sometimes we we get caught in our own way. There's a book that I that I love, a secular book, but but a spiritual teacher. It's called The The Power of Now by Eckert Tolle. Eckert Tolle is uh kind of a spiritualist and uh and he he takes you know things from all different religions and sort of formulates them. And I I've I've found a lot of great teachings in his books. And one of them is that we identify ourselves with our mind. And I find this to be very related to what I believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is that our body and our mind is something that God created for us in his image, that we can come and receive this mortal experience and receive a mortal body. But I also believe that we have a spirit that and our spirit and our body together make the soul of man. But we begin to Believe that our thinking is us and that all of our thinking is us. And he says, Eckhart Tolle says that we are identified with our mind, meaning we think we are our mind, but our mind is a tool for us to use. It's a physical tool, but we have a spirit. And so he talks about observing the mind. He's like, you can't outthink your own thinking because then your mind is still in control. And so you just need to observe. And that has been a great blessing for me to when I begin to feel anxiety. And that's the he separates it as the mind and the mind body, but basically the mind and the body. When I begin to feel anxiety in in my body and I feel shortness of breath or something like that, when I start to feel my mind racing and thinking and thinking and overthinking, or, you know, when you when you're talking with someone and you're thinking about what you're going to say instead of thinking about what instead of listening to what they're saying and all these things, it's like your mind and your body just running, running, running. And it's not like you can outthink it. And so what he says is just observe it, that you aren't the mind and you aren't the body, but you're the observer of the mind and the body. And to me, that's the spirit. And so I allow my spirit or that other presence to observe what I'm feeling, to observe what I'm thinking, and that tends to just calm everything down and I can return to this moment right here.

SPEAKER_00 45:12

I love that. And I think that can be really hard to do, actually, for me anyway. But there is such a power in observation of what's going on and trying to take that step back and thinking about things from an eternal perspective is so important. I have one final question, which is always kind of the last question on this podcast. Is that one purpose of pebbles of light is to celebrate those relationships that have helped to brighten our path and in turn help us to light the paths of others? And could you share about one or two people who've placed a pebble of light in your path?

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Well, I've I've shared a little bit about Julie. Julie was definitely placed a pebble of light in my path, which is the light of you can learn, you can um achieve, you can, you can go to school. Um without her, there's no way I could have done it. I would not have been able to to get into college and and and I it would have changed the direction of my life. And so Julie for me was definitely a pebble of light. And I'm so, so, so grateful to her. There are there are many others, you know. There was there were my the at the time that I was a flight attendant, there was Tammy and Hector. They for me were pebbles of light to just accept me and love me for who I was. They didn't care whether or not I went to church on Sunday. They didn't care whether or not I was, you know, educated or not educated or anything. They were my friends and they taught me what true friendship is is about. And so I I love and appreciate them. And then I would I would be remiss if I didn't say that my wife was probably more like a you know a giant stone of light.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

A North Star of Light who has has, you know, been willing to take on someone as damaged and messed up as I could be. She's from this idyllic family in eastern Idaho, and she was student body president at school. She's loves everyone, is kind to everyone. She had a full ride scholarship to college. Like she did all, she was, she was perfect, right? And I'm damaged, I'm damaged goods, I'm kind of messed up, and you know, I'm still figuring things out. It's messy. And she has loved me through through every bit of it, and I would not be who I am without her.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

Wonderful. So, where can people find out more about you or find the book? All of those things. If people want to learn more, where should they go?

SPEAKER_01 47:37

So you can look up the book at hidingfromthschoolbus.com. It's also available everywhere that books are sold uh online or or what have you. It's on, you know, Amazon, Barnes Noble, and Walmart or wherever you buy books. Most people Amazon. The audiobook is especially incredible. It was read by an incredible voice actor. Believe me, you wouldn't have to listen to my voice for for eight hours. I thought about reading it and I was like, oh no, this is a skill. This is really something. The audiobook on Audible is amazing. Uh, the book itself is an Amazon bestseller and has has been critically acclaimed. But you know what? It's not for everybody. It works like it works like my mind. My mind sees everything all at once, everywhere, all the time. And so some people have said, wait a minute, this book isn't linear. Well, if you want a linear book, it's not a textbook. I never was good at textbooks. It's not linear, but if but instead, I think it's I think it's very interesting and it's a very artistic piece that that that kind of flows all at the same time. So you get you get everything happening all at once, and that's not for everybody, but it has been uh very well received, and you can find it pretty much anywhere that that uh books are sold online.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

Awesome. Thank you, Calvin, so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 48:54

Calvin's story shows us that sometimes the very things we once wanted to hide become the most powerful parts of our story. From learning to read as a child who hid from the school bus to building businesses and helping thousands of people, his journey reminds us that growth often happens in unexpected ways. One of the most powerful moments in today's conversation was Calvin's realization that sometimes our bodies keep running like the storm is still happening, even when life has changed. His story is a reminder that healing is not only about moving forward, but also about learning to recognize when the storm has passed. This episode's pebble is to think about one challenge in your life that shaped who you are today. Take a moment to write down how that experience may have strengthened you in ways that you didn't see at the time. Be sure to check the show notes for more information about Calvin, his book, and ways to support Pebbles of Light through Patreon and BuzzSprout. And as always, thank you so much for being part of this community. Thank you for tuning in. My hope is that something helped you feel seen, encouraged, or inspired to bring light to someone else. If a name or moment stood out, don't let it pass. Reach out, express gratitude, or take that next step. You can connect with me anytime on socials at Pebbles of Light or at anMaxon.com. If this episode was meaningful for you, please follow the show, rate or review, and share it with someone who might need a lift today. And if you want to go a step farther, you can support the show on Patreon. See you next time.