Later in Life

Greg Fine: From Proving Himself to Finding Himself

• Broadway Bob

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 36:12

Greg Fine spent years chasing success, leadership, and the next milestone. Then a personal crisis forced him to reconsider everything he thought achievement was supposed to bring.

In this episode, Greg shares the story of rebuilding his life on his own terms, finding purpose beyond titles, embracing adventure, and learning that there's a difference between being relevant and knowing you matter. It's an honest conversation about reinvention, resilience, and having the courage to jump.

Follow Greg Fine: 

Follow Broadway Bob: 

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to Later in Life, the podcast about reinvention, rediscovery, and the courage to begin again. I'm Bob Bullen. My guest today is someone I've known for nearly two decades. Greg Fine. Greg first entered my life when he moved to Chicago and sublet the apartment that my husband and I were leaving, and we became fast friends. And it didn't take long to realize that Greg was the kind of person who never sat still. Anyone who meets Greg quickly realizes a couple of things. He's a natural leader, and he's one of the most extroverted people you'll ever encounter. He's positive, curious about people, and always looking towards what's next. He's also a fascinating combination of being a deeply authentic human and an unapologetic business nerd. He's an entrepreneur, folks. In all my years in corporate America, Greg is the only person I've ever heard use the word synergy without making me absolutely roll my eyes. Because the way he describes it in relationship to his life really makes a lot of sense. What I didn't fully appreciate until this conversation was how much of Greg's life had been shaped by the belief that he needed to be the best version of himself at all times, the capable one, the successful one, the dependable one, the person others can count on. As a gay man growing up in a world that didn't always make space for him, Greg internalized a lesson that many LGBTQ and other marginalized people often recognized. If you're going to be different, you'd better be exceptional. During our conversation, Greg references this book, The Best Little Boy in the World. It's a landmark memoir about growing up gay and trying to overcome differences through achievement and excellence. It's a theme that resonates deeply with his own story. For much of his life, Greg measured himself against expectations, both real and imagined, and worked tirelessly to meet them. But life has a way of interrupting even the strongest momentum. A major personal crisis forced Greg to stop, reassess, and rebuild, and we talk about that. And what emerged wasn't simply a recovery, it was a reevaluation of what success meant. Rather than continuing to live according to who he thought others expected him to be, Greg began building a life that reflected what he actually wanted. Today, he works remotely while traveling the world, guest lectures, coaches executives, and continues doing what he's always done best, connecting with people wherever he goes. The difference is that now those choices are driven less by obligation and more by intention. Because Greg is usually somewhere on a safari exploring a new city or settling into some villa halfway around the world, we don't get many chances to catch up. So this conversation became an excuse to reconnect, reflect, and explore what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime performing excellence decides to define success on their own terms. Now, before we begin, a few content notes. This episode includes discussions of depression, major depressive disorder, and suicidal ideation. If those topics are difficult for you, please take care while listening. Now here's my conversation with Greg Fine. Well, Greg, welcome to Later in Life. I know I know you very well, but for the people listening, tell us who you are.

SPEAKER_00

I'm a gay kid from Montana. I grew up I grew up in Missoula, Montana, um, in Missoula, which is the home of the University of Montana. Very middle class kid, I would say in many ways. We had a very similar upbringing, you know, families that were known and good and and uh you know our parents loved us and we both we both turned out to be gay. Um oh I hope I didn't I hope I didn't break the the they know your thing. You know, and and so I I always say I I I you know I grew up this just this you know upper middle class kid in Montana who always had kind of a wonder lust. And when I was in kindergarten, I have a picture of me in kindergarten. I think you've seen it, Bob, and it's um it's me holding a guinea pig, but then we're talking 19 early 1970s here, and I'm wearing a turtleneck and a sport coat to kindergarten. I mean, I was rocking the 1970s executive stuff.

SPEAKER_01

I think I have seen this. Was the sport coat like um was it was a plaid?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, of course it's 1970, like 1975. Of course it's plaid, you know. And yeah, you know, I I think I've always sort of had that persona of being a leader. When I at one point when I became a CEO for the first time, I had people reach out from my from my youth and say, Greg, you were the CEO of the playground. Um, you have always been sort of the CEO of the convener. And and I'm like, oh, bossy. And they go, Yeah, but it's different than that. When I was in fifth grade, my uh I decided that I thought all the parents of my friends should know each other. So my birthday party when I was in the fifth grade were all the parents and my friends as a fifth grader, right? So I'm a I my whole life I've always been a connector. I was always called the mayor of my town. When I was a little kid, I would have um I would know all the little old ladies and I would go have tea with them. I literally would have my tea, my tea circuit in the neighborhood. I love that.

SPEAKER_01

I can totally picture that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, right. I mean, it's you know, then they probably didn't know I was, you know, gay or I was just they were just, oh, look at this special kid. And and so, you know, who who am I? I've always just been this, this, this kid that's on a on a journey. I'm adopted. Um, I found out I was adopted when I was um in second grade. Uh my mom sat me down and said, Greg, there's something I need to tell you. And I said, Okay. And she said, You're adopted, there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. And I went, wait a minute, there's no Easter bunny?

SPEAKER_01

And Santa Claus, you figured out, but Easter bunny you had it at that point.

SPEAKER_00

You know, um, and so I think, you know, if you were to look at my story or my my journey in life, there's been a lot of times and a lot of things in my life where there were moments where it could have gone positive or negative. I I I've dealt with my entire life. I have dealt with a degree of depression my whole life. Um and it got luckily, it got identified when I was quite young, um, you know, in elementary school, and and I've had some great therapy around that. And I've I've dealt with it. I've I've had incredible highs. I mean, I was elected to the school board when I was 18 and in high school, and um, you know, and then have been places where you wonder if the darkness is gonna win. I really do live the the the analogy that every day is a gift. I really believe that. But some gifts you want to return. And so what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? Well, because I mean, we all get the gift we don't want, the ugly Christmas sweater, the the the you're like, do you even know me? And so if you try to live a life that every day is a gift and that we have to appreciate every gift, you can't. That's a polyannic. Yeah, but you can be but you can live a life that says, wow, this is awesome that I'm here, but if you have enough days that you want to return them, then you have to think about the change. And so I I think your pre, you know, your premise of the the call of this podcast, you know, this later in life, when you you finally listen to all those, pay attention to all those gifts you return and go, you know what, I want to change what people are giving me. I want to change what life is giving me. Yeah, and if you have the luxury, the privilege of being able to do that, to to to really make some change, that's that's pretty powerful. And yeah, that was a really long answer to the question of tell us about where you're from.

SPEAKER_01

So let's let's back up a little bit. Let's back up a little bit and talk about how we first met. Because you talk about how you travel a lot. You've always been the kind of a wanderer and you've always been someone up for new experiences. When I first met you, I want to I want to know what your first like memory of me is. But my first memory of you is you had just moved to Chicago, I believe, and were looking to move, and you had just like basically uprooted your life and came to Chicago with a new job. You already felt like someone who like lived there for a long time when I met you. Like you already seemed connected, you already seemed like ready to go. And I remember just being so impressed by your energy. Because for people who like the people who don't know, like you you rented our apartment from us that we were trying to sublet at that time, and you're looking for a place to land. And that's how we met you. And I was like, this guy has more energy than anyone I've ever met. You were just like bouncing off the walls.

SPEAKER_00

So I do. I remember that night perfectly. I remember knocking on the door, I remember walking in, and I walked into the apartment, and I was like, Oh, I love this apartment. Oh, this is perfect. But I also loved it because you had painted that one wall in the apartment that bright orange or orange red.

SPEAKER_01

It was this just uh and my that's early 2000s aesthetic, right?

SPEAKER_00

Oh my god, it was awesome. But my you probably remember it, you remember I had a chair with that color in it. That color was a was one of my primary colors. I loved it. And I didn't repaint. In fact, the the 10 years I lived in that apartment, the whole time I lived in that apartment, I never touched that wall. It didn't get repainted until I moved out of the apartment. So we we basically pretty quickly were like, yep, I'll take the apartment. I love it, it's good. As I left, I remember it was either you or Gator, but I remember maybe going, or I turning in and going, Yeah, we should do dinner or something. This was this was great. You were one of my first Chicago friendships. You and Gator were one of the first. Um, because I did move to Chicago because of my my career, and I knew I knew hundreds of people in Chicago professionally.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so we're gonna skip ahead a little bit and talk about where you are now and how you got there. There was a long period of time that I knew you, that you were an executive working in an office, and now you're a consultant traveling the world, and you seem to have had this big mental shift. You seem, you seem like you've opened up in some way. And I know there's a lot that happened between the that period of time. I know there's this particular instance, if you're comfortable talking about it, that I I want to talk about. But I know that you moved to Michigan um during the pandemic, and you made this big life change. Can you talk about what happened and where you are today?

SPEAKER_00

I there was a great book that I read um back in my early 20s, and it was called The Best Little Boy in the World. I don't know if you're familiar with that book, but it's written, it's written by a gay man who is Catholic and who was always trying to be the best little boy. The best little boy for his parents, the best little boy for the church, the best little boy. It's you know, now it's a dated book, but it at the time it really, I remember reading it in my, I think I read it in my late 20s or early 30s, and I was like, yep, that's me. And I and at the time I was like, cool, like I understand it, I I accept it. So my my whole life has start started as, you know, again, this gay kid in Montana who was always just trying to prove that he was worth something to the world. And so I had created a career, a path, a career path that was the sort of the representative of how you do it in my industry, the association world. Bigger, better, more. I had my entire life was focused on being a CEO, being a corporate nine to five guy. And um, and then when COVID hit, and I um I I decamped to Michigan, to the to my house in Michigan, which was supposed to be a weekend home, but turned into my home home. The whole my whole world collapsed during COVID in a pretty dark way. Um, I am almost a dysfunctional extrovert. Um, I have to work through people. So COVID for me was was mentally and physically dangerous. I mean, it it it and and it was good. I mean, I I I dealt with that. I would get out. I exercised more than I ever did because I had to get out of the house. Of course, that was fun. March, you know, freezing cold friggin' March and April in Michigan is not a pleasant time to go for walks in the mornings. And I got through 2020 and 2020 was really tough. And then at the end of 2020, I had an absolute crisis happen. I um I became the victim of a cyber blackmail attempt. Um, and they came after me and they they threatened everything I'd spent by that point, 50 years building, well, 30 years building, because the first 10 years I built Lincoln Locks, I got pretty dark. I mean, it got really dark. I was sitting in the Michigan house between Christmas and New Year's wondering whether or not I should put plastic down. I mean, that's where I was. I was I was done. I was ready, I was ready for life to be over to make the hair hurt go away. Obviously, that didn't happen. I'm still here, and basically what happened is I got angry and I got emotionally angry, and I have enough trigger warnings in me to deal with anger. So that's how I that's how I survive. I get angry, which then forces me to then deal with being angry. January came and I'm like, okay, uh I think everything I thought I wanted. I don't know if I want that. I I really don't know. About mid uh end of May, I exited my company uh and exited my day job, and I took some time and I just thought about the world and I thought about what I wanted out of Michigan. It was interesting because the rabbits in my yard never quite understood why I wanted to have staff meetings with them every day. But I had this huge, I had this huge um this huge weight lift off of me. I learned a few things. I learned that gardening is not something that gives me any level of peace. I want plants, but I don't, you know, some people gardening like they love it, right? They just they're out there. Not me. I just hated it. I'm like, can I just can I just get the damn flower boxes fit? Yep, can I just go over to Sawyer Garden Center, buy them and put them in? Can I pay someone? Pretty much can I outsource this? And so I had you know, Bob, I had to figure out what I wanted to do. So the the the thing when you say it just seemed like whom in 2022, all of a sudden you're making all these decisions. They were really quite deliberate with a lot of conversation with myself and others during 2021.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And it's it started with what do I want to do for a living? Like what what what do I want to do? Do I what what do I care about? What do I like? And it became very clear to me I didn't want a full-time, I didn't want a full-time dedicated job. I'm a consultant now, I have a full-time job, but I didn't want a nine, I didn't want to, well, CEO, it's never nine to five. I but I didn't want the everyone every day counting on me every day. I didn't want that. I know that I'd always loved travel. I mean, you knew that about me. I think you that probably became pretty clear early on, you know, if you saw the part of my apartment and just my my space, and I sat down and I just said, okay, how how is this gonna happen? What's this gonna be?

SPEAKER_01

I appreciate you sharing that about yourself in terms of the the dark period you went through. And I wasn't sure how much you wanted to talk about that, but I I don't know if I knew how how much it was a driver for what you changed and how you changed your life. I guess I didn't make that connection. I think it speaks to your your your character and the fact that you activated versus regressing and you said, what can I do in this situation? Where can I find control? And I think as we get older and as we as we kind of learn more about ourselves, it's easy, I think, to um model your life after what's known and comfortable. And you went for the thing that is unknown in a lot of ways. Did you have someone whose life that you you thought this could look like? Or were you kind of going just based on like a vision of what you thought it could be?

SPEAKER_00

So the answer there is there were a number of people. And so, you know, the first the first catalyst was when I realized that when I was sitting in Michigan contemplating ending my life, I was contemplating ending my life because somebody threatened my public identity tied to my job that I had spent all this time curating this public identity, this Greg Fine, this this strong, you know, leader, this person who people want to follow, inspirational, all of that. And somebody threatened that and came at me. And I was so scared of losing that and letting my, you know, letting my mom down, and again, best little boy in the world, right? Letting all these people down, and you know, how could I recover from it? And when I got through that, and I I I did have somebody in my space that I reached out to during that moment, and I I called her and I said, I'm in trouble. And I remember she said, What's up going on? And I said, I almost killed myself. And there was this dead silence, and she goes, and she was not anywhere near Michigan. She goes, Do you do I need to come? I mean, this is December of 2020. She was like, Do I need to come? And I go, No, she goes, Do I need to call somebody? No, I'm okay. I promise, I'm okay. She said, Good. And she talked me through it. And she asked me, she asked me, you know, I told her about the blackmail, I told her what they were doing, and she she laughed. I'll never forget this. She laughed. But her laugh was the laugh I needed to hear because of who she was as a human. And it was that it was that moment of humor, that moment of human connection, and that moment of understanding it. And she goes, and Greg, more important, Greg, you do know there's hundreds of people. Hundreds, she didn't say 10. She said there's hundreds of people that you have helped, there's hundreds of people that you have trust. There are hundreds of people that all you have to do is ask, and your army will be activated.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And we will be there for you. You are not alone. And what was fascinating over the next six days, I got texts from people. And I found out later that this good friend of mine simply reached out to people and said, Greg's an extrovert. He's going crazy in Michigan. He needs to hear from you. That's all she said. She didn't say Greg's in trouble. She what was me? She knew me, right? Everybody who knows me, I'm an extrovert. So I was getting memes. I got I got a family reading the night before Christmas. I got I got all these things that told me, Bob, that there's an army of people who say you matter. And if you matter, if you matter, then life is worth fighting for. And so so then I was like, okay, what do I do? Then I started, I I talked to some consultants that I respected and said, How do you build a practice? Because I'm still type A, right? How do I build a practice? What is what does it look like? How much revenue do you think I can get? How do you get clients? You know, I'm very technical. Then then I was like, okay, I can't be a consultant and live in Michigan, uh, in Sawyer, Michigan, because the airport's too far. It's just too, it's just too and the and the market was so crazy. The market when I put my house on the market was so crazy. So I'm like, this is the top of the market. We're selling, baby. We're getting out of here.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and then I needed to decide to where to go. And I needed a good airport. I needed no snow. I wanted mountains. I wanted no snow. I wanted to get back to um closer to my family, no snow. And I had some good friends, some very, very dear friends that ended up relocating to Phoenix during COVID. So they were here. I knew a couple people here. It's a place I enjoyed, checked all the boxes to support me in my change. Yeah. And I've always considered now Arizona is simply base camp. It's not my home. My home is wherever I happen to be and where I'm with people, but it is my base camp and it's where it anchors me.

SPEAKER_01

Talk a little bit about travels with Greg, because I know it's kind of an outline, it's an outbranch of kind of this new philosophy you've you've kind of cultivated around your work and life and travel. Tell me a little bit about that and how it ties into what your this like next phase of your life has been. How did it, how did it come about? And what is it?

SPEAKER_00

So basically, it really comes down to, and you remember this before Instagram and everything else, but I was an early adopter, adapter of Facebook. And so I would always be posting my travels whenever I would travel even for a work or things on Facebook, right? And I would get people who'd be like, Oh, I really wish I could travel like you, really wish I could travel like Greg. The the name came out of people just being stopped posting on Facebook, telling us how fabulous your life is.

SPEAKER_01

Traveling is a skill, Greg. It is such a skill. I'm I am such a bad traveler because I overpack everything, I don't plan very well. I just I'm very much like, well, show up and see what happens, and it never works out. I like I don't I'm surprised you don't have a personal assistant to help you like figure out where you're going because you are everywhere all at once at the same time. It feels like it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00

You were not wrong, you're not wrong. And by the way, I can help people like you. So travel, travel like Greg, really, as I began to to think about being a consultant and having that as my primary income and my primary way to do it was I did have this passion for travel. So I was looking at all the other influencers out there. A lot of, I mean, God, there's a gazillion influencers, right? I mean, it's just you know, and I was actually on a cruise with a with a with a major influencer at the time. And I was like, oh, very cool. I was like, I think they're an influencer, and they were. And at one night I said, Hey, would you like would you like to join me for dinner and traveling by myself? But you can't bring your camera. Just you and me. And they said they kind of looked at me like, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't bring my camera. I go, nope. So they agreed and we had dinner, and I learned the life of being a real influencer sucks. I mean, it is people, I think people think if you just throw up a couple of videos on Instagram and you suddenly or TikTok, you're suddenly a sensation. No, once you become a sensation, it has to be fed. And it was interesting to have the conversation with this individual about their journey and how they were burning out because travel and influence was no longer, there was no joy in it. It was all work.

SPEAKER_01

Well, what did what did you learn from that? How did that how did that help you?

SPEAKER_00

So so what that so what that did for me is I realized right away that travel like Greg was not designed now as a monetization tool. My niche, my travel like Greg niche is really great. I've got, I'm just about to approach 1400 followers there. I'm growing organically, I don't owe anything to anyone. I could just share my content. I don't care what my views are. Yeah. And so it really was designed. Travel like Greg really was designed to just be me sharing my travel. And if you like it, you follow me. But but also as an entrepreneur, because I have an entrepreneur's heart and soul, yeah, I wanted to lay the foundation in case I ever did want. monetize it in case travel like Greg become if decide I don't want to do management consulting anymore. I've built the platform to be able to monetize travel like Greg if that's something that I want to do.

SPEAKER_01

I love it because we not only do we get to see your amazing photos and like be like, where the hell are you and are you safe, Greg fine where you are right now? Not only is it to like look at it and be jealous and and see the beautiful places you are and like be inspired, but it's also like your personal mantra. It's kind of like your philosophy for where you are right now. And I want to I want you to talk a little bit around what that feels like. Do you feel like you are in the place you're meant to be right now.

SPEAKER_00

No question. And and what it is is that I've achieved synergy in my life. So I joke that it's not a joke. It's actually true that I have just enough expensive travel books that I've only put a deposit down on that forces me to keep working because I still need to work. I I'm too type A and I like my work. And I have enough big chunks of travel on the schedule that makes it impossible for me to work too much as a management consultant. Because I understand myself I would if I only have one thing to throw myself into I throw myself into it 180%. I threw myself 180% into being an association CEO and when somebody threatened to take that away from me I didn't know what to do. And so I want a life that is about a third management consultant well you know a management consulting speaking whatever that is travel travel advising and then I just call it aimless wandering. So what you don't see what you don't see in the kind of curated world that I still do because that's just who I am is the times I just sit still it might be on a beach in Fiji. It might be it might be that I had a day or two in Des Moines, Iowa I was always fighting to find balance balance between being the CEO, the staff balance to be the travel balance to take care of family. It's another thing too I I now have the ability that I go work I go to Montana you know I just get in the car I'll drive to Montana and spend two weeks in Montana so that I could be present in the lives of my mom and dad yeah on stepdad. I'm still working you know people are like oh I'm sorry to invade I'm sorry to invade your safari on vacation no I don't have vacation I have synergy the thing I love that you said is you've kind of you know for another consulting term you've created your own forcing function.

SPEAKER_01

You're not going to work too hard because you've packed your travel in and you have to pay for that travel by working. So you've got to create this this like this cyclical thing that seems like it's working out really well for you. I want to talk about your travels like what are some like give me like two of the most interesting people you've met.

SPEAKER_00

So one of the most interesting people that I met is Mara who I've built the lead who I've built the leadership leap with my I met Mara on my one of my first uh Atlas Ocean Voyages small yeah and leadership leap is kind of a it's like a uh executive coaching enterprise it's actually a new it's actually an executive retreat experience it's a it's a whole way it's a whole new way to create a uh a leadership retreat that's just what's called a leadership leap I see okay so Mara is Mara is actually someone you should interview for this podcast so she is the former travel editor for Bonapatite she is a senior she was a senior executive inside of Condé Nast and she I mean her experience her stories are amazing and she became and positioned herself as a master of taste and tradition her food knowledge her her love of adventure and travel and so she has thinking that every taste has a tradition every tradition has a taste and she she does these I met her she does these she was the culinary expert on the cruises and we've cruised a couple times since and I have brought her in a couple times with clients to do what's called a table journey where you sit around the table and you use food and the metaphor of food to create connections with people that maybe they they don't see coming. So I always say it creates connections that no trust fall can ever create. So she definitely is one of the most interesting people that I've met on my what's another one one more yeah I'm oh god there's been there's been so many it was oh this was years ago this was before I even moved to Chicago and I was on a windjammer barefoot cruise company doesn't even exist we were in the Caribbean and uh there was this woman on the cruise she was 96 wow she was blind in one eye still driving which was terrifying from Atlanta and she was amazing and her the story she told and growing up and being that old and her her husband when he asked her to marry him and she went to her mother and she said I you know so and so wants to marry me her mother says you can't marry him she goes why and she goes because you're a terrible cook and wives have to cook now think about 90 years right we're talking like you know well so she went to her wannabe fiance she said my mother says I can't marry you and he said why because I can't cook he says we'll eat out and they ate out dinner they had dinner out every night of their entire lives wow brava do you remember her name Evelyn Evelyn yeah we love Evelyn they decided they were going to do lunch on this beach so we we anchor the ship and they they're taking food back and forth and it's time to go to the beach to have lunch and they say you can go to the beach one of two ways you can jump in the water and swim ashore or we'll take you ashore in the boat. And if you swim ashore just throw some you know we'll have a towel and some dry clothes and you know and so we're all like we're gonna jump in the water and I look over and Evelyn is standing at the side of the boat 96 years old blind in one eye and she said she said okay everybody when I jump remember I'm blind I'll never forget this I'm blind in one eye so somebody needs to swim in front of me so I can see your feet kicking in the water and I'll just follow you to shore and we're all like Evelyn should you and then she jumped she jumped and then she's like let's go everybody and I I I just I remember I I've always remembered about how at night in her night you know in her 80s when her husband died she could have retreated into life and she didn't she went and explored and she jumped and for me I've always been don't wait until you're 96 to jump.

SPEAKER_01

I love Evelyn I love that story.

SPEAKER_00

And what is something you've learned about yourself so I think I think the thing that I've learned the most about transit about transitioning to being a consultant and and and and this journey and watching people follow me and reach out to me and build the connections you know I've always I've always felt that people valued me but I think I often thought it was more transactional that they valued me because I did something for them. Right. Because what's interesting you know you and Gator never really saw the Greg side except publicly maybe on LinkedIn you always I mean the Greg fine the Gregory J. Fine side you always knew Greg. You just do Greg. And and my circle of people who just know Greg is actually really small. It's really small. It's always been really small. And so for me I've always I I spent my life Bob trying to prove to everybody and show everybody that I was relevant. What I figured out particularly in the last two years is that I matter and that's a different thing than being relevant because I had to get to the point where I realized I matter to me that I'm not doing any of this for anyone else. I'm doing it for me and if I do it for me and I'm and I'm strong and I'm secure in me that I'm to me then I can give lots to others you know it's if you think about the travel metaphor is you have to put your own mask oxygen mask on first. Yeah we all say we try to do that but boy most people are terrible about that they're really terrible but I'm done I'm done I'm done chasing relevance and I'm just focusing on you know do I matter and then I open myself up to realizing who I matter to that was the really interesting thing is I began to realize that there's all these people who it's not fake. They're authentic like I matter to them and because I matter to them I they matter to me and it's it's a weird word but it it it it's it to me it's a really powerful word. So do you feel in your traveling that you're meeting people who are kind of in the same journey you are of like they've like kind of uprooted their lives and are taking like a big swing do you do you feel you're meeting people who kind of are meeting you where you are right now that might have helped you realize this thing that you know most of the people that I meet on my travels because I'm not a 20 year old backpacker living in hostels I'm not either and you're not you know I'm I'm I'm past that phase if I try to go to a hostel now they'll be like sir get out why are you a creepy old man get out or no so I I would actually say that the majority of people that I meet in my travels are actually people who are still searching. They're on vacation. You know what's what's interesting is the I I often find myself in situations where people are very curious about what I'm building and I'll end up in conversations late in the evening whether it's around the safari fire or the lounge on a ship or standing on the Nile or whatever with these sort of with a lot of people in their 40s mid-40s who um just they want to talk. They want me to tell my story and then it starts into a conversation about finding the courage to to to do it find you know positioning yourself. And I I joke that my father my dad um who was a an amazing man he was a really hard man to like pretty easy guy to love but he was magic. And I remember him sitting down with me one time when I was very young. I don't at that time he didn't know I was gay and he told me call me Igor my nickname with him was Igor because that's the middle of Gregory and he was the only one who ever called me Igor and so he looked at me and we were at at a restaurant having dinner the mayor had just the mayor of the town had just stopped by the table to say hello to my dad. He looked at me and he said Igor you're not gonna have an easy life and I I looked at him I said okay I was a fat you know I was a fat old kid then but I didn't know I was you know I didn't know I was gay even and he go I go why he goes because you're magic and magic people don't have easy lives but if you find the other magic people that's the key to success that's the key to happiness. How old were you?

SPEAKER_01

I was probably seven or eight what a what a a philosophical thing to say to an eight year old.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah well my dad also really liked did you understand what that meant when he said that not really but it did but it was so you know and he also drank a lot so he was probably drunk but anyway but but here's what's really fascinating what I have found in the last few years is that so everyone called my dad father fine because everyone would go to him for advice my dad was really good about giving advice terrible about following it the other thing that I love about travel Bob and I and I love that you say this is that travel really forces me to be patient and I am not a patient person.

SPEAKER_01

What does that mean for you? What does patience mean for you?

SPEAKER_00

Well patience for be you know in some respects is just okay people it's a conveyor stand to the right walk to the left stand to the right walk to the you know like don't be a jerk watch your backpack it but it's also you know being self-reliant you get into the middle of a downtown city no one speaks english there's no internet connection and you just have to make do what does this new chapter mean to you like it if you were to find if you were to give a a title to this chapter in your life what would it be and why the real bridge and explain that and throughout my life I thought I was bridging to the next phase to the next place. And they all turned out to be false bridges that they were a bridge that actually didn't take me to a new place. It just took me to a slightly different place where I already was and that and that now I'm kind of letting the future unfold in a way that I have some degree about where I'll probably end up but how I don't know. And I and I say kind of where situationally but not specifically.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah I think that makes complete sense because if we were to say oh this is the final bridge I'd be like Greg do we need to do a a health check on you? What does that mean? Because we're we're all like we can't presume to know what the rest of things are going to look like. But what this bridge it sounds like means to you is you have gone someplace that you realize that this is a change. It was a big change for you out of some of it out of necessity, some of it out of desire and where you've landed is like exactly where you need to be I like that you said you kept going to different bridges and you always ended up in the same versions of where you were before and that might be like a comfort thing a lot of I think a lot of people do that.

SPEAKER_00

They they go for a change and they end up reverting back to where their comfort level was and I I think the bridge analogy for me too is that once this bridge is crossed, this is not a bridge I go back over. Like I I'm not gonna it doesn't mean I can't but for me I'm not gonna go back but I'm also not going back throwing up a big wall I can't see. I'm gonna look I'm gonna look back and go, yeah, I still learn there. I'm gonna carry those lessons forward with me.

SPEAKER_01

So if someone were to come to you let's say someone in your slips in your DMs and says hey I'm really loving what you're doing. I'm gonna do something similar like that but it's too late in life for me. What's the guidance you give to them? Jump jump it thank you Greg and Evelyn for the great work you advised. Thank you for listening to Later in Life I'm your host Bob Bullen. The show was edited and produced by me cover art by Rachel Joyce Theme Music by Rocky Potera. If you have a story that you'd like to share that you think fits the vibe of the show please reach out to me at dogbrawlwaybob at gmail.com. I look forward to hearing from you and remember it's never too late