How to Stay Positive When the Unthinkable Happens

I’m Back! 

As you know, I’ve been out of pocket for four months. Today, in my first episode since returning to work, I sit down for a personal interview with my friend Steve Gordon to discuss the shocking health crisis that both sidelined me and required me to make a life-changing decision with no time to weigh my options. 

Steve and I go deep into facing adversity head on and how I made peace with my circumstances. I share the challenges I faced in my journey, as well as:

  • My advice for accepting circumstances even when you don’t like them

  • How to make decisions without second guessing yourself

  • The one thing that determines success or failure when faced with life-changing adversity

  • The WIRM technique I use to remain positive when the heat is on

  • The importance of building the right team

  • And much more

Steve Gordon: Welcome to the Unstoppable CEO podcast. And this is actually a joint episode of our podcast and the Advisor Inner Circle podcast and John H. Curry's Secure Retirement podcast. And John, good to see you. Welcome back. I'm excited to do this, because it's been almost what, six months since we've had the opportunity to do this. And I think maybe the way we want to start out is let you just give everybody a little bit of an update for what's been going on in your life. And then we're gonna kind of take it from there.

John Curry: Well, first of all, it's good to see you again, via podcasting. And hello everyone. Well, Steve is alluding to is I had some drama in my world, starting on February 25. Remember the day very well, it was my father's birthday. And I was with a friend having some pizza and a drink. And on the way home, I had a very, very sharp pain in my right leg. And I take that very seriously due to having some aneurysm repairs and stents installed in both legs in 2019. So I got into see the vascular surgeon on Friday morning, the 26th of February, and also scheduled a time to go see a surgeon over at Tallahassee Orthopedic Center. 

Long story short, give you the cliff notes version. And then I'm sure some of those come out as we're talking today. I ended up going into the emergency room on March 11th. And they did bypass surgery to bypass the stent. Did not work. So on Sunday, March 14th, my doctor's partner came in to see me and I had met her she said I have bad news. We have to amputate and I'm thinking my foot. She says no. Your leg above the knee. And I say okay, why? She said because the poisoning that's going on is coming up your leg rapidly. We've been monitoring it for three days. And if it gets to your kidneys, it will kill you almost instantly. 

I say okay when we do surgery, and she says as soon as I can get you into the OR. About an hour. I said okay, you got things to do. I got people to call, let's get it done. And that became the opening. And as usual, we've not rehearsed this. I don't know where we're going, Steve, because I don't know what you're gonna ask. But here we are.

Steve: For everybody that's listening. I'm sure they probably just had the same shock that I had that that day that you called me.

John: Yeah, because you're one of the very few people that got the call.

Steve: You you did yeah. And, in fact, it went to went to my voicemail at the time, and I was driving my daughter back to college. And so I didn't hear it for maybe about an hour or so. And I called you back and didn't get you. And I know we kind of went back and forth a little bit there. But on hearing that I can tell you my own reaction was just utter and complete shock and, and sadness, really. You know, kind of thinking about, you know, here, you're my close friend who's got got to go through this and the shock that you must have been feeling in that moment. And one of the things I think we're going to get to today is talking about adversity, you know, and and you and I are sitting here now with the benefit of knowing what the whole story was, right? 

What's happened over over the last five months or so four or five months since I'll tell you just from my observation, it's been a very challenging journey, but in some ways, a very fruitful journey for you. From from my outside perspective, you know, but I just want to give everybody who's listening, just a moment to kind of let let it sink in what you just said, you know, because we've had time to process. So you got that news. You really didn't have time to think much about it. I learned from talking with you, after the surgery that you were at peace and sort of accepting it. That's the way you described it. Tell me a little bit about that.

John: Well, I don't know where I got this from. I don't know if this because of something I learned in the Air Force in the 70s. Dealing with things, business along the way. Martial Arts, I'm not sure I'm sure it's a combination of all of it. Once you have all the facts, you make a decision. And you understand that it could be a good decision. It might turn out to be a bad decision, but you've made a decision. And I have learned somehow or another not to have a whole lot of second guessing and regrets.

Some things I have. I'll second guess myself back and forth, but it's usually a little nitpicky things, but the big things. My friend Lee Harris has always said, you know, the buildings on fire. John Curry is the guy to go to, because he's one of the most calm guys. He's gonna say, well, I suggest you put the fire out then. And he'll be cool as a cucumber. And other little things like headsets were bugging and it's from cross room, things like that. Right Steve. 

Steve: That may have happened before we started recording. Dead headsets against the wall.

John: I see them on the floor. I know it happened. But but little things do that. But it seems like I have the ability to just accept it. I don't have to like it. But I've learned to okay, what can I do about? And in this case, because I've had several people ask me, especially medical folks say well, how were you able to make that decision so quickly? I said well, the key words where it could and will kill you. Death is pretty damn permanent. 

And I remembered I call Susie, my lady. She says, honey is just a leg, you're still alive. Even without a leg, you'll be alive. We'll get through this. So that's the best answer I can give you is I'm pretty well at peace with most decisions. And even when it goes to crap, I go okay. Time for another decision, what do you do now. And this is not all a bowl of cherries. It's been a pain in the ass for a lot of ways to be blunt, and I've had to, I've had to work on my attitude adjustment and my mindset up here.

Steve: We're going to get to all of that, because I've kind of had the privilege of observing all of this, you know, and you would think privilege would be a really weird word to use to describe this, but I'll be honest with you, I've never in my life witnessed someone face the kind of challenge that you faced with the mindset that you've brought with it. I've learned a lot. And that that has been a personal gift to me. And I hope through our conversation in this episode, and I think we'll probably end up with, with probably, I don't know, two, maybe three short episodes out of this that, that hopefully that'll be a gift to anybody who who listens along because we all run into adversity. I hope we'd all don't run into this specific adversity that you've had. But, but we all run into adversity. And the longer you go in life I've learned, the more significant those things tend to get.

John: Yes, I let me say this, I hope that you don't go through what I went through. But let me say this, you will go through some type of life changing game changing adversity, sooner or later, it's going to happen. And I think that the more that we read and study and learn from other people and how they dealt with it, the better we are. And I'm convinced, I mean, I believe this all my heart, Steve, that all of the reading I've done during my life in my career, especially of understanding what are the people dealt with. Dealing with trials and tribulations and processing that in the head and working what our friend Dan Sullivan calls your mindset. You know, there's all kinds of books about that Carol Dweck's book, you know, Mindset. Now, what is your mindset is a fixed or is it growth conscious? I mean, where are you? And I'm convinced that I know for a fact that in military training, navy seals, any type of special ops. It's not the strongest person physically. Martial Arts when I was doing Krav Maga and karate. It wasn't the person who was the Mr. Bad Ass, you know, physically that won the matches, it was a person who mentally was tough enough to deal with what had to be dealt with.

Steve: So as we go through this conversation, and we're going to kind of break it up, I see some some topics that I think need to come out. I don't want to spend actually a lot of time focusing on the tragedy of this because you haven't spent a lot of time focusing on the tragedy of it. 

John: No and I don't want to either. I will answer any questions when people ask me and I will do what it takes to have clarity but that's another team, my friend. It's when you dwell on something what happens?

Steve: You get more of it.

John: You get more of it. So that this negative you're just you're just screwed yourself down into this pit and it's hard to unscrew yourself from that. So what I tried to do. I don't try, I do it, I will address it with somebody oh my god what happened your leg. It happened to me the Governor's Club the other night. Half dozen people saw oh my god. Haven't seen you. What happened? I just said you know, had a little little encounter. You should see that shark that's up on my wall though. I got it mounted. And they're like, you're crazy.

Steve: So well. Maybe that's the perfect jumping off point then. Because when I spoke with you, right after the surgery, you were actually pretty upbeat. You were a little bit intoxicated from the pain meds, but but you were actually pretty upbeat and, and I was the entire time that I knew you were in the surgery. So while all that was going on, I was, I was still on this trip to take my daughter back to college and then driving back and I couldn't get ahold of, of, you know, anybody that was with you, or would have known. 

And, of course, so I'm thinking, all right, well, what what, this is going to be a big deal, I knew immediately that the thing that would determine success or failure coming out of this would would have been like your mindset and how you took it coming out and how you adjusted. And I'll be honest, I was really, I was really worried for that. Because I don't know how I would have responded. I still don't know how I might respond to something like this. I know how I like to think I would but, but knowing how you'd like to respond and how you actually do I think are two very different things. 

And so going from being worried about that to then talking with you and going alright, within five minutes, I knew you had this. And that all comes down to mindset. So talk a little bit about how coming kind of right out of that, that surgery. And and I'm going to say first surgery, because there's more to the story as we get into it. And I don't want to get into that yet. I want to kind of tease that a little bit. But coming out of that first surgery, what was it that you kind of latched on to and focused on that got you moving forward? Because I think for anybody that's facing adversity, it's like you got to flip that switch.

John: The first thing was knowing that a lot of people out there, we're sending their thoughts and prayers, number one and acknowledging that and accepting it saying, wow, thank you. And number two was I started feeding my mind with as much positive stuff as I could. So I had a couple of books with me. So I just continued to read. When I was awake, slept a lot, because the medications for the first two or three days really. But it was a combination of gratitude that I was alive. I'll admit, there's a little bit of frustration and a little bit of anger, like okay, why? Why'd I have to lose my leg? But I didn't allow myself to dwell on it. Okay. And Susie helped me a lot with that, in the sense of, you know, she'd say things like, honey, it's just you're leg, you know, you're still you're still alive. We're gonna get through this. 

And so it was the positive encouragement. And then people around me. They, the medical team, the doctors, the nurses, the technicians, were all very encouraging. And we're talking about building a team around you in different parts of your life, then those people were very important part of my healing. And I've always been very nice and pleasant to people who, you know, who were serving me in any way. Whether it be the waitstaff at a restaurant. And people say why, why do you need another person's name? Or if I tell you your name, their name? Why do you tell them your name? Because they're human beings. They're not robots, dude. And I can still tell you some of the nurses. 

Now you alluded to second surgery. Now back into the rehab the second time, it was like everybody in the hall was like, oh my god, Mr. Curry's back. I mean, it was like running over. What happened? What happened? Why are you here? Good to see you again. But what what's wrong, what's wrong? But that's that's a lot of it, Steve. It was just taking the, and part of it was the practical side of me says, like, what the hell am I gonna do about it. I look down now leg's gone. From above the knee down it's not there. And right now. So in your earlier, it's like, my foot is asleep. My right foot feels like it's I fully numb and asleep, the way your foot would go to sleep. And that's the nerve issue. I've had a lot of pain since the amputation, but first few days I did. But it's just an acceptance. I would say acceptance and gratitude. And then so okay, time to get with it. What can I do to improve it? 

So listen to the folks in rehab, we do this and don't do that. Your point earlier about where we're kidding around about me leaving the kitchen counter going to the to the wheelchair without and falling and busting my face because the tendency is just to hop off this chair and just go get a cup of coffee. Well, you don't hop to do that when you got one leg because the other leg and I've already had three falls from after the first surgery. And the third one was just because of that, because I was out at my property with my grandson. I'm coming down the steps, hop down steps just fine. He's got the walker waiting for me and the right leg goes, whoop, taking a step and guess what? I landed on the dirt.

Steve: You made a comment earlier today. Like you know, your brain still thinks it's there. 

John: Yes. 

Steve: You know, like it you haven't adjusted to the fact that, you know, when you go to step with that, really nothing touching the ground. So.

John: Four months later, the brain still says, hey, foot fo this foot do that. And is that right? March, April, May, June? Yeah, we're almost at four months.

Steve: You sort of made this immediate jump to a positive mindset. And, you know, it took you a little while to get, you know, recovered to the point where the pain meds weren't kind of influencing your days dramatically. And, you know, kind of where you got into a bit of a routine, but even even within the first few days, you were doing things ahead of schedule. And that that's been kind of the theme throughout all of this is that, you know, they the doctors or the, you know, the the rehab nurses or whoever would tell you, okay, here's our goal, here's where we want to be. And, and you, you would take that and say, all right, well, how do I cut that time in half, and double the result?

John: Oh, that's true. And I remember one of the physical therapists said okay, I have two questions for you. When you are in here, what do you want to accomplish? I said well, I want us to start on time, I will be on time, I will be early. And whatever time I'm allocated, if it's the 30 minute sessions, or the 45 minutes, I want to get as much out of that as possible. And it got to a point after the first day, the doctor even said hey look. But they also come in earlier and do other stuff on the machines they better let him do it. If there's space, you can't move another patient to accommodate me, but so I would go there sometimes and have 15 to 30 minutes of doing something before they had down to work on me during my allotted time. But the reason I did that was twofold. 

One is that yes, I wanted to have improvement. But also I wanted something to occupy my mind. Because if you sit around, you're suck your thumb. Poor little me. Poor little me. Poor little me. You're gonna get a whole lot more poor little me. But if you're doing something physical, like, I mean, they gave me five pounds dumbells. Are you kidding me? I used to do 35 pound dumbbells curls, you know, and 50 pound dumbbells when I was doing bench presses. And you're gonna give me five pound dumbbells. And the therapist says, you won't be thinking that way in just a few minutes, you go right ahead. As she was right. After doing about 25 reps of five pounds, and then repeating that and doing four sets of them, so you're doing 100 reps, you go, hmm. 

Five pounds seems about right. Until you get your strength back. So I had to I had to accept the fact that there were some things I had to almost like start from the beginning with, but there's a lot of there's a lot to be gained when you're doing physical exercise anyway. And then you're into fitness and go workout you and your wife so you understand that. But when you are mentally challenged, and physically challenged, what are you gonna do? Lie in bed? The second around, I was literally bedridden for 10 days. I wasn't allowed to get out of bed for 10 days, it took a lot of work to overcome that.

Steve: Well, so let's break down just what we've talked about so far to kind of make it I think useful for for folks. So

John: Yeah, because I don't want to just be hearing my story, let's talk about how to apply it.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely. But I think having it in the context of this, it's one thing to talk about this in the context of business, you know, because all of the concepts that I think we'll go through are all ones that you learned and developed over the years through business. And through personal development. We hear about these things all the time. It's one thing to apply them in a business situation, but you've actually taken all of these ideas and applied them in a life or death situation. And I believe they've made all the difference from as an outside observer.

John: I can tell you for a fact they have you're correct.

Steve: And so to me, this is just like evidence. Okay, they've been battle tested. You know, we've talked about a lot of this stuff before, but you've had the opportunity to test it in ways that most people will not. And I think that's an that's worth learning from. So the first thing that that jumps out at me is and you mentioned it before we were talking the acronym WIRM that you learned from Mark Devine, the Navy SEAL, and really you applied that probably almost immediately whether you knew it or not. So walk us through that acronym. What that stands for.

John: Well, I came up with the acronym to help me remember it but the W stands for witness the negativity. So what is it you're thinking? Okay the negative thought. Witness it because you have to acknowledge it. So witness it. Okay, I said that or I'm thinking that. And then you have to have interdiction or stop the negative thought. Okay. And for me, sometimes I'll slap my hands together. And okay, stop that. And then redirect. So you got to redirect your mind to something positive. And you and I have kidded around about this, you'll hear me say, looking good, feeling good, I ought to be in Hollywood. I got that from Mark Devine. And I went to his classes back in 2016, I think it was in San Diego. 

And Mark Devine is a retired Navy SEAL. And he finished number one in his class when he was going through SEAL training. And he is big to tell you that it's all about the mindset, you can be the strongest person in the world. And the name of the book is Unbeatable Mind that I encourage everyone to read. Whether you're in business or not, I, it's my go to book. I go by, I have it in front of me. It's always in my briefcase and a second I've talked about is Who, Now How. These are always close by. They're either with me personally, or they're either in my truck. By the way, remind me to share what happened when I made a comment in the hospital that day. When you came to see me I met a comment about being lazy. Will you help me remember that?

Steve: I called you the most productive man in rehab.

John: We'll come back to talk about why you said that because of what was going on that day. But, but the but and then the M stands for maintain. So you got to find a way to maintain your new positive spirit. So witness what's happening. Okay, so I've witnessed that I got no leg, negative thoughts. Well, crap. How am I gonna do this? I can't, how can I do this? I'm giving up a lot of stuff. Stop that. Okay, you still got your other leg. You're alive. Start thinking positive, feeding those thoughts. 

Okay. You know, and also, I would not accept pity from myself or other people. I've had a couple people who say, oh, you poor thing. And no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not poor at all. I'm very grateful to be alive. So please don't let's not go there. And then to maintain, you know, constantly read, be around people that are positive, we should do that anyway. Both people that are negative and toxic, we need to get the hell away from as quickly as possible. And if you have to have interaction with family, friends, co workers limi it. Just Just don't put up with it very long.

Steve: I'm thinking, the example of what you've gone through, and how you've used these same techniques just takes away so many of the excuses for people who want to just bitch and moan. Right?

John: True. Let's do this. So since we're on that, I'm gonna get on my soapbox about this. Because folks, before we started, we had about 45 minutes just talking and I was venting about some things. Let me tell you something. I'm tired of. I'm sick and damn tired of people using COVID as an excuse for not doing what they need to do. I'm tired of it. Yes, we've gone through a pandemic. Yes, we have problems. Yes people died. Yes, people are sick, but you know what? Dammit, quit blaming COVID. Get off your ass and do what needs to be done. And yes, if you're short handed, we'll go find some more people. Do what you said you do.

Steve: That's right. 

John: Okay. I'm off that box. Okay, go ahead. 

Steve: All right. So you're faced with the adversity, you've got this process of witnessing the negativity, interdict it, interrupt it, redirect it, and then maintain that positive. And so that, to me, that's a way to kind of fix the mindset. And we go through this all the time. Everybody thinks that people who have like a really strong mindset are just that way all the time. And that's not it at all. It's that they're just better and faster at redirecting because they've practiced it more.

John: Absolutely. And let me say this, I was gonna use the phrase you hear a lot, rinse and repeat. You know, because you will have repeat it over and over. I do. I had something happen yesterday. I got so frustrated myself. I ended up buying a new truck because I had to have the ability. Not my Tahoe, I had had the pickup truck that worked a certain way. The back door had to open what we call a suicide door because I just picked the wheelchair up one arm and put it in the back of a truck. 

Well I gave up something for that. What I gave up was space. So my passenger seat's full of junk. Stuff that just let it pile up there. You know, there's no room in the back to put it because I just got frustrated. I'm like, for a moment I said, why the hell do you buy another truck? The other truck was bigger, better, more comfortable used to it. And I go stop it. Stop. It did not fit your needs John. I literally said this out loud. It did not fit your needs this truck fit your needs for now. When you get your prosthesis, go buy something new if you don't want it anymore. So you have to constantly be on guard for that.

Steve: Always and you know we all go through it multiple times a day. And we tend to overlook, I think the small occurrences of it and let that go. And that's a mistake, I think you've had to deal with it on a pretty massive life changing scale. I can only imagine, like, you look down, you know, and almost every time you look down, you have the opportunity to just jump right into a pit of despair, or not. 

John: Well said.

Steve: Anyway, so I think having that little shift is important. And then the other thing that, you know, you kind of touched on there is this, once you've shifted into this positive kind of growth mindset, and I think growth is the way to describe it. You made the decision that okay, yeah, this has happened, but damn, I still have things I want to accomplish. You know, and right now, my my number one focus, and, you know, my focus has got to be, how do I get my health back? Right. So even a couple of days out of surgery, you're doing things and forging relationships with the, you know, the medical team, and, you know, and setting these goals for yourself, and then you did it in rehab. And I remember walking into the rehab facility. And you were there the first time, what two weeks?

John: Two weeks. That's right. One week in the hospital, then two weeks in the rehab hospital.

Steve: Right. So you're in, you're in rehab, two weeks your a week out from this, you know, life changing event happening. And I remember walking through the halls in the rehab place and walking back to your room, and all I hear are people moaning, and complaining. And in pain it was, I'm sure they were in pain, not to minimize that. And then I get in your room. And I believe at that point, you were sitting in the wheelchair, you were dressed and shaved, cleaned up, you know, you weren't in a hospital gown. You wouldn't allow yourself, you know, and I'd seen you in the hospital and, and all that kind of stuff. But you got yourself together. And you were in pain, you know, because I saw you wince in pain, but you didn't moan or complain about it. You know. And so there's two ways to take these things. And so you had set these goals for yourself. 

And it was so interesting to see how everybody around you, that whole team of people that was there for your care how they responded to this attitude that you had that Alright, I'm here, this has happened, I got knocked down. But dammit, I'm going forward. And you had such tremendous support. You were the favorite patient in the hospital. You were the favorite patient. And I heard people tell you this, you were the favorite patient in rehab. And that isn't like a superlative that you're looking to earn. But what it did is it it you were able to pull resources to you because you are going somewhere. Because people want to be part of somebody who's going somewhere, even in that situation.

John: I agree. But let me say the biggest thing I got from it. See if I'm negative, what are they gonna be feeling? They're gonna feel negative. So they're gonna reflect that negativity back to me. So what I was what I was doing, and I can't say I consciously did it my style. And it's just I'm a people person. I've said for years, you want to destroy me put me on a desert island, you might as well shoot me and be done with it. Put me around people. I'm good. Now what my solitude, don't get me wrong. I want some by myself time. 

But I realized that the people around me that if they were positive, and I had positive vibes coming back to me, and it we'll get into that in a few minutes. But the most important people in my world, to be candid was my team at work. Because they're like family, you know, those people, they allowed me. And they said over and over, you're you don't worry about work, you don't worry about business, you don't worry about the clientele. You've built a good team. That's why we're here. You just get your number one job is to get healed up and take care of yourself. So you can come back sooner.

Steve: Yeah, and we're going to talk, what I want to do with the team stuff. I want to talk about that separately. Okay, in the next episode, because there's a lot to break down there as well. But I think just for for people, we've been through a lot of stuff in the world, and we're gonna continue to go through a lot of stuff. I mean, that it seems to be the human condition is that there's constant chaos, both on an individual and a societal level. And for anybody to think that what we've been through in the last 18 months is anything unusual. You haven't studied history very much. It's just part of the game. 

So if that's part of the game, how do we make ourselves resilient and capable to live, you know, and thrive through that? And in spite of it and and I think that the two things that that we've just touched on. This idea of immediately reframing any negativity as hard as that can be. It's not denying the negativity, but it's reframing your and and and recalibrating your reaction to it. And then once you've done that sort of creating this growth trajectory that you're on, because that is now going to attract to you, all of the resources and the people that you need to get to that goal. And that's the Who, Not How, you know, the book that you held up there. I mean, that's a great description of it. But anyway, those are, those are my kind of two takeaways from what we've covered so far.

John: I think one of the biggest things that happened for me was understanding that no matter where you are in life, there's going to be problems, there's going to be adversity. And two words popped in my mind when you're talking about that a moment ago. That is planning and action. I remember clearly, when the surgeon himself asked me, he said, John, you seem mighty calm for what we're about to do to you. We, when we had the first surgery. I said well, you know Rob, all my legal documents are in place, my life insurance is in place, good health insurance, everything's in place. And I've had a chance to talk to my family, people that love and care about, yeah, let's do what we got to do. 

And so planning was in place, I've taken the action to do some things. Now I've done some modifications just this week, based on some things on legal documents. So once you know what needs to be done, get off your butt and go do it. You know, we have all all of us, anybody who tell you they don't procrastinate. I say, well I don't believe you.  We all procrastinate about some things. But the quicker we can go from idea to implementation, or at least taking action, the better off we are. And it's okay, if in the middle of it, you simply say I don't like this anymore, I'm not gonna do it. And I go back to thinking about Seth Godin's book called The Dip. Now there's a time when you should say, I don't want to do that at all. And then another time you find yourself in it, you go, I'm out. 

Now people are gonna criticize you. You're a quitter. Yeah, I'm a quitter. Call me what you want. Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm not doing that. And I will tell you this. I told you this back when I had my heart surgery back in 2008. That's your that was a game changer. And that was a game changer in my mindset and attitudes and standpoint of things that I would not do. Some things I say I would do. Some things I'd fight to my death over. Some things, you can have it. Take it. And this was taking that to a level that even I don't know where it came from. I still don't fully understand some of it myself. But I do know that there are some things that you have to kill me to get me to change. Other things I'm gonna say screw it, you win.

Steve: Absolutely. Well hey, let's let's wrap this episode. And I want to have one maybe maybe it ends up being two follow on conversations. And we'll release these all three, one week after another in the in all the podcasts just so you don't have to wait too long in between them. So I want to talk about team and how you've built your business in a way that has made this possible because a lot of businesses would have failed. Had they experienced what what you've experienced here over the last four months. 

And you've created something that could continue really without you and kind of keep not kind of actually keep growing. While you're not there, which is I think, an amazing story. And I think something that all the entrepreneurs listening to need to hear. And I think for you know, because we're releasing this on all three podcasts. I also think all your clients need to hear it. Because they need to understand what you've created to take care of them.

John: Let me set the stage for that then because here's what happened. I was asked a question one day years ago, and then I asked myself, okay, how will I prepare for retirement? What will keep me from retiring? And I have this beautiful clientele that I have built since 1975. I said okay, I need to make sure. I have to know that I've done everything in my power to make sure that in the event of my total disability. So I'm incapacitated. Stroke, heart attack, whatever, or I die, or I choose to retire. I had to know. I didn't have to think, I had to know that my clientele were taking care of. And once I had that in place, life would be good. 

So I started working on that. And I was very fortunate to build a team around me starting seven years ago, well, long before then, but the key partner now is April Schoen and I'll talk about how that happened and where we went and what we did, instead of being the John Curry show, build a team of loving, caring professionals. So we'll come back and touch on that but it's the three things we're making sure if I chose to retire, or if I became incapacitated, or if I died that people were taking care of.

Steve: Absolutely. So I want to touch on that. And I want to touch on productivity, because you've been, as I called you, you're the most productive man in rehab, and the things that you actually got done in the outside world, most people wouldn't have been that productive had they been in the office. So I want to touch on that a little bit and kind of talk through that. So, folks, we'll be back with a continuation of this conversation. And I hope you found this helpful. We would love to hear your feedback. If you're watching this on YouTube. Leave us a comment below if if you're hearing this on the podcast, and this has been helpful send me an email you can email me directly Steve@unstoppableceo.net. I'll pass on your comment to John and share it with him. But we'd love to know if this is the kind of conversation that you're finding beneficial. Alright, I'll see you soon my friend. 

John: Very good.

Voiceover: If you'd like to know more about John Curry's services, you can request a complimentary information package by visiting johnhcurry.com/podcast again that is johnhcurry.com/podcast or you can call his office at 850-562-3000 again that is 850-562-3000. John H Curry chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant, accredited estate planner, masters in science and financial services, certified in long term care, registered representative and financial advisor Park Avenue Securities LLC. Securities, products and services and advisory services are offered through Park Avenue securities a registered broker dealer and investment advisor. Park Avenue Securities is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian, North Florida Financial Corporation is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Park Avenue securities. Park Avenue Securities is a member of FINRA and SIPC. This material is intended for general public use by providing this material we are not undertaking to provide investment advice or any specific individual or situation or to otherwise act in a fiduciary capacity. Please contact one of our financial professionals for guidance and information specific to your individual situation. All investments contain risk and may lose value. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Guardian, its subsidiaries, agents or employees do not provide legal tax or accounting advice. Please consult with your attorney, accountant and/or tax advisor for advice concerning your particular circumstances. Not affiliated with the Florida Retirement System. The Living Balance Sheet and the Living Balance Sheet logo are registered service marks of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America New York, New York Copyright 2005 to 2020. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Guest speakers and their firms are not affiliated with or endorsed by Park Avenue Securities or Guardian and opinions stated are their own. 

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