179. Navigating Career and Personal Fulfilment with Lon Stroschein

💭 What if the life you envision for yourself is just one bold decision away?

In this episode of The Leadership Project, we welcome Lon Stroschein, best-selling author of 'The Trade' and founder of the Normal 40 movement.

Lon shares his inspiring journey of career pivots, from working on a family farm to holding significant roles in politics, banking, and technology, ultimately leading to the creation of Normal 40. He discusses the importance of recognizing pivotal moments, the weight of decisions on personal and family life, and the process of trading unfulfilling success for genuine happiness. Lon emphasizes the power of community, reframing limiting beliefs, and investing in oneself. He also provides insights into his mission of inspiring change and finding fulfillment.

The episode concludes with a rapid-fire round where Lon shares his favorite book, quote, and advice for his younger self, underscoring his belief that we are often more ready to take the next step than we think.

🌐 Connect with Lon:
• Website: https://www.normal40.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lon-stroschein-normal40/
• Normal 40 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/normal40/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lon.stroschein

📚 You can purchase Lon's book at Amazon:
• The Trade: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBSRSH2T/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Pivotal Decisions in Life
• 8:22 Navigating Regret and Impact on Others
• 15:08 Navigating Self-Image and Ego
• 21:55 Discovering Fulfillment Through Passion and Purpose
• 22:18 [Ad] C-Suite Strategies
• 23:06 (Cont.) Discovering Fulfillment Through Passion and Purpose
• 35:50 The Trade
• 47:14 Navigating Career Crossroads and Community
• 54:23 Trusting Yourself and Taking Action
• 1:00:59 Gratitude for Podcast Collaboration

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:00

Have you ever found yourself at a crossroad in your career? You may find yourself not feeling fulfilled at work and wondering whether you're meant for more. It could be that your outside does not match what is going on for you. On the inside, everything seems to be going well, but for you, something just doesn't feel right today on The Leadership Project, we are sharing the story of Lon Stroschein. Lon is the founder of the Normal 40 movement. He shares how he dealt with pivotal decisions in his career and how he now helps others to do the same. Sit back and enjoy the show. Hey, everyone and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Lon Stroschein. Lon is the best selling author of a book called The Trade, how to move from the life you have to the life you want. And he's also the founder of a movement called Normal 40 where it's about some of those pivotal moments in your life, where you look at your life and think, where am I? Am I where I need to be? Am I where I'm supposed to be? And making changes in your life if you need to. So I'm really excited about today's discussion. I think there's going to be something in here for all of us in the audience to think about our life, where we are and where we want to go. So without any further ado. Lon, I'd love to hear a little bit more about some of those moments in your life where you've had pivotal decisions that you've needed to make, and some of the processes that you went through. So let's start with a little bit about you and your background.

Lon Stroschein: 1:41

Hey, Mick, well thanks a bunch for having me on the podcast. This is, this is super cool. So look, there's my life I can kind of boil down into about four different occasions where there were really big, pivotal decisions that at the time, I probably didn't quite appreciate how pivotal they were going to be over the trajectory of my life, but they absolutely, certainly as I as I reflect on them, through the rear view mirror, I can see exactly how they've impacted me. The first one came about the time I was 22, 23 years old. I was a senior in college, and I grew up on a farm. I grew up on the farm in the in the middle of the United States, and it's a it's a beef cattle farm and corn and soybeans. We had some row crop and some cattle, and I was going to be the fourth generation to come home to the family farm and take it over. And a weird thing in in American agriculture anyway, is that one of the kids, and I've got three siblings, there's four of us kids, kind of falls into this slotting, if you will, to be the one to take over the farm, and that was going to be me. It wasn't it wasn't something my parents said, it's going to be me. It wasn't anything where my siblings said, No, you should do it. It's just kind of how it was coming together. And it got to be January before a May graduation and of college, and my phone rang, and it was the United States senator's office asking me if I would be interested in coming to work for him in the state where I live, and helping him do ag legislation, writing a farm bill, and doing economic development inside the state, but also being his eyes and ears while he's in Washington, DC, and then traveling with him when he's back. And I thought to myself, you know, this call may never happen again. The farm is going to be there. I don't have to go home to the farm right now. I'm going to lean into this and I'm going to accept this position. And what I didn't appreciate at the time Nick was that while this was all that was true, and I knew that in that moment, that the filter I used was it. Will I regret it if I don't do this? Will I be 1, 2, 4, 5, 10 years older, and will I be on the farm? And will I be thinking about this call in this moment, and will I regret not saying yes? Will I regret never going down the path and discovering where it might have led. And I knew in my gut I would regret it. I would regret not finding out what I didn't take into account is that the ripple effect it would have on my family when I came home, when I came home and I told my dad, Hey, Dad, there's been a change of plan. I know that you were expecting me to come home in five months and take over the family farm, but this has come up, and I'm super excited. And I was surprised when I thought I was going to get this rich excitement and kind of this excitement, because it was a big opportunity for me, and what I got was silence, and when then I got tears, and it's the first time I'd ever seen my dad cry because of the ripple effect of my of my decision to go to work for United States Senator. And they weren't tears of selfishness. They weren't any of that. It was just this profound change. And so I underestimate. Estimated and underappreciated how decisions can have profound impacts outside of, outside of, in your periphery, just just outside of you. But that was one saying yes to the to the job working for United States Senator. The next one came about five years later, I had I just got married, and my boss was up for election, and I'd gone through one election cycle already, and I decided, you know, this is a bad way to to live a marriage in politics. So I I made one phone call to a gentleman who owned about a $2 billion bank in my home state, and he offered me a job to come to work for him and create a private wealth group inside of inside of his bank. Now, I had never lent a nickel to anyone, so the fact that he said yes and he hired me was just a situation where this gentleman took a chance on me, just like the Senator. I had never worked in politics before, and now this this bank owner took a chance on me, and I said yes to that opportunity. And five years later, one of my clients was the incoming CEO of a public company in my hometown, and the incoming CEO offered me a job to travel the world, setting up distribution for our technology company all over the world. And at the time, Nick, I didn't even have a passport, so for him to ask me, a farm kid who had some Senate experience and now understood profit and loss, to go travel the world to set up distribution for a public company, what I now? I didn't tell him that, obviously, I just said, Yes, I'll take I'll take the challenge. And so I traded out the bank for the public company. But I use the same metric. I sat in my bank office thinking, if I say no to this, because I don't have to say yes, I can stay where I'm at. This company's this bank is, is tremendous, but if I get 1, 2, 5, 10 years older than I am right now, will I regret not saying yes to this opportunity, and the answer was the same, yeah, I would regret that. So I said yes to the Yes to that position, and I'll summarize the last one. But 15 years later, the company I was working for the same public company I went to work for sold, and we sold to a substantial company, and I was leading mergers and acquisitions for this company, and I didn't expect to get an offer to stay, usually the sell side m and a guy gets chopped, you know, that's just part of the deal. But the acquirer came in, and they were fantastic. They offered me a tremendous position, playing to my strengths, doing stuff that I knew how to do, they weren't going to ask a new move, and it was making more than I was making. So now I had another decision to make, but I woke up after a long conversation with my wife and I decided my work there was done. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know where I was going to where I was going to work, if I was going to work somewhere else. Immediately, I didn't know anything. I just knew my work that was done. So I turned in my resignation, and I I went back home, and I started what we now know as the Normal 40.

Mick Spiers: 8:12

So, congratulations on your success, really interesting career, and now you're doing something that you love and following this movement. There's three things I picked up on there, and I want to unpack each of them at some point in the discussion. The first one those forks in the road, and we all come to them, opportunity knocks, and are we going to answer the door? And sometimes the question can be a yes, no or a not now situation. But at least with that first one, with the senator, that was just a now or never situation. It wasn't yes, no, not now. It was now or never. So sometimes it really is a fork in the road where there's no turning back once you once you go down, it's either, if you say no to this, it's never going to come back. The second part I'm unpacking is this regret. And you said, you know, would I regret not doing this? And I think there was an underpinning in there of, Am I going to regret doing this, or am I regret going to regret not doing this? So which one is going to cause the most regret. Then this third part, the impact on others, that was the bit that I want to unpack. Now, Lon, so when your father's crying like that, you mentioned in the last decision, you're sitting down with your wife going, Hey, what do we do here? Do we do we do this? Do we do that? How do you compartmentalize that? The difference between what Lon wants to do in his life, and the fact that you are a part of a family, you're part of a network of other people, the impact on others?

Lon Stroschein: 9:50

Well, there's a there's a few things you have to do. And I tell people, if you're feeling something about work, you're feeling something about. Your job. Let me just talk a little bit about what I was feeling in the two years before I left. I left my job as a public company executive in February of 2022 so not all that long ago, in the grand scheme of things, and in February of 2020 I was starting to feel angst and anxiety about the fact that I had worked myself into this box. Okay, so let me, let me just layer that up a little bit too. So I had started my career, worked for a US senator, worked for a bank, and now he's working my way up and through this public company. And I was at the top of my game. I was at the top of my professional gain, and I was on a hot I was a named executive in a public company in the United States. I had achieved more than I thought I would ever achieve, personally and financially. I was making more than I thought I would make. I was leading more, doing more and part of incredible work. And I had landed right where I wanted to land. I had I'd achieved everything I wanted to achieve. So when I would show up to work, Mick and I would have this feeling of, well, is this it? Immediately, this guilt would overcome me, because this is exactly where I wanted to be. This is where I tried to get. This is this is exactly the goals I was shooting for, and now I've got them and I'm they don't satisfy me anymore. So what do you do? You hold them in. You don't tell anyone. You just tamp down that feeling because you feel guilty for wanting something other than what you chased and got. So you don't do anything, and you tamp it down. But inside you, there's this there's this thing, and it's begging you to do something. And I think that's what leads to the Sunday pit. The Sunday thing about four o'clock when you think about work the next day and you you are dreading going to work, even if you don't have anything negative going on. But that pit is something calling you out, saying you're going to go do something tomorrow that you know isn't the best version of you, and you're going to do it, and you know you don't want to, and that's what, that's what starts this angst. Now to your question, how do you how do you unpack that when you start to feel that you don't have a lot of people you can talk to, at least you don't feel like there's a lot of people you can tell because who's going to care? Let's use me. I like to talk about me because nobody can criticize my example of me. I just told you I had achieved everything I set out to achieve, and I didn't feel fulfilled in all of the good work I was doing. Well, who? Who do you tell who's going to care that a public company executive is no longer fulfilled? Who's going to care that I don't feel the way I want to feel? You know, there isn't a lot of sympathy for that. So you you just in my position. I didn't tell anyone. I refused to tell people, because I was kind of ashamed by the fact that I didn't feel on the inside the way my image was portraying, I felt on the outside. And the math wasn't working, and it was it was creating this anxiety for me, until finally, I had an open discussion with my wife, my life partner, and I told her, I just expressed to her, Hey, babe, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm not quite as happy as I used to be at work, and I'm having thoughts about starting this other thing on the side, and what I thought would be met with, well, we can't You can't afford to make a trade. You can't make it for we can't afford for you to leave. Because she was at home. She was staying at home with our kids. What I thought might be this place of concern, and her asking me to stay wasn't that at all. It was her getting in the boat with me saying, well, let's figure this out. Well, let's the last thing I want is for you to be dissatisfied with your work or feel like you're off mission. Let's figure it out. And once I had her permission, and I don't mean that from the sense of I needed her permission, like there's a controlling relationship, the permission is we've had this conversation, and oh my gosh, we're on the same page. That permission. Once I had that, now I had now I could give myself options. So going all the way back to your question, how do you unpack that? How do you create a team? Talk to your life partner, and talk to a best friend, and then, by the way, you can talk to a coach. The best thing I ever did was to hire a coach, and that probably sounds loaded, because guess what, I am one, but my life wouldn't be where it is if I wouldn't have spent a few bucks and talked to a dude who did exactly what I did five years before I did it. He knew every step, everything I was going to go through, everything I needed to do. So now I had a coach, a friend and a spouse all on the boat with me saying, let's figure this out.

Mick Spiers: 15:00

So there's three things I want to unpack there, Lon. Really, really great, interesting story. And I think there's going to be a lot of people in the audience going, Oh, that sounds like me. So if you are one of these people that lon is talking about, where you have the Sunday pit, you called it, I call it the heavy leg syndrome, when you get to Monday morning and you go to climb the physical or metaphorical steps at work. Do you really want to be there or not? So people do experience that it is time to check in with yourself. The answer might be yes, by the way, it doesn't have to be No, but it is important that you check in with yourself. The three things I want to unpack, and James clear talks about this a lot in his book atomic habits, is about goal setting. The goal setting of a lot of people tell you that you should have very clear goals, and goals are what's going to drive you, but one of the pitfalls of having such clear goals is what happens when you achieve them, or even what happens when you don't achieve them, does that mean that you don't value yourself, you you're you're not worthy because you didn't get the goal. Or what next? If I achieve the goal, I'm up the top of the mountain. What do I do now? There's a certain element of goal setting that doesn't work when it comes to these things. Did it really fulfill you? Or did you just achieve the goal and tick a box? Then there's the element that you don't always know what's happening in someone's life from the outside. The Instagram version of someone's life from the outside that looks all beautiful and pressing. And to be clear on I'll be blunt with you the job that you're describing. There's going to be many people that are listening to this going, well, that's a dream job. How can you possibly throw in the dream job? But on the outside it looks pristine. On the inside it was not fulfilling for you. And then the third part is that suppression of the emotion that you weren't feeling it you weren't feeling fulfilled. I'm sure your bank account was doing fine, but banking we spoke before we started hit record about richness is not all about money. You weren't feeling fulfilled, but you didn't feel like that. You could talk to people about that, but I believe that we sometimes underestimate the people that care about us the most. So in your case, your wife, what does your wife want? And she she doesn't care about the bank account, she cares about you, and she wants you to be happy. So we avoid that conversation, thinking that we're going to be judged, thinking that we're going to let someone else down, but we underestimate their reaction. How does that sit with you?

Lon Stroschein: 17:40

No, it's exactly right. You know, I two things I want to say to that. I use strong words to kind of describe what people kind of go through on their march up the mountain. And when you set up your 20s and your 30s, and you're climbing and clawing and scratching, and you're building up yourself, and you're you're moving up the career ladder in whatever profession you choose. At some point you don't, you don't mentally say, Oh, it's my time to really start working on my image. But there's, there's some things that you do along that journey that put you in a position or put you in in a situation where what you're working towards is creating this image that you are capable of doing more. So I the term I use is you manufacture an image, and your image is really important. And there again, I'd like to talk about me, because I get to tell you what I went through. But in the last two years, since creating the Normal 40 I've talked to 637 people who have found me and said, I don't know how you got my words, but you are talking my language. Can we talk what I'm going through? And here's, here's a very consistent thing that happens as you get as you climb up through the ranks, you get to this place where now you've got the big title, and you got the nice car, and you got the big home, and you've got you've got your family, and maybe they're in public school, private school, and and you've got all of these things that you've built, you've manufactured, and by the way, they're the things you've wanted. Maybe you're a member of a country club. You wanted that these are all good things. These are not criticisms. But as you climb one of the things that becomes really important to you is your image, like your title, like where your office is, like the number of people that report to you. These are all things that you manufacture along the way, because it helps you kind of continue to grow where you're going. But the problem with images is it's a hard thing to leave behind, so people think all the time, well, I can't leave, my I can't leave, or my ego wouldn't let me leave. And I said, No, no, no, no, your ego, by the way, your ego is the thing that wants. You to leave your ego's the thing. Saying, Hey, dude, you don't need another paycheck. You need some joy. You need to go figure this out. But it's your image saying, hey, look, you just worked the last 15 years to get this title. You worked last 15 years to get this office. You worked the last 15 years to get a country club membership, to get a house, to have the life you've got. That's your image. That's the thing you want everyone else to think your life lives like image. That's what that is your ego. That's the thing that's in your gut saying, dude, you don't need that. You don't need a country club membership. You didn't have a BMW 10 years ago, and you sure as heck don't need one. Now, go do what you want to do. Your ego, man. It's awesome. You have to listen to it. The problem is your image has a lot of power, a lot of power, and image keeps people in their position years longer than what their ego wants them to stay.

Mick Spiers: 20:50

I really love this, and I like that you're unpacking this, because ego is sometimes, or quite often, misunderstood, and it is our sense of self. Are we proud of ourself? Do we know who we are, and Are we proud of ourself? Whereas the term you're using around image, which I really like, is, what do other people think of us? It's almost like a projection and a concern that, what will people think of me if I do this? Will I think I'm an idiot? Will I think I'm I've lost my marbles. How? How's the rest of the world going to think of me if I throw away the corner office job because I follow my passion, my pursuit, my purpose, whatever you want to call it. So how much? How do we how do we bring it back to ego? Then how do we bring it back to ourselves? If we have those thoughts about, oh, what are other people going to think? And it could be societal expectations, these things are very ingrained. I'm, I'm a father, and I've, I'm a husband, and there's a societal expectation that I need to provide for my family. And all of these things are pressures that come around us. Then there's the image of corner office, nice paycheck. Oh, wow. Lon's really got his life sorted out. What will people think? How can we switch our brain from what will others think to what is my gut telling me?

Lon Stroschein: 22:59

For me, once I realized that I was staying for two reasons. And these are super obvious. These are these are the reasons everyone stays longer than they should. If, if you're an individual, and you've climbed to the top, and you are listening to this podcast, and you're thinking yourself, well, this is kind of me. I am. I've clicked. I've lived my life by the book. I've checked the boxes, I've done the things I'm supposed to do in my life. I've provided and providing for my family. I'm a problem solver. I i, I can be counted on all of these things, but you're feeling at the end of the day like your best days are here, but they might not be where your feet are. They might not be doing what you're doing and you feel compelled to do something else. There's two things that'll keep you right where you're at one your image, because you can't walk away like we talked about, and the other is the money. Well, those are two pretty real things, and they're hard to separate from now to your question, how do you separate, how do you how do you actually untangle that, that web? How do you knock down one of the walls of the box, because you've worked yourself into a box? What I did is, I named it. I really named it. Is that? Am I here? Do I need to be here because, because I really need to be or am I staying because I'm afraid what people will think of me when I quit my job for nothing, and that's what I did. I mean, I left my job, I didn't have a Rolodex of clients, I didn't have another job lined up. I didn't even have a resume. To this day, I haven't had a resume in 15 years. So it's like, they're gonna think I'm crazy, but my ego was like, so what, so what, and so what. Now, keep in mind, I'm really simplifying this. It took me two years to get to that point, two years of me kind of wrestling, and get to this place where I could navigate this. So it's not quick, it's not easy, it's not obvious, it's not even free. It's a trade. That's why I call the my book is The Trade. It's a whole process you go through. But when you when you arrive at your office, and that feeling starts to come up, and you're sitting there and you're thinking, I've I've performed better professionally than I thought even possible five years ago. But yet, I'm not feeling fulfilled personally, and I know I've got more to give. I know I do, even though I don't know what it is. I can't articulate it. I can't put it into words, and it's not even obvious. So you've got this frustration, and it's and it's burning you up, and it's the thing that eats you up, because you would trade what you've got, you just don't know what you trade it for. Are, and that's a tough place to be. But if you get to that point and you are ready to start meaning, take an action. What I did, I just started exploring. The first thing I did, Mick, is I said, What do I love to do? I love to grow people. I love to grow people. I love to invest my time into people and see them be successful. I love it when my fruit gets to grow on other people's trees, because even if they don't say thank you to me, I know I showed up for them, that's how I'm wired. So I knew two years before I left my corporate job, I wanted to go get my coaching certification. So I went out and got my coaching certification, and then I came back to my company to coach future executives. I had no illusions of doing it outside of my company. I just knew I loved it. So I started exploring what that could be. And guess what happened? I realized I was good at it. Okay. Now what? Well, other keep in mind, I said I worked in the bank. Bank presidents in town started to ask me, Hey, will you coach up our young executives who are coming up, who are 2, 3, 4, 5 years away from being executives? And I said, Yeah, I love it, so let me do that. And it was me exploring without knowing I was exploring. This is all in hindsight. I'm like, How did I make this trade? Here's how I did it. I started exploring my passions, and I didn't do it before I left my income. I got good at my passions, and then I had a choice to make, just like we talked about going to work for a senator's office, I reached this point, or I said, I can stay where it's safe, and I know it, and I'm making good money, but it's not fulfilling. Or I can trade that, and I can put my effort into something that I will do happily for the next 30 years of my life, and that's ultimately, obviously you know this by now. Spoiler alert, that's exactly what I did, but it starts with exploring, really paying attention what you're feeling. Get clear on what you love. And one other thing, if there is something you come across that is an injustice, something you read in the paper, something you see in the streets, a conversation you have with a friend, something you see on the news, and it elicits an emotional response. Listen to that. It's telling you something that's not fake, that's not image, that's maybe ego, but it's your hardwiring saying, Pay attention to this. Pay attention to this. And there's something you need to do about this. And and for me, it was, it was it was in those injustices for really smart people who are just getting passed over for no good reason, because they didn't have an advocate inside of their company, or they didn't have a coach helping them prepare for what was next. And I wanted to go save them from that. Now I save people from wasting 3, 4, 5 years of their lives doing a job they no longer love because they think they need to pay and they're too scared to take a bet on themselves. Now I save that person from wasting another 3, 4, 5 years of their lives in a job they don't love.

Mick Spiers: 28:46

I love it, Lon. Thank you so much for sharing this. The things I'm taking away is is about those pursuits of material goods, whether it's the job title or the flashy car, that when someone sets a goal around getting a certain car. They get a certain amount of pleasure once they get the car, but the first thing they want to do then is, well, now they start wanting to get the next car, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a never ending cycle that doesn't end up in fulfillment, and that's in work and in the material things. Then you're starting to look at, well, what do I really love? And what in particular about it, do I love? It's, it's not that you love coaching. It's, it's that you love having an impact on people's lives. And what did you say that helping them grow fruit on their tree? That's a beautiful metaphor, by the way. And then that antenna being up to, what are the injustices or the inequalities that you see in the world that really stir up emotion in you that you would like to do something about, that those are two really strong triggers about where you belong in the world. By the way, one of mine around the injustices, one of the things I talk about often is that people spend up to 1/3 of their life in the workplace. So no one deserves to work in a workplace where they're not treated, probably like where they they're not seen, they're not heard, they're not valued, where they don't feel included, these kind of things. So so if you see an injustice, it's telling you, if you if you're always getting rolled up, it's telling you that there's a calling there somewhere. This is really powerful stuff. Lon, so I want to know now I'm going to get really pointed about it. What does fulfillment look like for you today?

Lon Stroschein: 30:31

So, over the course of my first probably six or eight months after I left and I was really exploring, I was really leaning Into this. I'll tell just a little bit of a story here Mick, when I left Raven, that was the company I worked for, I had no idea what I was going to do. I just really didn't and but the moment this phrase hit me, and it hit me with in a conversation with my wife in a little nondescript bar after a fabulous concert that we had gone to, my wife and I were talking about, what am I going to do? I had the option to stay with this company that I was at. I had I was I had an offer in hand to go be the CEO of another company. And my wife finally asked you, she's like, you don't seem excited about either of these options. And I said, No, I'm not. I'm happy. I'm happy, and I'm grateful, and I can do them, but I'm not excited. So as we unpack that, I realized this phrase came out of my mouth. Maybe my work here is done. Maybe I've taken everything I can take from this company. It's given me everything it can give me in growth, and I've given it all I have to give it in what I can provide for it. So I'm not quitting. I'm not leaving people in a lurch. My work's just done. I've done exactly what I came here to do, exactly what I needed to do, and once that phrase hit me in this conversation with my wife. Now the aperture for what was possible sprung wide open because I had given myself permission to say, I'm not quitting. I'm not leaving my work's done. I've done everything, everything that was expected of me, and it was this incredible relief and and so we, we, I couldn't wait, in fact, to come back that next day spin the nego you know, we were negotiating back and forth and writing. I said, Hey, look, here's the deal. I'm out. Thanks. I'm out. So I left. And the day I left, I went to LinkedIn, and I just wrote about it. I wrote about this exact experience. I could have stayed. It's been a good run. I love the company. I wasn't running away from them. I It might work. There was just done, and I woke up this morning. This was my first day without without income. I wrote a post that read something like this, I woke up this morning, and for the first time in 25 years, I didn't have to rush to an office. And when I woke up, my home was warm, the carpet was soft, and my run this morning wasn't a release of stress, it was in a a stroll of appreciation for all that I have around me. And I don't know what tomorrow's going to bring, but I'm curious as heck to see what finds me, and that was essentially my post, and in a day, my life changed because people from all over the world said, how, how did you do it? How did you quit? How'd you know you had enough? How'd you know this was your time? What'd your wife say? What'd your boss say? What do your neighbors think? What did your parents think? I mean, all these things. And that was the first time it dawned on me, like, holy cow, there's a lot of people who feel just like I felt, who? Who know they've they've outperformed their own expectations, but are at this point where they don't want to be obligated to hang on to them anymore, and they don't know what to do about it. So I just kept leaning into that, leaning into that. And over the course of six months, it I got to use my coaching and all those things to to create what I got. Okay, now to answer your question, what is my mission? So, my mission is to inspire, and that's really important, not to get hired, not to whatever my mission is, to inspire the change in 1000 lives, to inspire the change in 1000 lives. Okay, what is my metric? 1000 notes of thanks. Not 1000 clients, not a million dollars a year in revenue. None of that shit inspire 1000 inspire the change in 1000 lives. And I'll know all I will know I've been successful Mick, when I've got 1000 notes of things and I am well on my way. So what does fulfillment feel like for me? This morning, I got a handwritten note in the mail, the old fashioned mail, from a gal who lives in Windsor, Colorado, who I could have never even knew had a copy of my book, I have no way of knowing this person, and she sat down and said, Thank you, thanks. Thank you for writing the book I needed. Thank you for writing creating. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for your authenticity. Thank you for the intimate stories you share about your family, and thank you for giving me a process I can go through to stick and the permission I need to and give me the permission I needed to go do what I needed to do next. Can we talk? I'm talking to her later today. And so the whole thing is, what that I can't describe. I can't even put dollar figure on that. How do you put dollar figure on that? Um, it's just the absolute most fulfilling work of my lifetime.

Mick Spiers: 35:44

I love it, Lon. Thank thank you so much for sharing this. There's there's three things I want to summarize here, or two things I want to summarize, and then one thing I want to explore. The first one is the way you reframe the word quitting, that you're not quitting that my work here is just done. In fact, it's mission accomplished. It's not quitting at all. You're not quitting mid race. You're celebrating at the end of the race, going, Yeah, I did what I set out to do, in fact, more than what I set out to do. And when a lot of people talk about someone leaving the job, they say, I quit my job. No, you didn't. You didn't quit your your job here was done. The second one is the redefining of success and making sure that the success measure that you now use is connected to what brings your fulfillment. To rethink, and it wasn't financial at all to rethink, how am I going to measure success in the future? And is that measure of success really connected to what my gut is telling me? Then the third one is about the feeling that you had after you made the decision. And I've had an experience just this week that you made me think of which is I had someone come into my office this week and want to take a year's leave without pay because of her elderly parents and her children, she was making a family oriented decision. She really felt like she needed to now, she confided with me afterwards, she was completely nervous. I don't know why I'm worried about this, by the way, she was completely nervous about telling me, and then as soon as she told me, she felt relief. So how did you feel like so you're talking now about the day where you went into the negotiation say, Oh look, I'm going to make this easy I'm out. How did you feel immediately after? Was it relief? regret? Tell us more about that.

Lon Stroschein: 37:41

When you finally give yourself permission to go be who you're capable of being, or go chase it, and you can tie out everything in your past to this moment and feel like you've done what you are here to do. You've checked the boxes, you've provided the best of your ability. You've delivered on every project to the best of your ability. But now it's time to move on. Now it's time to go figure out live the best years of your life. When I left I was 46 truly the best years of my life, and I was going to go figure out how to put them to use in a way that was pure. It wasn't for someone else. It wasn't for income. It was to use my pure gifts in ways that made me feel purely good. It is the most incredible feeling. The first one is of lightning. The moment I said, maybe my work here is just done, I literally mean, it is like the movies. Mick, it's like the weight just came up, all the pressure, the image didn't matter anymore. My work was done. I didn't have to I didn't have to pretend anymore. My work was done, and my life partner was right there saying, Yeah, your work's just done. I had a teammate. She's in the boat with me. We'll figure it out. And in the weight of the world, I don't know how else to say it. Other than that, all the Sunday pit, all the frustration, all the board prep, all the stuff that just annoyed me gone in a moment, in a single moment. So when I finally got I got to go in the next Monday, and I got to tell them, thank you. But my work here is done. I'm out. Let's work on my separation agreement. It was me taking control over my own life. And when I talk to people, I ask them, What do you want? The word control is always a word that comes up. I want freedom. I want the ability to do what I want, when I want, without feeling guilty about it. I mean, those are the things we want. And I knew in that moment I still needed to work. I don't want anybody to think I'm like, independently wealthy, and that I had this golden parachute and I could ride off into the sunset. Never Work Again. No, no, no, no, no, no. I still have to provide. I still have to do those things. The difference is, and this is important, I wanted, I want to just hit on this pretty pointedly, The Trade we talk about. You know, my book is called The Trade. I know we'll probably get into that, but there's this moment when you're when you're staring at two paths, and The Trade when you're standing there isn't a one time event. It's not a chalk line that you snap and you you cross over at once, and then it's done. What I traded was the belief that I could, I could grind out another five or six years and probably have enough to retire on. I traded that for the chance to build whatever I wanted to build. And. Do it for the next 30 years of my life, making an income from it, and doing it with a big smile on my face and feeling fulfilled. That's The Trade. The Trade isn't quitting. The Trade is quitting the fact that you've convinced yourself that if you leave now, you can't afford to retire in seven years, so you're gonna put up with all the stuff you're putting up with. You're trading that for. Now, I'm going to build something over a long time. It might take me a year or two, but it's going to be the thing I want to do for the until I'm physically unable and Mick, I can tell you what I'm doing right now. In case you can't tell I am so excited about what I get to do every day. I can't wait to do this for the next 25 years of my life. I don't need a big nest egg. I'm going to have an income helping people find what it is they want to do. And I'm going to do it for the next 25, 30 I call it Normal 40, because usually by the time this finds you, you've got 40 good years in front of you. And I hope I do. I'm going to do this hopefully for the next 40 years of my life.

Mick Spiers: 41:38

I love it, Lon. I'm going to reflect on some other language that you're using, just in case the audience is not picking up on it. So the first one is the words get versus have. So a lot of people will say, I have to go to work today. Have to go to work on Monday. What I hear you saying is, I get to go to work today. It's like a privilege. It's an honor. I get to do what I love. I think that's an amazing reframing from I have to go to work, from I get to go to work. And then the second one is, once again, reframing this word quit, but you're replacing the word quit with the word trade. I'm trading this for that. Here are the benefits of this, but here are the benefits of that, and guess what? I'm choosing that. So trading this for that is also really powerful. You mentioned about this. I want to unpack it a little bit more. How do we make sure that we're in that trade as much as we all want to pursue our passions and things that fill our heart with joy, we do still need to put food on the table. How do we make sure, in that trade, that we're not jumping from something that keeps some level of security in our family to who we're on the edge now, and I'm not sure how we're going to put food on the table next week.

Lon Stroschein: 43:03

I'm gonna share what I teach, and it fits a lot of people, but I'll admit it probably can't fit everyone. Couple, couple of ground rules. If you can start before you quit, do that, but I tell everyone you don't have to quit before you start, but you do have to start exploring something else if you ever want to trade it. Because, like I said, that that income, that's real that, and it should be. It should be, if you're the provider in your house and you're counting on that, then you've got that obligation you just do. But for me, what I did, one of the things that was keeping me there is that I'd spent the last 25 years of my life, Nick taking a piece of my paycheck, every paycheck, and and I did it a lot. And my guess is, the people who are listening to your podcast, these are over savers. Not over like not you're saving too much. I mean, these are the people who save more than others. They're good savers, and so they spent the last 25 years of their life, or 20 or 15 or 30 years of their life, saving, and they're saving in their 20s, and they're saving in their 30s, and they're really saving a lot now in their 40s, and they get to this, and they believe that it's money that they're saving for when they're 60 or 70 or 80, so they don't even think about it. In fact, in the United States, you're told, but not even think about it. Put it away. Don't even think about it. It's not even an option. And that's, there's there's some goodness in that, and there's some utility in that. But what I tell everybody, when they get to this point, if you get to this point, and you know your best days are in front of you, and you know they're not going to be found where your feet are. They're not going to be found in your current employer, then you have to take an action. You have to do something. And for me, I had a really hard time thinking, well, if I quit, I'm going to have to use retirement, because I had named it retirement, and I was 46 and I couldn't retire. So what I did was, I said, Okay, markets in the course of six weeks go up and down 10% when markets are volatile, certainly in the course of a year, they'll go up or down 10% so I said, what I'm going to do is, I looked at my retirement, I said, I'm going to take 10%. 10% of my total dollars that I thought I was going to use in 25 or 30 years. I'm going to take 10% of that and I'm going to take it out, and I'm going to put it over here in a different account. And I'm not calling it retirement. Mick, I'm calling it the bet on me fund. I'm. Calling it, this is my time fund, and I renamed it, and then I gave myself permission to use it to build the life I wanted to live for the next 30 years of my life. Now I wasn't borrowing from retirement every time I needed to make a house payment or a car payment, or my daughter had a college tuition bill. Do no now I was, I was using the money now that I named that gave me permission, and was the bet on me fund to build the next 30 years of my life. And so I was able to avoid the anxiety you have about the finances you've worked so hard to have. I just decided to put a little piece of it, 10% 10% of it to work for me now, so that I had a chance to build the life I wanted to build and to live the next 30 years of my life. And it has been the best return on investment I could ever imagine, because I'm in year two, and I've got 38 more years to go of paying it all back, it's going to pay more dividends than you could ever imagine.

Mick Spiers: 46:44

Really good long there's two things there one, and you touched on this earlier. One is about you can start before you quit. And you said that you had gone into the world of coaching at least two years before you made that pivotal decision. So you were getting yourself ready. It wasn't just jumping off the edge of a cliff, it was. It was a preparation phase before you launched into this and then this second one. You're very good at reframing, by the way you reframing. I'm not. I'm not digging into my savings fund or my retirement fund, I'm investing in myself. I'm making an investment, and I'm backing myself. I'm betting on me. So I love the way that you reframe and I think that is what will help people overcome any limiting beliefs where they might go. I could never do what lon did, because if you find yourself saying those same statements, how? How might you reframe what you're doing, as opposed to looking at it just on the surface of what you're doing? Now tell me, Lon, what does the Normal 40 movement look like? So if someone was to engage with you, to get involved in the movement, what does it look like?

Lon Stroschein: 48:02

So, I want to say just a couple things really quick, Mick. What you're going through, if this is resonating with you, is really damn lonely and it's scary, and you didn't want it, you didn't ask for it, and you wish it would go away. But in the hundreds and hundreds of conversations in the 1000s and 1000s of hours I've invested in just learning this through people. And the people who tend to find me are people who have already dedicated 20 years of their life to something so think of physicians, career, military, attorneys, accountants, architects, people who decided when they were 18 or 20 what they're going to do for the rest of their life. And now they're 35, 40, 45, 50 and they've got this feeling so they've worked themselves into the docs, and it's hard and it's lonely. So even though, yes, I can reframe and yes, I can say, just do this, it's hard. So what I discovered early is that people in a Normal 40 don't even know that there's other people going through this. They have no idea that they're not alone, because nobody talks about it. So I created a community, just a place to hang out, so that you can see. You can actually look people in the face. You can exchange emails, you can get on phone calls, and you can see people in your profession, in your country, in your hometown, in some cases, or from around the world, and connect with them on exactly what you're going through. You can, of course, connect with me, but normal 41st, and foremost, is a place for you to realize what you're going through is normal. That is why I named it Normal 40, and it happens when you have 40 good years of life left. Hopefully none of us know, but you've got time. It's not about the miles behind you, it's about the years in front of you. So it's Normal 40. So what is it? It's permission for you to say, hey, look, maybe this is my time to go, bet on me. And here's a place that I can just kind of peek behind the curtain, see who's here, and as I get more comfortable, I can get more involved. That's number one. Normal 40 is a community and and number two, I would say it's it, of course, is a process, a process that I've created, a process that I created for me, and a process that I've helped hundreds and hundreds of other people navigate. And the last thing I'll say is, look, I get billed as the guy who inspires people to quit, and sometimes that's true, but my mission isn't to get anyone to quit. In fact, I tell you, I don't even get a vote. I don't even care if you quit. I just care that. You know, I care that you care. I care that you know what your answer is for you as to what you should do next. And then we go do that. You might decide you want to become the CEO. Great, let's do that. I love it. You might decide you want to quit and create a nonprofit. Great, let's do that. I don't care what the answer for you is. I just care that you know the answer, that you stare yourself in the face and say, This is the answer, and then you put a plan together to go get it, man. And that, that's in a nutshell, what we do with the normal 41. More thing, I define the Normal 40 as an insurance policy against future regret, and I it goes right back to what I just said, I don't want you to get two years, five years, 10 years, or, heaven forbid, 15 years older than you now you are now. And you think back to this podcast when you think, God dang it, The Leadership Project had some dude on there who's talking about betting on yourself and a process to do it. And that was 10 years ago, and I didn't do anything. God dang it. Don't do that if it's your time, accept it and start doing something about it.

Mick Spiers: 51:51

Really powerful on coming back to this word regret, right? So in investing and avoiding that regret so you act now, so you avoid that regret later. It's very powerful. Also love what you're saying there around the person. So you're saying that you don't actually care what decision they make, as long as they care about what decision they make. And there was something that you didn't say, but I picked up there, and want to test this with you. It's about whether they're connecting to themselves. Do they care, as opposed to what they're worried about other people thinking so is it? Is it touching through to where their ego is telling them they need to be? How does that sit with you?

Lon Stroschein: 52:31

It's perfect. It's perfect because they got where they are chasing, who, chasing what other people thought they should be. All the promotions, everything in their company. It's Hey, this is what I'm supposed to do next. Think of somebody in the military, they know the day they sign up. Your two is this? Four is this six, this. Same with med school, somebody else decided what their path was going to be. So the time they get to me, they've forgotten how to dream. So I tell you, I don't have your answers. Man, it's impossible for me to have your answers, but I'll have some questions, questions that you need to answer for you. I'm just gonna hit you with them, because I can't tell you what you want to do. In fact, you can't even tell yourself what you want to do. That's where the work comes in, and it's work, and it sucks, because you think by now you should know the answers you when I say, what's the dream, you should know, but you won't, because you've forgotten how to dream, because everyone else has been putting what's next in front of you, for you for the last 20 years of your life.

Mick Spiers: 53:29

Spot on one, I really love it. One more reflection I'm going to make to you is the power of the language that you use. I've already mentioned it about your ability to reframe. I'm just I'm going to reflect now on two things, the very name of your book, which I didn't understand until we had this conversation, The Trade, I'm not quitting. I'm just trading one thing for the other, and the powerful word, the Normal 40. And I want everyone to hear that. If you're walking around thinking I'm the only one that feels like this. You're far from it said, Lon, congratulations on creating this community. Community is a beautiful word, because I'm sure whatever it is that you're going through right now not it might not be identical to what lon is sharing. But if you're walking around your city right now with a heavy weight on your shoulders thinking I'm this, I'm that, and I'm unusual. Somehow, I guarantee you, if you strike up a conversation with people, there's going to be 1000s of other people that go through the same thing you are. And it feels good to be able to have conversations with people that understand what you're going through. So thank you, Lon, thank you for what you do. Thank you for the community that you've created. Thanking you. Thank you for helping people go through that tricky decision making, to bring them back to their own ego, their own sense of self, back to what brings fulfillment in their life. I'd like now to take us to a Rapid Round lon so these are the same four questions that we ask all of our guests. So first of all, what's the one thing that you know now, Lon Stroschein, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Lon Stroschein: 55:11

You're more ready than you think. It always feels like you're not prepared to make the next big decision. You're not ready to make the next big move, that it's that it's not going to work out the way that it has worked out for other people. And so you just stay you're just not ready yet. You're going to do one or two more things you're going to do, you're going to make it just a little bit better so that you feel ready. And the chances are you're never going to feel ready. You're just going to put your. Yourself, but we should do is just put yourself in the position and then react to whatever needs. I mean, it's, it's when you have kids, you're never ready. If you waited until you're ready to have kids, guess what? The population the world would be seven. None of us are ever ready. But guess what? When baby shows up, you know what to do, and it's no different. If you quit your if you put together a plan to leave your job over sometime in this year, you're ready. You are you'll react. It won't go the way you thought. But that's part of the romance, that's part of the fun and and so just trust yourself and listen to me when I say this. Whatever you have in your mind right now, you're ready.

Mick Spiers: 56:22

Love it. Now, as a best selling author yourself, what is your favorite book?

Lon Stroschein: 56:28

It is a, it's probably a book that's been shared here a few different times. I love, love, love the book The Alchemist. I read it the first time when I was in college, and it didn't really it was good book. It was kind of whimsical. It felt like, okay. And it felt like fiction when I was young, and then I read it again when I was about 40, and I'm like, wait a minute, this, this, this is a lot less fiction than I thought, because I think I'm a character in this book, and since the age of 45 I've read it every year so, and I'd read it every spring, so I'm about two months away from reading it for like, the eighth time, and every time I've read it. Mick, I'm a new character at a different place in the book. And it is, it is one of the most beautiful pieces of writing ever. It's it's spiritual, without being religious. It's our it's, it's just wonderfully written. And if you give yourself the space to really go with the story, I mean, it's just, it'll just, it will. It will shape your life. It will shape how you think your life can look in just a matter of years.

Mick Spiers: 57:43

I love it, Lon, and what I love is that you're getting something different out of it every time you read it. That's really interesting. What's your favorite quote?

Lon Stroschein: 57:53

This is a quote that goes back to so I led strategy and mergers and acquisitions for a public company, and one of my favorite quotes of all times this day is by Winston Churchill, and the quote says, no matter how great the strategy, one should occasionally look at the results. And man, we can all relate to really having a conviction about something and just going all in and all in and all in and just assuming that it's going to get better and it's going to get better, but occasionally, maybe you should just look at the actual results and maybe make a different decision. And so every time we would get into strategy, I would start with that this is the point where we look at the results and then we decide if the strategy still makes sense or not, because we can all rally behind strong words and a good strategy and a rah, rah, but occasionally you need to look at the results.

Mick Spiers: 58:44

So thank you so much, Lon. There's going to be a lot of people listening to the show that are going through the exact things that we've been talking about today. How do people find you? If they'd like to know more about you, your work, the community, the book?

Lon Stroschein: 59:00

Yeah. Thanks, Mick. So, it's pretty simple. I show up most on LinkedIn, and every morning I write something. I write something in the moment in the morning. So occasionally we have spelling errors and all the things that happen. But I wake up and I just share something with people who are typically at this intersection, and so find me on LinkedIn. Lon strohsen, you can also go to normal forty.com or Normal 40 on LinkedIn, but that's where I show up every, every single day, the most. I also, I mentioned, I want to mention two other things. One, I wrote a book, and I'm really proud of it, and it really, I mean, you can probably hear my passion and emotion about this, and it's been fantastic. It's been an absolutely fantastic part of my journey. I'm not trying to say the book is fantastic. I'm saying what it has gotten out of people has been inspiring. And so I would really encourage people to buy the book. I it's an audible. I'll read it to you. I read it. Or you can, you can buy the book on Amazon and and, and find it that way. And I really think that for a few 10s of dollars, this is a fantastic way to say, look, does this make sense to me or not? Am I ready to take some of these steps or not? And it's, it's the there again, the best investment you can make on yourself. And then the last thing I've got is I've got a little community called The Insider, and it's $25 a month, and it puts you face to face with me a few times a month, and face to face with hundreds of others who are right where you're at. And we show up there, and we treat it like a community. And. And those are the best places you can find me and my work and what we do, but it's also where you can get involved in the movement and start going to work on yourself and betting on yourself for who it is you're capable of being next.

Mick Spiers: 1:00:53

Wonderful, Lon. Look thank you so much for everything that you've shared today, your wisdom and your insights, your your different pieces of advice along there on the LinkedIn Part One thing I noticed when you and I connected, I also noticed a lot of the resources that you have there, things like the Normal 40 planner and things like this. So there's a lot of great content there. I do strongly encourage you to connect with lon on LinkedIn. Follow some of those resources, join the community, buy the books, buy the book, buy the book, buy the book. Leave a review. These really, these things really help authors as well. But thank you so much. Lon, really enjoyed today's conversation. I feel literally richer from having this conversation. I know that the audience would as well. Thank you for your time today.

Lon Stroschein: 1:01:39

Absolutely, Mick. Thank you. Thanks for your mission, Man. Putting together a podcast. You know people take for granted. If you've never done one, you take for granted that it looks easy because it's just a couple of guys wrapping but I know the amount of work you put into this, I know how long we've worked to just get this scheduled in your busy schedule. So thanks for doing what you do, Man. I really, really appreciate you.

Mick Spiers: 1:02:00

Thank you, Lon. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. In the next episode, we'll be joined by Vera Quinn, the CEO of sidcor. She shares her inspirational story, going from being the daughter of immigrant parents and early tragedy in her life to career and entrepreneurial success. Don't forget to follow The Leadership Project podcast so you can be notified of all of our future episodes. If you are getting great value from these discussions, it would be wonderful if you would leave us a rating and a review. You can also subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel, where we bring you weekly live stream shows, short, informative videos and full video podcasts. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to Faris Sedek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP, Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo, And my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.