[00:00 Jim: And so I started to realize then that everyone was looking at AI as the risk. And, another key part of all this= is fear.  I was realizing people were actually focused on the underlying issues of fear of failure and fear of inadequacy. Two things that healthy humans all do. Why? Because the systems we were losing trust in taught us to do that. You're better controlled if you think, "Oh, I shouldn't try this 'cause I may fail at it," or, "Who am I to question this?"

[00:42] Gerrit: Dear listeners. A warm welcome to a brand-new episode of Second Crack - The Leadership Podcast. If you are new to the show, this is where we explore complex leadership dilemmas and paradoxes, and where we invite you as our listener to self-reflect. I am Gerrit Pelzer, I work as an executive coach, and I bring to my coaching a combination of Western science and Asian wisdom. Joining me today, as always, is my dear friend and business partner, Martin Aldergard. Martin specializes in driving change and transformation within organizations, and what we both have in common is that we always put people at the center of our work. Hi, Martin, it's good to be recording again with you.

[01:27] Martin: Yeah. Hi, Gerrit. It's great, and today so looking forward to having our first revisiting guest with us talking about risk.

[01:37] Gerrit: That's right. That's Jim Massey. Hi, Jim, and welcome again.

[01:43] Jim: Thank you. It is an honor to be your first revisit and so I appreciate that. 

[01:49] Gerrit: So you have been on our show three years ago, I didn't imagine it was that long already. At that time, you had just published a book, "Trust in Action", and we discussed your "Can, Care, Do" approach to building trust, which by the way, has been also very useful in my coaching. At that time, you were still the chief sustainability officer of a biopharma company. Before that, you were a vice president at a large pharmaceutical company, and since then a lot has changed. So I don't know where to start. So you have written another book, so you came from "Trust in Action" to now "Risk in Action". Certainly something we want to explore in more depth today. You have also started your own company, Eastward, taking a lot of risk doing so, and you also shared with us that there were some personal changes in your life. Um, that go beyond also look- looking at the video, your hair grow on your head and in your face a bit. So a lot of changes. Jim, why don't I just hand over to you and we see where the conversation takes us?

[03:07] Jim: I love that, Gerrit, and thank you. When you told, you know, when you, when you just said it's been three years, it feels like yesterday, and it feels like a decade. Time has changed since post the pandemic for me. And I think one of the interesting things was Trust In Action came out of a time when so many of us were questioning trust, and, you know, we were feeling like the systems around us were failing.

And I've come to realize over time that those systems are still failing, and just because we may or may not trust them wasn't enough. And, um, I've always, similar to you, put people at the center of the work I do. And, and so I started to realize that as I was helping people understand trust, there were other key concepts that I am very passionate about. And I've spent most of my professional career helping people understand risk. But I started to realize we have the wrong definition of risk because the systems we no longer trust had taught us that risk was bad. And so that was a big piece of what I needed to write about. 

And I think what any author who's written a leadership book will tell you is you always think it's for others, but by the time you get done with the process, you realize it was actually for yourself, and you're just hoping others may benefit from your journey. Because that's what we all can do. When we share our stories, we pick up nuggets that then can translate into our own personal lives. And so you're exactly right. You know, for, for your listeners, if they see me on LinkedIn, um, they may have seen me a few years ago and, you know, I had the professional short haircut, and now, you know, I, I, I let my curls flow and I stop shaving and, you know, though I trim my beard every once in a while. I, I look quite different. You know, I, I've lost weight. You know, like there's so many elements that have changed because I now understand I trust myself. Trust rooted in self-love that was required. But then I also now understand risk that I'm facing, that all of us are facing in an ever-changing world is not bad. It's just simply a gap between where we currently are and where we know we need to go. 

So I'll stop there with just kind of the concepts because it sets the stage for, um, I think the, the final thing I will say, I may have lied to you there, is the other trend I found is both of my books talk about "in action". And it's really important that there's a space between the word "in" and "action". So it's not inaction like nothing's going on, but it's "trust in action" and "risk in action". And what I've come to learn is that I'm actually a fan of action. At a time when so many people stop, action, doing something is what's required.

[05:57] Gerrit: So you said something very interesting that people may miss, which I think is extremely important, and maybe we get to that later in more detail about the gap between where we are and where we, did you say want or need to go?

[06:15] Jim: where we know we need to 

[06:16] Gerrit: we need to go. I, I think this is highly interesting, but maybe before we go to this into more depth, what prompted you to write another book and this time about risk?

[06:29] Jim: You know, as I was meeting with my clients and working with everyone, I just started to realize artificial intelligence was coming out, and once I started getting access to OpenAI, Anthropic, ChatGPT, you know, all of these various tools, I started to realize this wasn't something that was going to happen in the future. And so many people, and particularly in my professional network, were doing what we always do, poo-pooing the innovation. Like, "This isn't good." I get so tired of hearing people talk about AI slop. Well, guess what? Human slop I've been cleaning up for the last twenty-five years in work. People finding shortcuts or making up excuses to take the action they knew they should not have taken. And so trying to blame artificial intelligence on humans' bad efforts is not appropriate. And so I started to realize then that everyone was looking at AI as the risk. And, and the other piece that I'm gonna talk about, and it may be a third visit we end up with, but another key part of all this is fear.

And so as we keep talking, we're gonna be coming through here, but I was realizing people were actually focused on the underlying issues of fear of failure and fear of inadequacy. Two things that healthy humans all do. Why? Because the systems we were losing trust in taught us to do that. You're better controlled if you think, "Oh, I shouldn't try this 'cause I may fail at it," or, "Who am I to question this?" and, and gentlemen, I... This was me in my personal life. You know, I'm, I may look twenty-two, but I'm fifty-two, and I'm joking with that. I, I, I look my age and maybe a little bit older. But, um, but, you know, all of my life, I've held myself back because I didn't trust myself or I saw a gap between where I am and where I know I need to be, and I wouldn't jump into that gap because I was afraid of failure. And so my two books actually address the two most common fears we as humans face. Trust in Action is focused on fear of inadequacy, and fear of failure is why I wrote Risk in Action. 

[08:43] Gerrit: It's very interesting you mention that when you talk about the common fears humans face. I feel reminded of a book that I read on my, my last business flight. it's called "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz. And he says that many people think the biggest fear humans have is the fear of death. But he says the biggest fear is actually to be alive and be ourselves, and I found that extremely interesting. A- and he talks exactly about this, we try to fulfill the expectations of other people, and that is holding us back. So I can see how fear and risk are related there, how many people are afraid of doing what they are here to do. And, it also relates to myself. You know, this book was one of the many pieces of a puzzle that gave me the courage to leave a corporate job behind and start my own business as an executive coach. 

[09:49] Jim: One of my favorite stories I, I love to talk about is when I was ready to write my second book, I reached out to my publishing coach, who is a-- has become a dear personal friend. And this was over a year ago, right? It was back in early twenty twenty-five. Um, and we, we reach out, and we're on a Zoom call. We're looking at each other, and I, I'm telling him, "I, I would like to write another book, but before we get into this, how are you?" He's like, "Oh, I'm great. I just got back from the, the country's largest publishing conference." And, um, he's like, "There was a lot of buzz. You know, there was a lot of change. But Jim, I got one piece of advice for you. Whatever you do, stay away from AI. Publishers are saying, 'Do not touch anyone who uses AI to help them write.' It's a cheat. They're gonna ruin the industry. They're gonna do all of this." And I said, "Wow, okay." And in that moment, you know, our ladder of inferences, all those things start to take effect, and, and I-I'm processing. And I said, "Okay. So Scott, I wanna announce something to you." He's like, "What?" I'm like, "I wanna be your first best-selling AI-assisted author." And he roared with... He's like, "That's what you took from me saying, 'Stay away from this?'" And I said, "Yes." Because everyone is afraid of inadequacy because they don't know what this is, and everyone is afraid of failure, that this is gonna take over their jobs.

AI is here to unleash the human capacity to think. And this was a long time ago. Since then, two years later, like, Eastward is an AI company. So not only did I... And by the way, not only did I become his first best-selling AI-assisted author in twelve weeks instead of a year and a half like it took me with my first book, but also, I found myself in a space where I wanted to learn more and, and I've been bringing AI to innovation across the work I do and helping others realize it's not here to replace me. It's here to help me stop doing the stupid mundane work that humans were never meant to be doing with machines.

[11:59] Martin: Yeah, we have so many angles on this, and I'm, I'm drawing the parallel so much also to, to the personal stories of staying stuck, and which is a parallel with AI. Sometime we might use AI as a scapegoat of remaining stuck in how things are usually done, right? Because taking action and moving forward exposes ourselves to all our flaws, and it doesn't matter whether that is AI will expose us to our flaws because we need to prove that we are better than the machine, so to say. And I'm thinking as a leader, how many time have I hesitated to take action? Analyzing, looking for justifications, looking for data, looking for guidelines what is the right decision ,should I do this? Even if my gut feeling telling me I should do this, I'm still hesitating. And I'm asking myself why? Why couldn't I come out faster doing this and just move forward? I'm stuck in this gap that you're talking about

[13:09] Jim: Yes. I, Martin, it's, it's beautiful. And, and, and I wanna share, I always had this vision that I would have three books, but when I was working with my team, my publishing coach Scott actually said, "Jim, you need to bring..." 'Cause it was always gonna be trust in action, risk in action, and fear in action. And I know someday I need to get more about fear, but he's like, "Jim, now is the time to bring it in to risk in action." So I always write my books in kind of threes, you know. With trust I did can, care, do. With risk in action I kinda collapsed it, and, you know, I talked about what was happening in the world and redefining risk, and in the middle I talk about the three parts of risk. And I say you must face it, you must frame it, and then you must move forward. You know, every model I have, the final step is action. In trust it's can, care, do. You must do something. With risk you must move forward because you have to cross the gap. But in the third section of Risk In Action, I introduce my action universe. And, and what that is is it's, it's, it's, you know, almost a superhero moment for leaders like us, Martin, to recognize when we are in that space of taking no action.

And so if you guys will just indulge me for a little bit for listeners, I wanna introduce what is the action universe. And I, I describe it as almost like a solar system where action is my s- my central sun, you know, it's running through, and there are three planets always at play, and it is trust, risk, and fear. And the best way to summarize this is when action is needed, risk is simply the gap between where we are and where we need to go. Trust is the bridge that will take you there, but fear is the fog that will keep you from ever taking a step on that bridge of trust. And the reason for that, and Martin, this is exactly what you were saying, what does that sound like?

It sounds like at the end of a meeting when a big decision needs to be made, I as a leader say, "Well, let's, let's spend a little more time analyzing that. You know, let's get more data." So it makes me sound strategic as a leader, but really what I'm doing is saying I feel either one, I feel inadequate to make the decision, or I'm afraid that if I make the decision we may fail and it will come back to haunt me. 

[15:29] Gerrit: Hmm. 

[15:30] Jim: So with those two major fears, there's an issue of trust and there's an issue of risk, that gap being fueled by fear. And so how you look at that gap, whether you look at it with fear... When you, when you allow the fear of fog to set in, you see risk as a stop sign. When you s- view that risk and the gap through the lens of trust, you see it as the green light to run. And, and it's so hard because the trust is not trust in system or trust in team, it's about trust in self. And then the final thing I'll say about all of this, 'cause b- you know, gentlemen, it sounds easy when I s- you know, give these little analogies. All of this, ironically, is rooted in a word we don't talk about, and it's love. Because fear is given to us by those who love us. You know, many of the fears that I have were given to me by my mentors, my parents, my grandparents, my partner, my kids. And trust, for trust to truly exist and for us to really trust ourselves, we first must learn to love ourselves. 

And so Martin, when I heard you talking about this, I have sat in meetings where I put off a decision because I did not love myself enough to fully show myself as the capable leader who's willing to learn from failure. Instead, I was worried because others had told me, "If you fail, people may fire you," or, "If you fail, people will lose trust in you. If you fail..." All these excuses the system's given us, and now I no longer give a shit because I know even if I fail, I will figure out the next step. Because I have to get me and those I care about from where I am to where I know I need to go, and that's that inner voice in me. And that's why I don't say where we want to go. We all know where we need to go, but because of lack of trust and fear of failure, we don't make the decision to take the step forward.

[17:37] Martin: Can we come back to this question about the gap? What, what do you do in the gap between where you are and where you need to be?

[17:45] Jim: So in Risk in Action, I do introduce... Because again, the system has always told me to be fearless And my model for fear is to be fearful, but not with the traditional suffix of F-U-L. I put F-U-L-L in the model. So when I talk about fearFULL, the word fear is all in lowercase and full is all uppercase. 

And, and I learned this from my dear friend Amon Wolfe, A-M-O-N W-O-L-F-E, out of Australia. He, he has mapped the, the nine most common fears to the stages of human development. Um, my whole thing around fearFULL is it is only once you sit with the fear, that poof, you realize it was made up. That if you start with the premise that I am safe and I am capable, I trust myself. So if something doesn't go right, I'll figure it out. But I'm not in brain surgery where if I mess the scalpel, someone dies. I'm in corporate, where I'm writing a policy on best ways to, to regulate expense reporting systems, you know. So we always need to calibrate what is it I'm fearful of. But that also always comes back to, you know, I always touch my temples when I talk about this. The construct of fear is here. We build these things that confine us. 

 You know, I, I am now single. I spent twenty, almost twenty-five years of my life in a, in a relationship, and it wasn't the best one for us. And to, to trigger that is one of the scariest things, but that happened at the same time that I was with my father, who has stage four metastasized prostate cancer. And he was in the hospital, and I was there with my siblings. And so, you know, as I was ending one personal relationship from whom I got many fears from my partner, I'm there with my siblings and my dad, where I got many other fears, right.

But it was in that time when I was sitting there with what are the fears of losing a parent? What are the fears of being single? What are the fears of all of these various concepts, that I had the clarity to realize I was safe and I was capable. And so the decisions became crystal clear because I was no longer allowing the constructs that I had in my head that were screaming. I always say that that's the voice that the world wants me to have, but the reason I keep saying that risk is the gap between where we are and where we know we need to go because that inner voice is trying to hear, but we keep putting it on silence. I've turned that up so loud that I'm listening to myself now because I am capable. 

[20:47] Martin: Imagine the energy that is released compared to the energy that we spend on trying to defend everything that we have defended, and suddenly it's such a tremendous, uh,it's relief. I'm exhaling and suddenly I can listen, I can see things, I can hear things that I never had the energy to hear before because I was fighting to, to pretend. And then, and now I'm extrapolating this into an organization. Imagine like one of your big companies you've worked with, with 10,000, 20,000 people, and there is more or less fear in the organization, and how much energy all of these people are potentially burning every day.

[21:36] Jim: Every day. And executives are, you know, uh, it's why I've created this AI company. What I'm doing is I'm helping organizations face the risks so they can frame them so they can move forward. 

And so what happened is because of AI, once you do the groundwork to do the risk assessment for an enterprise, we have something we now call the reality check, and it runs real time on a specific risk. You know, we've spent, we've done more than 1,000 risk assessments in this system. It brings up information. So I'm meeting with future clients who are asking me, "How do you know this?" I'm like, "Because we have access to the human capacity of thinking through artificial intelligence to now let you make a decision for your organization." 

 Right now, with my new tool, I can help leaders start processing and thinking, and it's remarkable, Martin and, and Gerrit, how I show up right now. Because when I'm in these meetings, it's not to sell this product to them. I'm listening to the two most common fears of inadequacy and failure, and I'm coaching them on how this tool can help them in their interactions at work get more laser focus. Because the wasted energy, it's what was happening with me.

And you know,one thing I wanna say is, I wear a wearable device and, and stress and all that energy is actually measurable in heart rate variability. And my subconscious was always, you know, in fight or flight. And, and so with so much going on in my life, I was constantly doing that, and my heart rate variability in this ratings were always red and yellow. And then once I started to focus on my fear, I have been in green for the last six months because I understand that I am safe and I am capable, and I just keep reiterating that to myself and working through that so that that energy that was being zapped for the last two years is now put toward the energy where I know I need to go. And that, that's transformational leadership for self that then helps me transform those around me.

[23:48] Gerrit: Coming, back to what both of you said earlier reminds me of another book by Susan Jeffers. It's called "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway." And it's like Martin, I think you gave this example of people who climb mountains, right? And it's often not that these people are fearless, they are maybe fearFULL, but they, yeah, they face the fear and deal with it. 

And it also relates to a quite common coaching question I ask people when they are concerned about things, they worry. It's such an obvious question: "What's the worst-case scenario? And how likely is it that the worst-case scenario can come true?" And often, well, it's highly unlikely, but even if it's relatively likely, then the question is, well, what happens when the worst-case scenario comes true? As well, yeah, then we deal with it. And that is also, this exhale, this relief. But people don't go there. It sounds or it feels so scary, we don't even think about it. But once we think our... Like, like you said in this first, how did you frame it, the first phase or what is "face". Face the situation, face the risk, right? So you face it, and then you can deal with it. 

And I, I don't know how we can approach this, but throughout our discussion, one example was on my mind. When I work with large corporations that are listed on the stock market, there are always these quarterly results. The quarterly results must look good, which 

[25:27] Jim: Yes 

[25:28] Gerrit: we can't take any risk. We can't take the risk, and it sounds so ridiculous, we can't take the risk to focus on long-term results because the short-term results are so important. And I have really come to appreciate working with private companies. I work with some quite large companies that are, for instance, still owned by a family. And, you know, they work so differently. They focus on the long-term results. And we don't need to do this nonsense right now. And this has been on my mind, and I can't really put it into a question. But Jim, I'm very curious, about how you think about the situation with these quarterly results: they must look good. W- what are your thoughts about this?

[26:17] Jim: It's all made up Right?the system outside has told us, and you will never get a CEO convinced that my statement there is factually true. And yet, at the same time, as soon as I say that, I have. So for example I was working with one organization, and I ran a reality check for them, and they're a beverage company. And when I ran the reality check, they did not understand that from an environmental standpoint, the trade winds across the Atlantic are going to be changing. And so this company sources a significant portion of their barley for the adult beverages they make from Europe. So I did this in early May. In April, a scientific publication had published an article that my system picked up, and then, um, they said that over the next decade, there's gonna be a drought, the way the trade winds are coming, that it's gonna be affecting Europe. And so they had that information, and it was around supply 'cause they source roughly forty-five percent of their barley from Europe. And so over the next decade, there's gonna be risk there. But what that also picked up was that they also had an issue because the, the US attack on Iran had closed the Strait of Hormuz, and many of their ships go through there. And so this leader is sitting there looking at this and, um, there was a third thing I'm now forgetting, but these three things popped up from recent headlines, and this leader, who's worried about quarterly results, did not realize that a significant portion of their ships for distribution were going through there. Like these, you know, you're... These aren't long-term things. 

But this is the type of information that impacts leaders quarterly and long term. And I think we before have talked about this. Short term, long term is actually a, a paradox. You can't have short-term results and not have that impact your long term. So you can't choose between them. So I always say that's where it's the, the, the yes and option. And so I just try to help leaders think, "Okay, you have to deliver quarterly results, but they must be tied to this." And so that's how I try to get them to always balance. It's not one over the other, it's both. We're in the most rapid rate of change with technology, and we as individuals keep up faster than our businesses do. So as leaders, we have to be operating at a different pace, and regulations and government will always be behind. They will never catch up again. So we as individuals have to be ahead of the systems that we rely on, and that is hard in leadership because we've always waited for the systems to tell us what to do. Now we have to do in the absence of the systems telling us.

[29:12] Martin: This hit the point for me. The leaders that trust their own capability and that feel safe, they are grounded, they are intentional, they are the one that will be capable in this situation to use, for instance, technology or to use the uncertainty in the market, in the world today, and be ahead of the game. And of course, the leaders that don't trust their own capability or don't trust the team, the world is changing too fast. And then AI becomes a threat because AI will show the weaknesses. It ... You can, you cannot hide from the clarity of the information that, for instance, your company is providing. 

 I'm thinking again of continuous self-development, challenging myself as a leader, learning new things every day, reflecting on what I'm doing, feeling safe with that, building relationships so thatI can get the trust, I can get the love that I need to feeling safe and capable. I can face the fears as a corporate leader or as a private person. I can take the risks, and I can extend this, throughout the organization

[30:30] Gerrit: F-face the fear is my cue, Martin. Uh, w-we talked a lot about very different, very interesting examples. I'm wondering for leaders who are listening saying, "yeah, okay, now, how do I use this, and how can I use a structured approach?" Should we briefly talk about this framework, "face, frame, and move forward"? And maybe you could elaborate a little bit what each phase means.

[30:58] Jim: You know, the face frame forward I use as a triangle.

 feeding into this is the "face" piece, right? And that face, what I mean by that is, so what is the gap, what are the issues that I might be facing that can keep me from going where I need to go? And asking that genuine question and understanding the potential risks that may be there, and then opening the aperture enough to actually get the full view. That's where many leaders mess up. E- especially if we go into organizations, we, we go with only the part of the world we know. And, and as I say that, it's the same truth for me. You know, what do I know about the world, and what do I know about myself actually kept me contained beyond me opening it up, what can I be, what is possible for me? And so that's the important part of face is being truthful about the risk and the view of what that risk is by facing it. 

Then the next piece that's important is the frame piece. Once you face the risk, then you must frame it, and that for me is the contextual part. Actually being able to define, so what is this risk and how does that matter? And I think that's partially where fear comes in and trust comes in. It's the way in which you're using that lens to see the risk itself. So do you see it as a green light or a stop sign?

And then the final piece of this is forward. You have to do something even if... I always say, even if the fear of fog is so hard, tip your toe one inch out and see if there's something under there. And if there is, take a step. If there isn't, move your foot a little bit and find where the path is. If you honestly cannot see, just tip your toe and see if there's something under it, and that's how you know you can keep moving forward. But that's the forward path that's so important.

[32:50] Gerrit: And I think in your book you also mentioned that frame is about creating meaning, and Martin and I talk a lot about in-- when, when it's about organizational transformation, it's a lot about meaning-making, sense-making together. How does meaning-making fit into "frame"?

[33:09] Jim: So I'll just give you an example, right, because in the frame of risk, it's where both the can care do and the fearFULL model sits, and one of my favorite things when I'm trying to help a leader be fearFULL. This is a, a technique I learned from Amon. Um, he's my fear guru, I love to call him. So the first exercise that I do with a leader is, similar to what, you know, Gerrit, you said earlier, I'll ask a leader, "What are you afraid of?" And they'll tell me. And often it's a system level. And so then they get very frustrated 'cause once they tell me, I ask them a second question: "So what are you afraid of?" And sometimes it's still kind of system, and then it gets to a little bit more of, of a, a closer world to them, and they'll, they'll talk for about five minutes. And then I ask them a third question: "What are you afraid of?" And they'll try to tell me something more. I ask a fourth question: "What are you afraid of?" And they'll tell me a little bit more. And then I ask the fifth question: "So what are you afraid of?" Every single time it's something between their heads. It's I'm afraid, and nine out of ten times it's either I'm afraid I'm gonna fail or I'm afraid I'm not adequate, the two most common fears, every single time.

And so then I have another series of five questions I ask, and it's the same question: "Why are you afraid?" By the time I get through these 10 questions, they realize the fear doesn't exist. And so that's what meaning is about in the frame context of my risk model. So you go through the fearful model, and you go through the trust model, and that brings meaning to the risk and the gap that you see.

[35:07] Martin: A short clarifying question. You said now they're realizing the fear doesn't exist. Uh, is it like it goes away, or is it just that I can deal feeling it? it. I have identified it, I can live with it?

[35:25] Jim: It's a great question, Martin, and I I'm afraid. It, it actually, it, it just, it poofs. It disappears.

[35:33] Martin: Hmm.

[35:34] Jim: I come out, right, and tell you, "I'm afraid that the world is not going to like this decision." Okay, the world, like, "Sorry, Jim, you're not that important." You know, I don't say that, right? But it's like, "So then what are you afraid..." and so and it comes down to I'm afraid that if I get this, I'm gonna lose my job. Okay, that becomes real. So what are you afraid of? I can't pay for my house. Okay. You know, like you, you see what I'm saying? So it's, you know, people start off... And when I first did this, Amon asked me, I was in a circle with 10 others, a very trusted, you know, curated group, and he's like, "What are you afraid of?" I'm like, "You know, I'm afraid of system failure." Really? And what it came down to was I was afraid of the self-chaos going on inside of me. And then he did the second exercise, why are you afraid? And I start off big again, and then finally, because it means I must be present and address it. So in this case, I had to face the risk of the self-chaos that was happening within me, and in my own model, once I had that meaning and I could accept the fear, that it meant I had to move forward. I couldn't stay where I was 'cause I knew where I needed to go. And in that moment, I understood why my subconscious had allowed me to go into the separation process. It allowed me to do so many of these things because I knew I could not stay where I was 'cause it was literally harming me. Physically and emotionally, I was not the best I could be for my partner, for my kids, and for myself. And so that's where I had to move forward. But it, it... the fear was the self-chaos. So is that really a fear? No, it's just an untidy home I had to clean up. So get to work.

[37:29] Gerrit: You had there a number of extremely powerful questions before, and typically we wrap up with some reflection questions for leaders. I wonder if we're ready to go there or is there anything else that any of you would like to add? 

[37:44] Jim: I'm shaking my head. I'll answer no.

[37:47] Gerrit: I, I have a lot of questions on my mind. 

[37:49] Martin: 

[37:49] Gerrit: Yeah, I havemany, maybe two for the, for the podcast episode. One that stuck with me for a while now while we were recording was this: "what is holding you back?" And the second is related to my spiritual teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, who uses this in a different context, but "what impact will my decision now have in 300 years from now?" these would be my questions.

[38:27] Jim: Yes

[38:28] Gerrit: Jim, I, I have two more questions for you. Number one, people who are interested in the book, Risk in Action, where can they find it?

[38:39] Jim: They can go to Amazon. It is there.

Okay. And any other online bookstore as well, and maybe physical bookstores. And, if people want to contact you, how can they do this, and who would be the ... I don't know if there's such thing as the right people to contact you? , I think anyone looking for their Second Crack, right, because they, they are gonna be focused on fear of failure and fear of inadequacy. Am, am I really the right person to try this now? And, and if you're in that space, give me a call because we, we will figure out which fear is most dominant, and I can help guide you to trust in action or risk in action. You'll need both, but, but we'll start with one. And the best way to get in contact with me is via LinkedIn, or at my website, jimmassey.co. dot CO, not dot com. 

[39:34] Gerrit: Okay, and we'll make sure we put links in the session notes so that you're easy to find. Gentlemen, it was a wonderful episode, and I'm looking forward to episode number three, four, and five with you, Jim.

[39:49] Jim: I cannot wait. It's, it is always such a treat and, and one of the things I will tell anyone listening, we don't have a script when we talk, and that's one of the most magical moments for me because often when I'm on podcasts, they want them so curated. But I, I so appreciate the wisdom the two of you bring to our conversations, and the kindness that, that you trust me, and that means a lot, so I value that. Thank you, 

[40:13] Gerrit: Thank you, and thank you again for being here. 

Well, then this concludes today's episode. And if you would like Martin and my support also in your leadership development, please do not hesitate to contact us via hello@secondcrackleadership.com. Second Crack Leadership is all in one word. And if you enjoy the podcast, which is a project of passion and which we continue to offer completely free of charge, please help us grow our community by telling a friend about Second Crack. And if you could leave a positive comment or a five-star rating, it would mean a lot to us.

Thanks for listening, and bye for now.