Welcome to the Brian Bithini show, where we explore the mindsets, motivation and methodologies of success.

My name is David Lally, I'm the producer of the show, and I know we may be in challenging times,

but that's just why we've been working on shows to keep us upbeat and focused on the good stuff. Let's listen in.

We'll top of the morning to you and welcome to the Brian Bithini show. I'm excited to welcome back to our show today, our very first guest on the podcast.

220 episodes ago, 9 million downloads ago. We had the great John O'Leary, and if you haven't had a chance to listen to that, I encourage you to go to episode two, and to hear more of John's incredible story.

There's a guy that has a nine-year-old boy was born over 100% of his body. He was given a 1% chance to live, and he's come back through that and become a profound inspirational character with a great message.

We've had him on our stages at Puffinian Company many, many times. We've referred him to dozens of organizations we have relationships with when they need someone to really fire up their troops, and I'm really excited to talk about something other than pandemics and setbacks.

This is a guy that's overcome something very, very severe and has lived to tell the tale and thrives accordingly and has a great family right there in St. Louis and a great bunch of kids.

He's just a good man and we've been good friends now for a long time, and he's just written a brand new book called In-R.

John and I were talking offline today. He's like, what do we want to do here for our audience? And I go, I want to talk about something inspiring, I want to talk about something encouraging, I want to talk about something other than politics, media, pandemics, economics.

I want to talk about something that really makes life go, and that's what this is all about. What really brought about the inspiration for writing the book? Where did that come from?

Brian, outside of being in your household and being on your stage, what I find with the majority of adult listeners and learners is that they struggle in life.

They endure the day, they find it to be taxing and exhausting, they do more and more with less and less. They feel beat up every single day and that's by lunch hour.

They wait for vacations that don't come for the next 11 and a half months. It's like they're always waiting for life to occur. They're not living presence in the moment.

And then I would leave the stages, leave these arenas, leave these ballrooms and these boardrooms, walk into school buildings, when I'm on the road, and I don't like room service. I like to work, and I love to be in front of kids.

What I would see in front of these kids, like first-printer, second graders, was unbridled joy. They would get into the room. They would smile more frequently. They would laugh more easily when I would ask them questions. Their hands would all go up.

Usually before I was done asking the question, they were completely on fire lit up with the possibility of their lives.

They were optimistic, Brian. They had the immigrant judgment. They really did believe that life was good and the fest days were in front of them.

So seeing this economy between kids, who we all were, and adults, who many of us are, I wondered, what is it that they have? Why do we lose it? And how do we return to it?

Obviously, it is a very interesting position. Many people desire the life of a public speaker without knowing all the costs and challenges involved.

And one of the hidden challenges I've always believed is when you're looking into the eyes of an audience member that so desperately needs what you have, and as much as they want to go where you're going, you know that for many of them, they're going right back to where they were before.

And sometimes it can be a haunting experience where you know, my gosh, I know I could help that person, but I've, whether I couldn't reach them or they just weren't ready. I don't know what it is.

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