Stepping Up from Cancer to Leadership Coaching with Carl Sharperson

We welcome you back, and we are pleased to have a wonderful guest here with us today to share with us about dealing with adversity, Overcoming Adversity to Lead with Authenticity. That's the title of his book, and his name is Carl Sharperson. You can find him at carlsharpersonjr.com, he's also the author of the book Parenting Principles for Rearing Young People. Carl, welcome to our conversation here today, my friend.

Thanks for having me. Brad, it's a pleasure to be here. Looking forward to the conversation.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you just we've had a prior conversation. Get to know each other a little bit, and I know you are a person who has some great leadership skills and some great things that you've done, including writing your books and being a leader in the industry and other things, and being a military veteran, and those are all wonderful things.

But one of the things we like to focus in on here is how people have kind of overcome some adversity in life. And I know that both you and your wife had to deal with a pretty serious health matter in life. So can you kind of take us through the story a little bit how you were kind of more or less cruising along in life? Okay? And then Health Matters came for both you and your wife, and you had to deal with that. So good. Let's, let's, pick up your story from there,

Alrighty. So I graduated from the Naval Academy, and then I went into the Marine Corps, okay? And after flight school, I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, from 1978 to 1981 then I got out of the Marine Corps, okay? Joined Proctor and Gamble for seven years, Frito Lay for three, COVID for six. Moved to South Carolina in 1999 December, 23 2012 I went in for a routine colonoscopy, and we had a colonoscopy before the doctor said, everything looks good. I went to Florida to visit with my wife's family, and my stomach started hurting.

Couldn't allow my stomach couldn't allow my back. Went back to the doctor. He says he gave me some pills. They didn't help. Went back again. Gave me some more pills. My wife says he's a quack. I go back the next time. So he runs a bunch of tests, right? He says, I'm going to do an x ray of your stomach. So he did an x ray of my stomach, and he said, I see enlarged lymph nodes in your stomach, and I'm going to refer you to an oncologist. That was the first time I'd heard the C word, the cancer word.

Okay, so went to an oncologist. They did a bunch of tests, blood tests, bone marrow tests, you name it, they diagnosed me with stage four non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a type of cancer that affects the lymph nodes. So it had taken residents up in my stomach. That's why my lymph nodes were enlarged.

By the time I was diagnosed, I looked like I was six months pregnant, sunken in face, sunken in arms, sunken in legs. I looked like one of those starving kids from Africa. I can remember when the doctor told me and my wife was with me, and she started crying. And then there was a lady named Pam who was my case worker. Pam. Pam says, Carl, you can beat this thing, but you have to have a positive attitude, yes.

So what I did, tried to concentrate on, was I tried to allow the doctors to give me a plan, whatever the doctor told me to do, I was going to do. I was going to do my part. I was going to do what I could do. I was going to allow the doctor to do what he could do and let God do what only He can do. So the treatment was six rounds of chemotherapy three weeks apart. Initially, it's gonna give me eight rounds of chemo three weeks apart. So as I'm going through my treatment, I'm getting treated at the VA in Columbia, South Carolina, and it was like 15 or 20 bays of chemotherapy stations, right? Can you go to the station?

So I'm looking at others going through their chemo. And I would, even though I was sick, I was a lot better off than a lot of them, sure, and one of the things that caused me to do was to be very bold in my faith and my ability to pray for people. I've had I've prayed for atheist I prayed for Jehovah witnesses. And when you tell somebody that's going through something that you want to pray with them, I've never been turned down. Never been Yes indeed. So I had that after six rounds of chemo, they tested me again.

He says, I don't think you're gonna have to do the last two rounds, right, but during that time period. So this was a during a time period of like six months. And so what I would do is I would walk every day when I was sick, I was kind of laid up, and. I had a friend of mine who was a cancer survivor call me one day, and she said, while I was while she was going through her cancer journey, she did what she called a chemo walk.

She said she used to walk every day, so I started walking. Also, I walked in my neighborhood for the first time with a 14-year-old neighbor. We walked, and then I walked every day. And while I was walking, I would say one of three verses, the Lord's prayer, the prayer of Jabez, or the 23rd song. If I was leaning to bed and my mind was running, I would say one of those three scriptures, one of those three verses. And because good and evil can't occupy the same space, so the good things would replace the bad things. So that's what I did.

Walk every day after six rounds of chemo, the doctor said I was cancer free, all right, but during that time period, not only was I sick, I was broke. I'd gone through all my savings, right? So now I'm sick and broke. Okay? So I used to tell my wife all the time. As long as I have my health and strengths, we'll be good. Yes, health and strength was gone. So I prayed to the Lord, and I said, What am I going to do? So what I did was I reached out to my classmates at the Naval Academy, right?

And I reached out to the president of my Alumni Association, a guy named Kevin. Kevin reached out to a guy named Keith. Keith was in my company. Keith put together a Go Fund Me program. Before Go Fund Me was in existence. Okay, my classmates and alumni supported me financially for an entire year, many of which I hadn't seen in 30 years. Oh, boy. But we had a bond together, and so that was very humbling and very, very helpful, yeah,

well, let me just interject here the sense of you have gone through this, and you've already had, you know, I I talk about five stress points that people can really deal with, and really you had two, and maybe three of the five, I call them the five ds, and they're the depression, divorce, disease, debt and death and disease is definitely one you were dealing with and debt, you know, the financial loss, and then probably fear of death, and maybe even depression might have been involved there as well.

So my point is, you were dealing with some of the big stressors that anybody deals with there, and, you know, compounded when they're when they're kind of stacked one another, they are compounded there. So it sounds like this was a real pivotal point for you. So what was going on with you? Kind of, not you've mentioned, you know, the disease part. You mentioned the dead part. Kind of what was going with through with your emotional or even a relationship with your wife, or anything else like that. What was happening there was everything cool there? Or is this a strenuous time of the best parts of your life as well?

Yeah, it was. My wife is an angel. So I'll tell you this quick story. So when I get the news from the doctor that he's going to refer me to an oncologist, I did not tell my wife because I did not want her to worry right now, she's seeing me go through. She can physically see I'm going through changes, right? Absolutely. She didn't want to mention anything, right? So, so after I went after I was on the other side, because what I did was I told my pastor, and I told two of my best friends, but I didn't tell my wife. After I got on the other side, my wife read me the right act. I bet

Trump over to you, buddy.

I was quote, unquote, protecting her, right? I didn't realize that she had the capacity to handle what she could handle,

Sure, absolutely. And then later on in life, she had her she's had her own challenges with cancer as well, and it's a part of your overall story, isn't it? You know how you Asia, as a couple in the family have dealt with significant cancer in your life, and that's an incredible thing about what you learned in this time, about you learned you mentioned a little bit about faith. What did you learn about resilience, and what were some of the lessons you picked up here in this initial stages, some leadership tips that kind of led you to begin to formulate some of your thinking about leadership that may have been come out of this adversity.

Yeah,it focused on what the thing that I learned and I knew it, but it just re emphasized it. Because when I talk about my book, I talk about how important it is to have relationships, healthy relationships, I'm a firm believer that relationships can get you things that money came by, sure relationships can open up doors that money can't buy, you know. And because I had those healthy relationships with my classmates, that was like money in the bank, you know. So that was one thing that got highlighted. I also had it was literal

money in the bank, because they helped raise money for you, didn't they? They. Literally, exactly,

yeah, exactly, yeah. And I had a I went to a doctor, a friend of mine, who's a infectious disease doctor, and he told me, he said, he says, Carl, he said, stress will, will will eat your life, right? It'll eat your life. And he said, and I'm not talking about stress, stress, hard stress. She says. I'm talking about, if I tell you I'm going to do something and I don't do it, then that can give you stress, right? So your body cannot heal under stress, yeah? So no, what? No matter what you have to do, you have to figure out some kind of way to reduce stress. I'm a firm believer that reading the Word will reduce stress, yeah, praying will reduce stress, and meeting with a body of believers that can lift you up can relieve stress. And that's

the community part you view it you've mentioned already among your classmates and so on. It sounds like you've developed in a strategy that has to do with, you know, the faith walk, the strategy regarding, you know, the community here and, you know, you also, I, I'll just say this here, you know, I one of my best friends. He's since passed, but was a naval academy graduate, and there's a certain thing about him that I always knew about.

He had this sense of, truly, you know, kind of military style, strategic thinking about everything that he did. Did this play a part at all that in kind of your approach to this kind of a strategic way of approaching things, even though, with some things involved here, that, you know, the faith walk and so on, that may not be part of a military strategy, I don't know, but tell, tell me about that part of things was that involved here at all this strategic approach to everything

That is a great segue, slash insightful take on your friend, because, you know, so one of the things you do learn at the Naval Academy and a lot of service academies, is you go through a point or situation that that is Very stressful, you know, I'll give an example. So after your at the end of your summer, after three weeks of rigorous training, right, your parents come and see you for the first time, and then they leave, right? And when, when the parents leave, the upperclassmen disrupt your room, just throw stuff on the floor and everything like that, and say, go fix it.

So you take your mind off of that, and you focus on what you have to focus so one of the things I learned over time is when something happens, you assess the situation, you make a decision to develop a strategy, you work the strategy, and you keep your head down until it gets over. What happens a lot of times, is people get analysis paralysis. That's why I said I'm going to work on what I can work on. Let God work on what he can only work on. And so I got a role. So for my cancer journey, I said, I'm going to make sure that I do what I'm supposed to do. So I walked every day, ate right, and did what I could do. That's all I could do, and pray and all the other kind of things. But that's a great that's a great insight. Well,

the insight comes partly from the retired pastor, and so I've seen my share of people who have had kind of the opposite approach, you know, the idea where many people, when they have faced a health crisis or some other adversity in life, will retreat, you know, they will go. They will back off. They'll go, I call it good, you know, put your heads under the covers. You go to bed, put your hands on the under the covers, and they just kind of back off in retreat.

And that's I have not find that those who did that, I did not find that to be helpful to them for many different reasons, and many times those are people don't, not taking care of themselves physically as well, and things of of that nature. They're just denial involved and things like that. But you decided to really be assertive, and not only to be successful in your career, but you kind of started off in this entrepreneurial venture, writing books and so on. And to what gave you the courage, even on, the midst of all this stress that you had, health wise and otherwise, what gave you the courage to kind of charge on and do some other things, your executive leadership principles and so on. What was that all about?

Well, as I navigated the corporate world and ended up in South Carolina as the vice president of manufacturing for Dunlap. Dunlap, which is a golf ball manufacturer. I worked for them for one year, and then my boss and I agreed to disagree. Okay, so then I'm at the crossroads, okay? I'm in the right location, because I'm right between my family members. And then I said, Okay, do I want to work for somebody else, or do want to work for myself? And I quickly came to the conclusion, after about two months, that I wanted to work for myself.

So then I said, Okay, so what skills do I have? How can I help people, and how can I make a living? So it always had a coaching mindset. My high school coach was the third most influential person in my life, so I always had a coaching mindset. That as I worked in corporations, always found myself in leadership roles. So I had the military experience, corporate experience, faith experience with churches and stuff like that. There were some common principles that I saw.

So I said, Okay, what can I do? I can do speaking, I could do business consulting, I could do executive coaching. And I said, I put out the shingles, and then again, I used my network or relationships to contact people and say, This is what I'm doing. Do you know anybody that can give me some work? So that again, how that was now. So as I'm going through my cancer journey, I'm journaling some things, writing some things down.

And in 2017 I wanted to write a book, but it was kind of intimidating for me, because she had to have them grammatically correct, it had to flow, make sense, and all this other kind of stuff. So my daughter, who at the time, was 23 she called me and said, Dad, are you serious about writing your book? I said, Yes. She says, Are you committed to writing your book? I said, Yes. She said. She said, if you're committed to writing your book, I found a book coach, and I'll connect you with the book coach, and I'll pay for the services up through the manuscript. So that took away all my fears and anxious about all that kind of stuff.

So I contacted the book coach you at the time was 33 she said, just because all my books are about my life and what's in my life, so I just had to recall it. She said, what I want you to do is want you to think about chapters, title of chapters, and just start writing, yeah, and then send it to me. She asked me some questions.

So when you have somebody from the outside that doesn't know you, then you get a pretty objective idea of whether or not you're really making sense to common people. So I did that process for about four months, and my first book was done. I had the vision of on the cover, making the Scarlet and gold, which in the colors of the Marine Corps. I had my wings on there. I had a mama Luke sword, which is a sword that the Marine Corps officers get and then on the back,

went away for a second there. Well, we'll pick it up at this point. Are, first of all, are you hearing me again? Okay, I'll edit. I am okay. I just want to make sure you hear me out, because I still hear you and whatever you might Did you touch your phone or something? I'm not sure if you did or

Yeah, put it on silent, and then somebody called me. Oh, yeah.

All right, we'll just, we'll pick it up here. I'll, I'll go. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna clap my hands for a little sound break from my own self here. All right, well, you said a couple things there. Carl, I find very interesting. You had a moment with your daughter who she kind of pushed you. And that tells me a little bit about maybe a little bit of parenting, and some things went on with you or her, but she was kind of turning back on you, a little bit, kind of pushing you to dad, if you're serious about this book, let's get after it. And I'm going to, you know, push you to do it, and then not only push you to do it kind of personally, but help set you up with coaching and to help to facilitate that.

So she's got some of that strategic thinking as well. And the, not only the strategic thinking, but the tactical application of it, which I think is a pretty cool thing that there. I bet you're proud of her in many ways, but also having the courage to push on dad a little bit is one thing there. And then you apparently were coachable in order to be coached to get your book done. And apparently that's what you're what you're doing here as well. Reflect with me, am I accurate on what I'm sharing here with you?

You're very accurate. Very accurate. My daughter asked me some pretty tough questions, took away all my fears. And then, but, but again, that's so in that scenario, there relationship with my daughter. Yeah, right. That got the thing started. And then so fuse was a resource for me to identify and give me another resource that can help me. If I didn't have that, I could have done a lot of stuff, spent a bunch of money, and it not been as good as it is, sure.

You know, but yeah, and you had to make yourself a little bit vulnerable to people younger than yourself and less experienced than yourself. And, you know, to take coaching from then. And I think you talk in some of your writings and some of the things you work on about servant leadership, and I think this may be an example of this that happened to use people serving you, so now you're serving others. So let's go there for a minute about servant leadership. How is this an important part of what you teach about and what you're all about, and kind of how this has been manifested through these experiences we've been talking about, to serve other people as a leader?

Yeah, I think the first model, and the basic model, is the Jesus model. What did Jesus do? Jesus helped others. That's what he did. He served others. And, you know, washed feet and did all kinds of things. So when you think about that, you. Life is, I think that's what it's all about, at least, that's what it's been about with me. And the reason that I think I'm so passionate about it is because people have served me again. My high school coach was the third most influential person in my life. He's the one that sent the recruiter to my high school to recruit me to play football at the Naval Academy. And I didn't know what the Naval Academy was, and was only 90 miles up the road. I still keep in contact with him.

He's 82 years old. I can call him up today and say, Coach, I got a kid that has good character. He's got some basic skills in this he wants to go to college. He can pick up the phone and say, okay, and contact somebody either in Kansas, Colorado, it's got, he says the only criteria is the person needs to be willing to travel. Yeah, if they're willing to travel those places, I can get him in so, so he served me, and because he did that for me, I feel obligated to do that for others, because I know how powerful it is. Yeah,

That’s awesome. So he I'm just curious now, you said you mentioned a couple times your coach being the third most influential person on you. So who's one and two?

Mom and dad? Okay, I was blessed to have good parents. I learned work ethic from my dad. He was a salesperson. Never met a stranger. He ended up, we sell anything that he could make a make a profit on. And he was actually in the Marine Corps in World War Two with the month report Marines, which is when the Marine Corps got integrated in 1942 my mother was the daughter of a Virginia tobacco sharecropper in Danville, Virginia. She had a eighth grade education, but by the time she was an adult, she was a master seamstress, a bait caking award winner. She was the unofficial confidant, slash counselor for everybody in the neighborhood. I've never heard I never heard her say an ill word about anybody. She just had the neck. She was a great cook and just loved on people.

Well, that's awesome to hear you say it. I suspect that that might be the case, but you mentioned here in one kind of a line through our conversation here, Carl has been people in your life who've been influential on you. You know you've mentioned about your classmates in college, you mentioned about your wife, about your daughter, your coach, and your mom and dad, and that's a ongoing thing there. And then one of the things I know that you teach about is how adversity can be a stepping stone to having some success in your life. How important is these relationships you've mentioned here a part of your life, in terms of building new relationships that can help you advance in life or to get to your next step. Speak to that for a little bit, if you will. Yeah,

I'm always kind of prospecting. I'm always looking to meet interesting people, to learn from others. I think that one of the most important things you can do and or develop as a person is to be a continuous learner. I think our public school systems lack that from zero to PhD, sometimes people will be intelligent and know a lot of stuff, but they're not taught how to critically think, and they're not taught how to listen, they're not taught how to collaborate. So those skills are not there. So one of the things I'm always doing is building healthy relationships with different people, learning new things. And I think that that's very, very important.

I think it's crucial there, what you're what you're sharing there, and I think it's a good thing. Let's bring the conversation around to this. You and your wife have kind of a unique, somewhat unique, I've seen it before, but both of you have experienced cancer together, and you've both gone through this cancer journey and your own trials and adversities. I noticed you shared with me some of her testimony, how she got three things. She talked about singing, among other things, about how there's a real sense of of something greater than self here that's involved. So tell a bit about your relationship with her and how this kind of sense of something greater than self your faith journey is integrated into some doing. You know, you have your book, you're writing, and she does what she does, but how that's kind of integrated in your approach that you are serving others in your servant leadership together. This sing a new song, is what I'm kind of after. Here.

Gotcha so you talked about the adversity. So my wife, I'll tell you a story about my wife, because it's a clear example of adversity and how great things happen out of it. So my wife had back pain for about 20 years and finally got to a point where she needed to have surgery on l4 l5 she goes into the surgery. It's a six month recovery. So. Two months into the recovery, she feels a lump on her breast. She goes to the doctor and has a mammogram. They diagnosed her with stage three breast cancer, triple negative, right? They went back and looked at the mammograms seven months she had a seven months before she had another mammogram, 00, in seven months, it had gone from zero to stage three. If she had not had that back surgery to feel that lump, by the time she found out she had cancer, it would have been all over body, right? So that's, that's for sure, an example of, yeah, it was adversity with the back pain. Adversity, adversity, let's help.

Yeah. Think this adversity that you've shared now you know both of you going through cancer and going through other trials in life has, how's that impacted your leadership philosophy in terms of kind of moving forward with partnerships, both in a marital partnerships, maybe other partnerships, business and otherwise. Tell me about that.

Yeah, one of the things I learned through the process was, like I said before, I got very bold with praying with people. But when I introduce myself and talk about myself, when somebody says, Tell me a little bit about yourself, I talk about my cancer journey, and everybody is going through something. Yeah. So when I when I found out that I had cancer and I was sharing it with people. I had several friends that had cancer, but they had never shared it.

So when people have cancer, they do one of three things. They tell everybody, they tell nobody, or something in the middle and wherever they are, you got to respect that and be okay with that. So now we both are very, very bold in talking about a cancer story. And my wife, if she's with a lady and I was speaking one day at an organization, and people introduced themselves, and this one lady talked about she was supposed to have a mammogram and she wasn't going to do it.

My wife at the break hem her up in the corner and said, let me tell you, you better get that mammogram. Let me tell you my story, you know. So we're both advocates on getting screened breast cancer, colon cancer. So when I had my first about with cancer, that was the first time I had a colonoscopy. The second time I had a colonoscopy was about two years ago. I go in for the doctor says, everything's good. I pulled off a pal. It was about the size of a erased her head. No problem. That was on a Thursday, Sunday morning. I get a call from my doctor. I says, oh my goodness, this can't be good news, right, right? He said, Carl, the polyp was cancerous. Oh, boy. I says, Okay. He says, I need you to come back in two days so I can mark it, and then I need to do surgery. So what's the surgery? Doc? Take three inches above that spot away, and three and three inches below, so a total of six inches of your colon. I'm taking out, I'm stitching it back together, and you're good to go.

Okay, so I scheduled it again. A mindset is, I'm going to do what I can do, let the doctor do what he can do, let God do it only He can do right? Yeah. So I went in for the surgery. I asked, Well, how long does it take? Doc? He says, normally persons in the hospital, three to six days. Recovery is two months to four months. And so I went in and understood those numbers. And after three days, I was I left the hospital. But tell you this quick story so that I left the hospital on a Sunday at about 1030 left the hospital right, and I told my wife I wanted to go to church. She says, I'm not taking you to church. That's crazy. I called my daughter, who was with us at the time, I said, Casey, will you take me to church? She said, yesterday, and I'll take you. Took me to church that day, and I got up and I testified. I said, I'm the devil. You a liar. There's no truth in you.

Yeah, that's an awesome story. Well, you know, you've mentioned several great stories here about your marriage, about your family, about your classmates, about other people, and that kind of thing. But let's talk now for just to kind of bring this conversation around to the person who's listening to our conversation here today, Carl, the person who's having their own challenges in life, whether it's cancer or some other adversity. Maybe they lost their job, maybe they're going through a divorce.

Maybe they have a death in the family, or maybe they had bankruptcy, or something like this. I know you faced your share and maybe or depression, or something like this going on. What do you want to say to that person? What do you want to say to be kind of an encouragement to that person based you know you've you teach a lot in about in your books, and your about your parenting books and so on, about leadership and so on. What have you learned that might be helpful to that person who made me feel a little bit desperate, a little bit out of sorts here about how this adversity is so great, I do not see myself getting out of it. What? What would you say to that person?

The first thing I would tell them is, do the three. Things that I said before, which is, read the Bible, pray and surround yourself with supporting people. Okay, the next thing I would say is, what happens most of the time is people are not willing to share this struggle with friends, relatives or any but if you can't do it by yourself, you got to reach out and humble yourself to other people.

And sometimes that's probably the most difficult hurdle to overcome, is to ask for help, especially if you take somebody that's always been healthy, always had enough money, you know, never that's why I'm on the panel for several congressmen and senators to interview high school students that want to go into the service academies. Okay? And one of the things I ask them is, what is the toughest thing you've ever been through in your life? Because I'm looking for something you've been through.

Because if the first time you ever go through anything is at the Naval Academy, that could be a problem, right? But let me tell you this quick story. So during COVID, I was interviewing these candidates on the phone, and when I asked him the question, what's the most difficult thing you've ever been through? I had four different candidates tell me the exact same thing. And guess what it was? I don't know. Was it sports related?

Perhaps I don't know you, you tell me. Or maybe health related.

The divorce of their parents. Oh, my God, the divorce of their parents. They said it was the toughest thing I'd been through, because I had to, I had to manage multiple family relationships with steps. You know, I had to do that. I had to get my stuff together to be on a weekend with them and have the I had to be organized. So I'm on this emotional road. I never thought of that before. I should have thought of that myself. Yeah, I never thought of that before. But that's huge.

Yeah, well, and apparently it was important enough to you to think about that. You wrote a book about it, didn't you parenting, parenting principles for rare and young people. I have to assume that maybe a part of the impetus writing that book had something to do with these experiences. Is it Apparently so? Well, good. Well, some great stuff here. Is there anything else you would just want to share for the good of our conversation before we say goodbye to your audience here? Anything else you want to share here? Girl,

yeah, I'd like to talk a little bit about how I ended up writing my second book. So when I had the colon cancer surgery, when I was recovering from that, that's when I wrote my second book.

And your second book was the parenting book, I assume, yeah, and I wrote that

During the time period that I would add some downtime with my colon cancer surgery, you know, wow.

You took advantage of that downtime to focus on writing. Okay, good, exactly. Yeah. So in other words, take your whatever adversity it is, even if it's pretty severe, and use it, you know. Don't let it get you down. Use it to your advantage, is what I'm hearing you say,

yeah. And the thing that, if you look at in research, people that have done some awesome things in athletics or medicine or the church or business, anything like that. Nine times out of 10 there was some significant adversity before they made those things before those things happen every single time. So if you have the mindset of, Okay, God, I see this adversity, I can't wait for how you gonna bless me, how it's gonna open the door for the next thing.

Well, it's been a pleasure having you with us, and you got some great insights here. Uh, Carl, tell folks on our audience how they can learn more about you, maybe about your books or your website, or what kind of things they can be in contact if they want to learn more about Carl Sharperson,

Outstanding. I appreciate it. My website is www.carlsharpersonjr.com, that's my website. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on social media. If you Google my name, there'll be several articles and things that pop up. So I'm very easy to get a hold of, so just reach out to me and have a conversation. See how I can help you. How you can help me. I'm a firm believer, again, that is all about relationships. So that's what I would say to people.

And I have two books. You can get them on Amazon. They're very easy reads. I had a 17-year Marine Corps veteran who got out of Marine Corps with post-traumatic stress disorder, became a substance abuser, then he became homeless. Now he runs a shelter for homeless veterans. He said, my first book is the first book he ever ran from cover to cover in his life. It's an easy read after each chapter to ask questions, what did you learn? What are you going to do differently? I've had CEOs, pastors, athletes, find value in it.

Awesome, awesome. Well, you've been an awesome guest here today. We appreciate you with us. You certainly have added value to our audience, and we appreciate that, which is all about helping people to take an approach of positivity in order to deal with adversity. And we appreciate you doing that again. His name was Carl Sharperson Jr. His website, carlsharpersonjr.com the author of Overcoming Adversity to Lead with Authenticity and we thank you for being our guest today. Carl, thank you for being our guest.