Translating Adversity to Triumph: Jason Willis Lee on Health, Humor, and Hope

Hello, good people. Welcome again to cancer and comedy. This is the podcast where we look to offer people a sense of coping with bad things that happen in their lives with a little bit of hope and humor. Today, we have a special guest with us. His name is Jason Willis Lee from entrepreneurial translator.com he is a specialist translator. Maybe we're going to talk about that just a little bit. But he also has a fascinating journey of dealing with some health challenges in his life and in his not only within personally, but any within his world. But he's gonna talk a little bit about how we can take some of his skill sets and his personal experiences to help us to all to cope with hope. So, Jason, welcome to our conversation here today. My friend.

Thank you. Brett, thank you for having me. Thank you for inviting me

wonderful before we kind of get into the kind of the heart of the matter, what we want to talk to you about, kind of how you overcome some of some health challenges. Tell us a little bit. What is a specialist translator? What do you do? What kind of, what's involved with your career regarding that?

Yeah. Thank you, Brad. So I'm a medical translator. I started my career training in medicine, so I got up to year four of a medical degree. That's bachelor medicine, Bachelor of Surgery. And then I thought, you know what, I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to do clinical medicine. So I went into research for a couple of years, and then I went into applied linguistics. So I very quickly got into the medical translation business, which is clinical trials, medical reports, and a lot of cancer in clinical trials, most of it is oncology. I do research for journals. I help my clients get published in the Journal of their choice. And these days, Brad, you've got to specialize. You've got to have a niche. So you have to do medicine, have to do law, finance, art, history, whatever it is you have to niche down. And the more micro niche you are, the more successful or chances of success that you have. So yeah, I've been doing that for 25 years or so. Just this month, it's the 25th anniversary of doing that, 20 self-employed, fully, full-time self-employed. So, I haven't worked for anyone else but myself, which is pretty cool. And then a couple of years ago, I diversified into consulting and products, and I got a book out that's behind me that I that I published last year for my entrepreneurial translator tribe. Those are freelancers who I teach to think more like solopreneurs and less like service providers. So it's this idea of leveraging, getting away from time for money, working and trying to get you know, package your expertise into productized services. And I'm doing, I'm just starting my first few consulting clients, and I'm having a great time. It's hard work, but I…

so you love what you do. You do it well. You have a little bit of a medical background. You have the, obviously, the translation and of a few languages, I know your English and French and Spanish as the ones I know of. Maybe there are others as well that you are flowing in, but it sounds like you've had overall pretty good success in your career, and that's going along pretty good. And yet, then a few years ago, something happened in your life that kind of threw a wrench in the plans, didn't it? It kind of threw you, threw you off your game with some health challenges. So come with us there a little bit. You've had success in your career, and then boom, what happened?

Yeah, that's right, Brad. So three years ago, I got COVID in the middle of the pandemic. It was February 22, so coming up for two years of the pandemic, I took my family skiing to a place called Sierra Nevada, which is down towards Granada. It's a few 100 kilometers south of Madrid. I got COVID. You know, I was protecting myself; I was distancing. I was doing as I was told, but I got COVID. Recovered. I tested negative because I had some elderly friends visiting from Brussels, and I wanted to be healthy for them, so I took it all very seriously. Then I got viral pneumonia, which was really bad. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. 10 kilos just disappeared like, almost like overnight, it seemed. And the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back in the ITU with arrhythmias and multi-organ failure. I was in recess. My wife was picking up on a couple of, you know, dodgy glances between the health workers. And it was pretty bad. My heart was down to 22% ejection fraction, which is severely pathological. And I got out with a stage two heart failure. So they stabilized me in the ITU for four days, then I went on the ward for four days, and I I got out and I went back to work, you know, pretty much after a weekend's rest. And now I'm pretty heavily medicated, but I'm healthy, as long as I do my medication and watch my diet. And it was a big wake-up call, Brad, because I've never, I've never really been in a hospital, except as a student doctor that is hospital training. The only time I went in was, I think, some day surgery on my friend alone when I was 23, so I'd really never been in a hospital as a patient. So that was it wasn't fun.

I wouldn't, but it sounds like it was. It was pretty dire circumstances for a while, and not only through you for a loop, your physical health, but it kind of knocks you off your balance in terms of your career track and your psych. And your mental health and things of that nature. So tell us about how you manage that, kind of after you get out of the hospital and sound like your wife was also a part of your process of kind of having a a decent attitude coming out of it. Because it sounds like it has kind of knocked you off your game a little bit. There is that a fair way of putting it.

It is Brad. It definitely knocked me off my game. I'm lucky. I have a very happy and optimistic wife. So, you know, subconsciously, I've chosen an ideal person to be around. I can, kind, I can kind of slip into a victim's mindset and negativity. Sometimes we'll, we'll do that, maybe to a certain extent. So I was, yeah, I was pretty worried. I was lying there in the ITU, as I was incommonica though, for one day without my phone, until my my wife bought an instrument for me. So I was thinking, you know, I made a promise to myself, if I get out of this alive, if I recover from this, I'm going to start this consulting business. I've been thinking about and coaching, and I was always thinking, dreaming of helping more people, possibly at scale. And that's kind of what I did in the middle of 22. I did some business coaching, and I did a consultancy program, which, looking back, was probably a bit over my head. It was a lot of e-commerce, a lot of heavy selling, entrepreneurial things. But, you know, I got into it and that sort of opened my eyes to a different world of product, eyes, selling and and different things getting away from this time for money. You know, there are only so many hours in the day. Brad, so whatever, whatever you charge, you can only, you know, your income is capped. You can't really scale it because there are only 24 hours, right? You gotta, you gotta eat, you gotta sleep, you gotta talk to your family. Sometimes, all these things take time. So yeah, it did knock me off my game. But it was a, it was a very good wake-up call for me. I was 46 going on 47 that year, 22 and I was thinking I was a little arrogant in the pandemic. I was thinking, I'm a young, healthy guy. I'm pretty invincible. COVID is not going to get me. And you know what? COVID can just hit anyone at any time. It's a very, very dangerous disease.

Yeah, it sounds like your wife really helped you in this whole process. You mentioned something a second ago about victimization, and you felt you had a little bit of this, you know, poor me, I'm a victim here, but your wife kind of helped you to get past that, to stop victimizing yourself and to kind of get on with your life. And he took you down a new path that seemed to be successful for you. Tell me about how she was really able to speak into your life to help you get out of your funk, whatever that was there.

Yeah, that's a great question. I think this is something that Alex for Mozi says, or somebody says it online. I saw it this week. Choosing your spouse is probably the biggest decision you will make in your life. It can make or break your life. Yes, if you choose the wrong person, you could be. And I know people who my father chose the wrong person himself, and we can, we can talk about that later, and that ruined his life, sadly. But in my case, I've chosen a very, very happy, optimistic person, and I wasn't, I wasn't consciously looking for those qualities when I got married, which was 20 years ago. So I'm just about to hit 50 in six months' time. I got married when I was 30. So we're coming up to 20 years. This is why we have an 18-year-old turning 18 in August, and we're hoping to travel this year and my 50th, my 20th wedding anniversary, my daughter's 18th. 18 is a big it's a big birthday in the UK, where I come from. So is 21 I know it is in the States as well, because you can't legally drink until you're 21 you can drive when you're 16. I never really understood that.

Yeah, that's an ongoing thing with every teenager. Now, that's for sure, sure. Yeah. Well, you

know, yeah, she helped me. She helped me get out of the front because you put it, and she's not one to let me be negative for too long. So you got to kind of climb up and, you know, just pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and just keep on going.

I think you made a good point there, Jason, about making decisions, including your life partner is a huge thing, and that means the people we put around ourselves, both our family and then even the people we choose to work with, and and I know you've had some challenges in your, you know, family, you grew up and things of that nature. We make our choices, though how do we relate to those? Do you see some you've you've really described a pretty positive marriage with your wife and then, but I know that you also had some trauma in growing up, and that was kind of informed you, maybe a little bit that victim mentality you may have had there. Maybe I'm reading too much in here, but a little bit about that, but to tell us what, how that kind of informed how you went into your health challenges and in how that was a part of the process for you.

Yeah, that's a great question. Brad, so I'm happy to say, you know, I think there's less stigma around mental health these days than 3040 years ago. I've had my mental health challenges just a few months ago. In the middle of last year, I found out that my mother, my biological mother, was the one who raised me alone from age eight to 18 because my father sadly left. When I was eight, she had borderline personality disorder, Brad, which is a serious psychopathology. It's a complex mix of psychosis and neurosis. So she was kind of out of it. Those Those 10 years, she was prostrate, impaired. She was being pretty abusive. It was pretty abusive, narcissistic abuse. That was physical abuse. There was emotional abuse. It even went into a sexual territory, although minor, more towards the lower end of the spectrum. So I had a tough time growing up, and that, that's the sort of adversity part of my life. So I have a I have a little story. I call it from adversity to achievement. And I just, you know, map, type my story on a slide deck, and I I put it up on my Instagram, and I was so this is recently in the last couple of months, and I published this story for the first time, and I was so uncomfortable with sharing the BPD story that I took that slide down as soon as I published it, and then a few hours later, I put it back. But I really found it difficult talking about that in public. So this is a nice exercise for me to get that story out there. And you know, 1.5% of the population are BPD, more predominantly in women like my mother. These women are usually layers of trauma. There is physical trauma, there may be sexual trauma, and I had a very, very challenging childhood living with that for 10 years. That shaped my perspectives on this topic.

Yeah, and I'm familiar in my work with borderline personality disorder as well, including in people I know very closely. But one of the things I'm interested in, really, in hearing you say here, Jason, is that you chose to put together a slide deck about overcoming adversity. And really, that's revealing of yourself. Everybody is really kind of in some vulnerable places there what got. And you put it out there in the public you put it on your Instagram or social media from adversity to achievement. So tell me about that. That must have taken some real processing for you to allow yourself to get to that place to you to put that out in the first place, and then I'll also be interested in any reaction you got from folks who may have seen that.

Yeah, so entrepreneurship is essentially about storytelling, Brad, and what we're doing right now is telling stories where we're telling an insurance story, which will hopefully inspire some people. I wanted to present my story in such a way not to victimize, not to sort of have a sob story that will evoke sympathy. I wanted to frame it in such a way that it would inspire others. And the story is basically, hey, look, look at me. I had this really bad 10 years. I got abused, and, you know, it was pretty bad, but I made it through, and now I'm pretty successful. And I'm, you know, I'm a solopreneur. I'm building productized offers. And I'm doing some pretty cool things, hard work, but I'm getting these proposals out. And sometimes it's crazy, and I go crying to my coach and what I do, what I do, I have a business coach who I work with, who is amazing. I found just the right person a couple of steps ahead of me. If ever you you know, if you are looking for a mentor, just find someone just a couple of steps ahead of you who can guide you and inspire you. And I did that. So the reactions I got, yeah, I got a few. The people who've known me a long time were very supportive, and a couple of my colleagues. I published this on a work platform. My Instagram is for my work offers, absolutely the colleagues I'm closest to, just gave me some very positive emoticons, you know the one, the fire emoji, gun that hands up. Oh, yes, right. So just positive, you know, movements. They didn't, they didn't sort of go into a belong, part of good.

It just didn't hurt. You really did it. I mean, it was painful, probably, to put it out there, but in terms of your business or your relationships you had, this didn't hurt you. It was; it was a value add in the end. Was it? Was it not?

Oh, absolutely, it didn't hurt me at all. And I think in the long term, as I continue to build out an audience, I mean, Instagram is a visual platform. Most of my audience runs LinkedIn. I've got a 4k micro community, and three or four people are following me on LinkedIn. And I just find that an easier platform to sure to work on but, yeah, nothing at all. I don't think you know, if you're struggling with publishing a negative story, just go for it, but just don't do it to evoke sympathy. Do it to inspire others to get through the, you know, walk through the fire and get to the other side, which is achieving.

I think it was just using our stories to kind of manipulate over there, using our stories to kind of be sharing, or be an influence, really influential sharing to other people, to share our story. You mentioned storytelling as being such an important part of what you do. And it seems to me, my friend, that storytelling and understanding story will be a part of the translation world, as it were, helping people to understand your story through language barriers and whatnot. Do you see any correlation here in the work you do in translation to helping people to take the story you know, your story of your growing up and translated from adversity to success? You see any parallels there between translation, language translation, and helping people to translate their. Life to others.

Well, I think translation is storytelling in itself. I think the one thing you can't do is just go off and start telling your own story. You have to concentrate on the story you've been given. So the worst thing you can do as an interpreter is to be interpreting a speech. And then, let's say we're interpreting Trump into Spanish, for example, and we just go off and just buy us just we just completely go off track. And I hear he's quite a notorious person to interpret for because of the way he speaks and the way he communicates his point. But translation is essentially Professional Communication. Brad, I could call myself a professional communicator because that's what we're doing. Obviously. Now it's aI centric. It's the power of the marketplace. It's a lot more editing of AI output. When I use AI every day, I'm on the verge of investing in chat GBT plus, which is, you know, more customized options, and you get an extra oomph out of the robot. So, yeah, I think storytelling is, is a big it's a big thing. I have a lead magnet on that on my website that's entrepreneurial translator.com/storytelling. I have a worksheet telling people how Disney, for example, is a very, very effective storyteller. And these amazing movies we've all loved since the time Disney was founded are all based around storytelling.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's amazing. And then many of the storytelling, well, let's just take Disney for example. It's a storyline that has a working through a process of dealing with adversity, and then usually there's some kind of villain or some sort of bad thing that happens. But also, there's also some sort of a good force, a force for good, or something that is, you know, come up at the end of the story with some bright future ahead. Do you see a role in kind of a positive outlook, kind of, even if it's even if it's very intentionally done, you know, like if we watch a Disney movie, you know, my granddaughters love all the Disney princesses, for instance, and they dress up like the Disney Princesses for Halloween and whatnot, and that kind of thing. They love that kind of story. Do you see a role, kind of in a positive attitude, in storytelling that can help us to deal with adversity in our life?

I think the most successful stories, as you say, involve good and bad and the humanization of people. Star Wars, for example, is a space saga that is successful because it has some good people, the rebels, some bad people, the Emperor's side, and one of the bad people turns good and has a bit of good. One of the good people has a bit of bad. And that was just such a successful story that built on George Lucas's love for Japanese cinema, and he just turned the samurai into a lightsaber. Look what happened that just took over his life. That's not a Disney film, but Lucas Film was sold to Disney. I believe that when he was offered summer money, he couldn't refuse. So I think if you can, you can build your narrative around positive storytelling. And I'm an example of someone who was in a pretty bad place from eight to 18. I was trapped in a mental illness situation I that I couldn't get out of. I tried to get out of it. Tried to improve myself. And I still have issues from those years. But if you can rebuild your narrative. And I don't know what the key to success is. I mean, we can discuss this, but it is surrounding yourself with positive people. It is surrounding yourself with people who teach you sales. I mean, I never learned sales at school. Sales should be an obligatory subject for Brad in any curriculum. You know, we have to sell ourselves. Everyone sells something, no matter what you me, everyone listening to this podcast.

Among other things, sales is enhancing the positive about yourself as well. Right?

Exactly, exactly. If you can frame your sales, pitch your uni, what I call my unique service premise, USP, unique service premise, okay, around a positive narrative, and if you can communicate that energy, you know, products, it's all about people feeling you. They have to feel your vibe. Nobody's going to buy from you if they don't feel your vibe, if they don't feel inspired, if they don't feel that. Jason Willis Lee or Brad Miller can take them from point A to point B. if you can paint, it's called future, future painting. I think you can paint the future of where you can take them. And I'm with some of my audience; there's a big gap between where they are and where I am now. And with others, there's a there's a lesser gap. And you know, you can mentor both those kinds of people. So, I love mentorship. I love feeling that I can have a positive influence on people's lives. I love business. I love talking about business. And I love switching off as well and hanging out with my daughters and watching a film, but I'm in a nice period of my life, just as I'm about to turn 50, and I'm glad I got through that health crisis because that was pretty bad. There, for a week, things were looking pretty bleak for me, and I wasn't sure what was going to happen here, and now, I just, you know, recharge pretty, pretty quickly. Take my meds. I do. I do as the doctors tell me and just keep on going. Yeah, keep calm and keep on going.

But you know, it's like you're in a good place, your wife and your daughters and your people you associate with, business-wise, are all a part of that process for you to be in a good place, and you're helpful to others as well. And that process, I'm sure, and I guess that's what I would ask you to think about here. Maybe give some thoughts about what are some for that person who may be in a bad place? Maybe it's a health thing, maybe their business has taken a nosedive, or maybe they are having something of the mental health crisis like you had growing up, or they're dealing with it now in a marital situation, or a business associate, or any number of things that can impact us and put us in a bad place. What kind of things would you share with that person about maybe how you can what was some of the systematic stuff that maybe you did and are doing? They help you to move through that, to deal with something serious, and to get through it to a better place.

So, a couple of things immediately come to mind. One is, if you bottom out and things go to the bottom, they can only get better. They can't get any worse. So if you're right at the bottom, things so a divorce, for example, you come out of that, you know things are going to get better. You're going to meet someone else. You're going to start dating. Another thing you can do is find a mentor, find someone who believes in you, who can imbue you with positive energy, and just move forward. The mental health thing is difficult. I mean, my tactic there was to get into a position where I'm with other people who are mental who had mental health challenges, which means therapy, and that meant group therapy for me. So I done a couple of, you know, solo psychologists. Then I went to a group about 20, about 10 years ago, 11 years ago, so I was just about to turn 40, and then suddenly I realized, hey, all these other people have had mental health challenges, and I'm not the worst in the room. I'm sort of near the top end. So I learned those people as well, and I still keep in touch with one dear friend who I met. We came in touch. He doesn't call me so much as Michael him, but when I call him, he's there at the end of the cannon. He's ready to see me whenever. And that's just a very, very nice connection. His name's Jaime. He's a professional photographer. Shout out to him if he ever listens to this show. and he had a tough time. His mother killed herself when he was 21; she tried it when he was 19. I never asked him how. I just was focused on his recovery and his transition from negative emotions, and he was channeling those emotions in some pretty crazy ways, doing some crazy stuff, which is normal, and how he recovered, and he got married a year ago to a beautiful Vietnamese girl, and he's happy. So that's, you know, people have positive stories and come out the other side, and it's nice to it's nice to just feel that you're on top of your mental health. The other thing is exercise. I think that with exercise, we need dopamine. So what does exercise give us? Brad is a dopamine. There are lots of positive hormones or endorphins. There's dopamine; there are all kinds of things. There's serotonin, but the dopamine you get from exercise. Mean, when I go down there at seven o'clock in the morning, I do my workout, and I come out feeling like a million bucks. You know, you come out and you can hit your shower and you just hit your papers with so much more energy. So I think if you can just find that positive energy and find something you're passionate about, I think this is very important. You have to find something you're passionate about. So that's bottoming out. Things are going to get better. Find a mentor. Be passionate about what you do, and do physical exercise, which gives you mental health as well. I love that.

Just to reflect with you a second there about everything you're sharing there, you mentioned your physical health, and you have to kind of manage the crisis there, which you had your health crisis. You had your mental health crisis as well, and you chose to address those and manage those. And the way you did it is what you have shared here with us, knowing you're trying to have that mental, that mental state of that, you know, we've hit bottom, or we're near bottom, we can, you know, can come out of it. And some people don't think they're going to get out of it. That's part of what we try to work on here. And cancer and comedy is that, you know, when you have that that cancer diagnosis, or that diagnosis of the put to put you in the ICU, that there's this feeling, oh man, the world is over with well, it's not necessarily over with you, but you need to take steps to get over you can stay stuck there if you choose to. And what you did by having mentors in your life, you also surrounded yourself with other like-minded people. And you've already mentioned your wife a couple of times, how she was so important about that whole process, about how to get through that. And then I've also heard you say here about how you've been able to speak into some other people's lives, your friend Jaime, you've been able to speak into his life and hand to yours, and as part of the therapeutic situations you've been through. And so I just think those are good, good things to share with other people. And I got a feeling that even by taking the steps of being vulnerable in your business world, that that has made you even more relatable and perhaps even attractive in the business sense, in terms of the bottom line. Go with me there for a second. Is that true? Do you think so?

Well, I think you have to be related. We have to make a genuine connection with people. If you want to have an audience. As I'm doing, I'm building an audience around around a productized offer. I mean, hopefully, I'll package this consultancy offer I'm dealing with. I'm trying to get into an interesting space called linguistic validation and cognitive debriefing. And hopefully that, you know, that'll be something scalable if we, if we get it down pretty well, yeah, you have to be relatable. People have to feel a vibe. They have to feel your energy. And that's something I think I've struggled with. I was always a bit of a lone wolf. I was always a bit of a, what we call a buff in in the UK, somebody who's a bit, sort of comes out with the books under his arm, and, you know, fairly intellectual, cerebral sort and I would have more difficulty with the emotional connection. And I think that was my upbringing; just having those emotions squashed a bit when I was when I was smaller, I wasn't allowed to be free to be creative. I loved the event where I met you at a pod fest. I met you a few weeks ago in Orlando, just a chance meeting in the food area. That has been an incredible connection. Look at us now. And that was what taught me the creative industries can be so very important. I met some wonderful people at that event. I mean, it's well worth the trip over to to the States, and long, long journey for me. And I made it a pretty packed schedule, 72 hour trip. So that was a, you know, investing in yourself is another thing. I would say invest in yourself. Find that mentor, find that event that's going to open up some opportunities for you, as podfest did for me. I mean, look at me now. I'm on your show. You've been extremely gracious to have me on your show. And you know, your audience is going to hopefully get some value out of this conversation and maybe have a look at me and get inspired by something I've said, or, you know, try and do something like a positive change.

And that's why we're here, indeed, to help to inspire that we like to turn it to the phrase we like to use in our podcast, is turn the gram into a grin, and the gram is just the bad things that happen to you, and the grand is simply having a fulfilled life. And it sounds like you've got a pretty fulfilled and overall good life, and whatever challenges are before you now, you have a kind of a process and a strategy in order to take them on, and you can be helpful to other people. So, Jason, you know, thanks for being with us. Once you share with our audience, we like to call them lifter uppers because we like to focus on lifting people up, but we also like to share with them how they can be in contact with you and maybe learn more about your story and your storytelling.

Yeah, thank you. So, the best place is LinkedIn. You can find me at my my hashtag is entrepreneurial translator slash linkedin.com/entrepreneurial, translator. You can look at my website, entrepreneurial translator.com, or you can find me on Instagram, entrepreneurial translator, where you'll get a bit more, you know, juice out of that, out of that adversity to achievement story. S,o I'd love to connect with you if you found value in what I said. Thank you. Thank you for listening, and let's connect.

Yep, well, we'll put links to all that on our show notes at cancercomedy.com and great storytelling. And it's great to hear how storytelling through adversity can lead to some good things in life, and that's what we like to hear. So, Jason Willis Lee from Madrid, Spain, thank you for being with us here today on cancer and comedy.