Brad Miller 1:12
Dr. Brad Miller back with you with the pathway to promise podcast where we're all about helping you overcome adversity to achieve your promise life of peace, prosperity and purpose. We do that by talking to some great people who have great stories to tell about overcoming adversity themselves, as well as helping you to gain insight and, and influence into your life and helping you to overcome adversity. Today, we have Dr. Michael Hudson with us, who has transitioned in his life through various through the academic world into a life now where he's helping people to drive to clarify their vision, and their businesses and their life, to drive impact in order to have success in their life. And he does it by really focusing in on their communication, getting their message heard. He is online at Michael Michael Hudson calm. And he is our guest today on pathway to promise Michael, welcome to the

Dr. Michael Hudson 2:11
podcast. Thank you, Brad. It's a pleasure to be here and a privilege.

Brad Miller 2:15
Absolutely. Well, I've been a fan of yours for quite some time on your podcast and some of your some of your work that you've done. And I love your story. And I love how you focus in on communication and helping clarify messaging, I got a feeling that you've had some experiences in your life that have been transformational and transitional for you. To help move you through various pivot points in your life. I just like to hear a little bit of your story. What are some of the points in your life that have important to you?

Dr. Michael Hudson 2:45
Brad, I love the question. And by the way, I love the work you're doing here because my fundamental belief that I have come to discover over time through the journey I've traveled is that all of us have lessons from the journey that we've traveled that reveal things to us that only we know in the way we know them. That opened the door for us to help other people in a different way. And you know, my big pivot in my first pivot out of academia was after a decade, had the privilege of building nationally recognized Programs at the University of Illinois then I went to Cornell had the privilege of doing the same thing. And then I realized the bureaucracy wasn't fulfilling me. And there was always this underlying thing. And right around the time I made the decision to leave Cornell that underlying thing reemerged. Now, I have since learned there is a category to define those kinds of underlying things, which is called adverse childhood experiences. And for me, and you know, we're diving in real deep here real fast, Brad.

Brad Miller 3:41
I'm ready.

Dr. Michael Hudson 3:43
Let's do it. You want the audience to know I'm okay, I'm past this. And thank God, I am past it. Sure. But I was raped and molested for a year when I was 10. Okay. Now, my way of understanding the world is verbal processing. I talk through things. Well, that's fine Island, me because the person who did this to me threatened to kill me if I ever told anyone. So I never told anyone. And I went silent. I didn't stop talking in class, and getting in trouble. Because I was trying to get attention and trying to get affirmation, all those things we do when we've been harmed. And I completely block that experience out. Now, all I wanted to do Brad was kind of be up in front of the room and on the stage, but I couldn't do it. You know, if a day came and it was show and tell tomorrow, I would wake up the next morning and convince my mother, I was sick, so I didn't have to go to school. And at the same time, I would envy the people who could do that, because I really wanted to do it. And the interesting thing is my father was a state policeman who was a youth officer at the time, who developed the first drug education program in the state of Delaware drug abuse education before day or existed and that whole thing came around. And I would go watch you speak. And I would think I want to do that. And right around the time this all happened, I saw a speaker come into our school. And I watched this man stand there on the stage. His name was john Jimenez. And then he your audience members who live in the Mid Atlantic area probably heard him if they were not in school in the 60s. And he was a recovering drug addict who actually started a very successful church in Virginia Beach, okay. And when I watched him tell these stories, I thought that's so powerful. And Brad, that became my resurrection, so to speak. In the short term, it was my journey. It was where I went to story. So I lived in the country, we had this little thing called the bookmobile which was a minute ago, you know, that had books on it came around the corner from down tenths of a mile from my house, every two weeks, kid was allowed to get six books, I convinced my mother that I needed more because I would devour them because that was where I retreated into story. So all of that is a backstory to let you know why story matters. Why message matters so much to me. When I was 33 34, I started experiencing some depression issues. And when I decided I need to get help with this. All of a sudden, one day all the memories of what happened to me came back. And truth be told Brad, I was in my PhD program before I actually got comfortable speaking in front of a room.

Brad Miller 6:16
Because when was the ongoing process really three, you're growing up years into your adult life?

Dr. Michael Hudson 6:21
Yeah. And I was fine in small groups. You know, I was fine one on one, I was fine in small groups. But you know, if I stepped to the front of the room, I just couldn't do it. But when you go into a class with 250 freshmen, and your job is to teach them economics. And it's your, your day that you have to overcome you overcome. And I overcame by doing one thing, leveraging story. I've got to tell this story this way, Brad, because it's it's absolute. It's the way it happened. But I left my office the day that I finally had to go put myself in a room on a stage in front of 250 freshman I stopped at three buildings between my office in the building where the classroom was and threw up in every men's room I could find

Brad Miller 7:06
left your mark, what's your trail, I guess?

Dr. Michael Hudson 7:08
Oh, my goodness. Well, and and and and you know, I've got my this is a new overhead transparency day, right? I've got the acetate, I've got everything, you know, I'm ready. Oh, boy. But I get to the last building and I walk into men's room for one last am I okay, before I go in the in the in the auditorium. I walk out of the men's room. There's nothing left inside, of course. And I realized, I've got to walk into the same doors those students are walking in, you know, it's about 25 feet away. But it seems like it's 100 yards I make to get across there. And the whole way I'm thinking what am I going to do? And literally all of a sudden, I saw john him in his face, in my mind, okay. And I saw him telling these powerful and vulnerable stories. And I realized, and I started hearing this refrain it I mean, whether it was God's voice or whose voice I started hearing this Frank refrain of just tell them a story, and teach them a lesson. tell them a story and teach them a lesson. The hallway as I'm walking, and this is this is in the early 80s. You know, they don't have cell phones. They're wondering who this dude is walking in the room that they've never seen before, because I'm not the professor that's regularly there. He's out of town for two weeks. And now it's my shot to go in and do this. Okay. So as I'm thinking, I'm okay, I don't have a story. I don't have a story. I'm teaching freshman economics, we're talking about supply curves. What am I going to what story who's going to care. And as I stepped on this stage, I remembered when I was in graduate school, there was a time when I did to supply and demand curves backwards on a final exam. And the professor called me to his office after class and he said, We need to talk. He says, I want you to look at this. He showed me my exam. He said, Is anything wrong with that? I said, you had a curves are all backwards. He said, yeah. He said, but I'm going to let you go with it for one reason. You said your logic is perfect. You thought through it economically. Exactly. Right. You just drew the graphs backwards. Okay. He said, You haven't ever done it before. And he said, I'm pretty sure after this, you're never gonna do it again. Right? So long story short, I told them that story. And I said, and here's the good news about being here. today. I'm going to show you how to do it. So you never forget how to draw them correctly.

Brad Miller 9:15
Okay, well, that's what a wonderful and effective teaching method telling stories, whether it's economics, or messaging, or communication, whatever is the story. The story is so powerful,

Dr. Michael Hudson 9:28
became the go to thing, right. And I literally at that moment, I felt myself if this sounds grandiose, but I felt myself transform on the stage. It's like, okay, I can do this. I can finally do what I've been wanting to do my whole life, which is a big fight. I left academia later.

Brad Miller 9:45
did all that being onstage and helping, you know, even though the bombing the whole bed there prizes that help you leave behind some of that childhood trauma, or whatever trauma was leaving up? Or is that was that part of the whole process of healing and wholeness for you?

Dr. Michael Hudson 10:01
Brad, it open the door, okay.

And the truth is, that journey took another 25 years. Sure. And but it opened the door to make I mean, I just I did not remember this at all. I literally was in a situation where I, I had gone to a therapist for 13 weeks. And every week, he asked more questions, and I told him more. And the 14th week I walked in, and I said, You know what? You're not asking the questions today. I need to know something because this isn't getting any better. And I've told you everything about myself. And he said, Are you sure? I said absolutely. I said, I said Why do you ask? He said because everything speaks to your having had some sort of a trauma or abuse. And you've never described anything like that. And it is as if he turned on a switch in my brain. And I immediately saw, I'll call it a video in my brain. worst time that it happened. Sure. And I sat down on a couch and cried for three hours. Yeah, he was fortunate that he had another room that he could go into his with his other patient, because he kept there. And and that unlocked it. And it didn't solve it and resolve it. And I didn't allow it to for a long time I kept hiding. I kept putting on the mask and the suit every day, and doing the work that I was being paid to do. You know, I, you know, that all happened about a year and a half before I actually left the academic world. And when I left it, I said you know, it's time number one for me to go do what I've longed to do since I saw john Jimenez, which is be that person on the stage changing. Beat person who's unlocking stuff in people that they don't even realize is there be that person who's asking the questions, others don't ask to let them raise their hand and say I need to be I need to help I need to work through this.

Brad Miller 11:45
So that was a pivotal point for you that you've used this metaphor couple times. Now unlocking in our and opening doors is sound like that was a pivotal point for you. Of course, we have a lot of evidence now that childhood trauma is guilt can be deeply suppressed in such a way that we don't even know it's there. A lot of evidence of that, of course, and you're an example of that. But it sounds like this unlocking process, opening new doors also led you to make some significant decisions in your career, leaving academic a pretty relatively secure thing, being a college professor into what you're doing now. So tell us a little bit of that story about how that evolves in such way. Because you seem to share now that you say that you're now doing what you said earlier, you always longed to do or remit to do. And of course, that's what I'm really about in my work is helping us to search out what I like to call the promise life where you really are meant to be. So tell us a little bit about that story?

Dr. Michael Hudson 12:36
Well, Brad, I think up until that point, in my life, I had been doing one thing, which was

chasing external validation.

And I think a lot of people do that, you know, because I felt like if every it was it's that kind of thing. It's the imposter syndrome, however you want to label it, I felt I wasn't good enough. Even when I wasn't aware of what had happened, I felt this drive to be recognized and acknowledged and celebrated, you know, so I did a lot of chasing, you know, rewards, accolades and things like that. And I did a lot of trying to chase validation through other things. When this all popped up, and I realized, okay, I can't keep doing this. And at that time, I weighed almost 275 pounds. And my body's not wired for that. I was working 16 hour day, seven days a week. And I realized, this is not validating me and and helping me. So I left that world. I was at the time were in that academic world, you could take a sabbatical. So I did and left, right. And I said, I'm going to go to full time speaking, coaching, consulting, because I believe that's my gift. And that's what I'm here for. And that's what I want to do. Now, the truth is, I sort of slipped back into that, chasing the reward more now through financial, you know, what, what kind of gross sales? can I do? You know, now, and at the same time, I don't, I don't want to mislead your audience. And I don't want to lie. I mean, Truth is, I was having impact. I mean, I was very successfully having impact with my clients. But I kind of got hung up on that drive, it's got to be more, it's got to be bigger, it's got to be this, it's got to be this. And I accidentally fell into a niche that I built a niche business for 16 years serving a specific industry, doing strategy, leadership and culture work, loved it had some fantastic clients. But then one day, I had another one of those pivot moments. And I share that that way, Brad, because I'm hoping to wake your audience up to the fact there are pivot moments in our lives that we need to recognize,

Brad Miller 14:31
yes, and you do need to do something about it. It's like people don't recognize those. And they let slide by for the safety and supposed security of where they're at. But they end up being in a lifetime called the malaise of mediocrity, or the blaze of misery, you stay stuck there. And many people in sometimes myself included, have chosen to stay stuck there rather than taking the risk to move forward. So keep going down my friend keep it

Dr. Michael Hudson 14:55
it's it's kind of like that parable or story about, you know, the guy hanging on the side of the map. God says, I've sent you three different things, you know, you just keep ignoring them.

I don't know that one well enough to tell it right now. But well sounds it

Brad Miller 15:08
sounds like an old preacher story that I've told many times that him but go ahead.

Dr. Michael Hudson 15:12
But the signs are there, right. And so here's where the sign happened for me. And I'll give a shout out to the guy because I love his work, Michael been gay standard. Michael was doing a keynote. And I had been hired as one of three people who were going to take the people who were in the audience into separate rooms, and coach them on how to apply what he had just taught. And this was when his book do more great work had just come out. Good. So I'm sitting at a table Brad with six CEOs who are going to be in a room with another 75 people with me after this session, where I'm supposed to coach them. So like, Okay, I got to play along and play fair and you know, be it be all in. First thing you did was it was piece paper on the table. Everybody take one. And it just had a circle with a button middle. You said in a minute, I'm going to give you a three definitions, I'm going to ask you to draw a pie chart of how they relate to you. So get a pencil out. Get ready. Let's go said good work is this. It's your job description. You're good at it. You enjoy doing it. And if you don't do it, it doesn't get done. We all have to do some good work. Bad work is abbreviated wombat. Because this is a waste of money, bandwidth. And time.

Brad Miller 16:30
I've not heard that one before. I like that. Remember that one? To get that book. So okay,

Dr. Michael Hudson 16:38
yeah, it's a good little book.

And great work is the work you're here to do. It's the life changing strategic stuff that you really are supposed to be doing. So I want you to draw a chart on this pie chart percentages for those. So in my I'm compelled to be completely honest about with myself, as well as with the people at the table. I think 65% of my work, bad work. Oh, my goodness, and I labeled 5% Good work. And I said, Okay, you're 14 years into running this niche business, you've done some good work along the way. But at this moment in time, you're saying 65% of your work is bad work. Why is

Brad Miller 17:16
that? That's a pretty brutal self assessment, isn't it?

Dr. Michael Hudson 17:20
It's a smack in the face, self induced. And so I went into room of the...