In this diverse world it's not about who you are. It's about who you are helping. Author Brad Sedillo emphasizes humility and shared humanity. He shifted from pessimism to positivity through friendship and travel. “Friendboats” illustrates two converging paths. A unique perspective on diversity and differing views.

What you live in, your bubble is not the world.

It's not about who you are,

it's about who you're helping.

Your positive, positive, positive imprint, imprint, imprint,

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I'm Catherine, your host of this Variety show podcast.

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podcast, your positive imprint.

What's your P.I?

Well, I am absolutely delighted to introduce my guest here on today's show,

and he's sitting next to me live here.

I'm

yes,

as an educator, I have had the honor of nurturing his critical

thinking skills throughout his childhood.

I fondly remember reading his captivating stories in class,

watching him lead the student council,

listening to him address the mayor about issues that matter to middle schoolers.

I cheered him on as he achieved his Eagle Scout rank.

His leadership has allowed him to navigate various paths to success

making lifelong friends along the way.

In his own words, he discovered himself through his group of friends.

He has committed himself to fitness.

Training for his next competition.

And authored a book titled Friend Boats.

He occasionally co-hosts your positive imprint.

I could go on and on and on about my remarkable former student, I

am so excited to welcome the absolute incredible Brad Sedillo.

I'm excited to be here.

The tree of your seeds that you've been planting.

I am the tree.

My friends call me a tree.

So here we are.

I love that

they describe running into me, like running into a tree.

So there you go.

Well.

You are incredible.

continue now with part two.

Traveling has always been a dream of yours Yes.

As well.

Especially because you do have that background of loving history.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

And so now you have friend boats.

Yes.

I want you to just read this part for listeners, because this was

interesting how you chose the title.

Yeah.

By your friend John.

Yes.

So there is, uh, a toast that we used to do, and I'm sure many of

you have heard this before at all of the parties that we used to have.

Um, and it goes, there are good ships and there are wood ships.

There are ships that sail the sea, but the best ships are

friendships and may they ever be,

and that's a, I think it's a fun toast and if you're with your friends, you

can say it in sort of with the, uh, tongue in cheek manner and it's fun.

And so I, I wrote this then John made fun of me for using the same thing over

and over, so he made his own version.

There are good boats and there are wood boats.

There are boats that sail the sea, but the best boats are

friend boats and may they ever be,

I love that.

There you go.

Friend boats.

Yeah.

I feel like it's a good sort of insider joke that encapsulates my,

uh, relationship with my friends.

So,

Yes.

Which is much of the book,

Is your friendship with your friends.

You made a statement and you said, with your group of friends, you found yourself.

Right.

So I always thought, well, you know, Brad, being in.

Third grade, my goodness.

He has found himself for the rest of his life.

Yeah,

because you were always anchored.

Mm-hmm.

And grounded with logic and you went towards opportunity,

but then you made that comment.

Yeah.

So why do you think you didn't

know yourself or find yourself until,

right.

You

found your friends, so can you.

Yeah, I think it goes back to what I was saying in terms

of what I thought I wanted to be in terms of politics, and then eventually

finding out what it actually was that I liked about that whole thing.

And so I think in terms of

what my friends helped me do when I moved into the dorms, that was, I, all

of the friends that I wrote about in the book are the friends that I made

in the dorms when I moved, to college.

One of the things that I realized is that I think I, I was putting a lot

of pressure on myself to be what I had already told people I wanted to be,

whereas I had already begun thinking that I don't want to be the thing.

I told people that I want to be, so I needed to sort of get out of the sort

of self-imposed prison really of what I had thought that I wanted my life to be.

And that also extended to my personality and how I sort of comported myself.

I feel like in high school I was, for a lot of the time, if I wasn't

with my closest friends, really buttoned up and you know, and

sort of almost full of myself.

It was sort of thinking back on it.

Think that I was full of myself when I was in high school, which is,

you know, people hate high school.

And I think I hate a high school in my memory because I'm like,

God, I wish I was a better person in high school sort of thing.

I could have had so much more fun if I had just let myself

not be perfect all the time.

You did strive for that.

Yeah.

You really, even in third grade, you would get so frustrated,

right?

If.

Everything wasn't perfect And you had to redo papers,

right?

Not because I said so,

right?

Because you said so.

'cause I messed it up.

Yeah.

So that whole, whole pressure that I was put, that's why

my hair is prematurely gray.

It was 'cause I put way too much pressure on myself to have everything

be perfect and fit a mold that I was telling others that I wanted to be.

And so what they did in high school, I in college and sort of why they

became my, my closest friends is because they showed me that, hey.

You can be who you really want to be and who you are and it's fine.

That was the whole thing.

I learned that it's fine to just exist and have fun and not be

so buttoned up all the time.

So, and that, you know, here we are, we're talking about all these things that

I've done since I learned that lesson.

And so look at how much more productive

I've been because of that as opposed to trying to

be the president of UNM Student Council or whatever, you know, so it, I think it

was a , a godsend that I sort of veered off of that path that I had set for myself

and found one that was still good and also I think better than would have been.

So, and

I agree.

You are fabulous and you are I the old Brad.

Uh.

I believe would never have come on to co-host your positive imprint.

Yeah.

Yeah.

'cause

you wouldn't have felt comfortable

uhhuh

in trying to be on the fly

banter.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Not at all.

'cause

you, you would want the script

uhhuh.

Right.

Right.

How long did it take you to write this book?

Hmm.

So I, I feel really bad saying that I enjoyed COVID, but you know, obviously

COVID was a terrible thing and bad things happened and a lot of those things should

have been avoided and so on and so forth.

But for me personally, I'm an introvert through and through.

I love working from home, which I've now been working

from home since March of 2020.

And I love it.

And, uh, despite the travel aspect of it, 'cause obviously I want to travel,

I got back into it very quickly, but.

When I was stuck at home during COVID, I didn't have anything to do, and so it

became very much a COVID project when I wasn't doing something else, I was just

sitting there on my couch typing my book.

I remember the specific day, I was like, okay, I need to set

this number of pages a day.

This is old Brad talking, and you said this number of pages a day and I have

to hit them, or I'm not allowed to do anything fun until I hit that quota.

So once I set that quota, it took me maybe six months to write the book.

And that was in 2020.

So it took me a while to get it to a point where I figured I could

try and look at publishing I then eventually self-published it in 2024.

So, I mean, it was a, it was a journey to get there for sure.

It was a journey on your trips and you learned Yes.

So much about the world,

right?

Places that you got to see, museums mm-hmm.

That you got to visit that you'd only read about before.

Right.

You talked about your dreams.

One of the dreams coming true was traveling.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And then another dream.

Dream was that you wanted to do something for yourself, which

turned out to be the bodybuilding,

right?

So what are some of the other dreams?

, Brad Sedillo: I think that one of the, one of the interesting things about what

this book does, the, the premise of the book that it, it, it's, uh, essentially

a, an autobiography of my time in college interspersed with my first trip to Europe,

which was in my sophomore year of college.

And so one of the things that I've come to learn is that my career.

I, I am very, very thankful for my career and I enjoy my job, but it's

not what I would envision myself doing for the rest of my life.

My biggest dream would be able to be a travel writer that

is paid to travel and write.

That would be my ultimate.

Bill Bryson is my favorite.

He's my, he's my literary hero if you haven't read any of his books, they're

all hilarious and very informative.

, and so that would be my ultimate dream is.

Being able to write and travel for a career, I think is sort of where I

envision myself eventually ending up.

It's a great book to talk about traveling, but also I think in

another is showing that it's okay to.

Come out of the shell

Yes.

Uhhuh and

have a good time.

Yeah.

But still be responsible.

Yes.

Yes.

So a lot of the book is about my debauchery as a younger man.

Yeah.

Uh, which I think is, was fun for me, uh, to write and then for.

My family to read.

'cause I'm sure that they knew, I mean, I've not, I'm not secretive about my

debauchery, you know, obviously not.

Yes, no, my, uh, my parents knew that I was out and drinking with

friends when I was in college.

But the thing is, is as you mentioned, we were all very,

we're all very nerds at heart.

That's the thing is, so we're not out there doing awful things or

drinking and driving, God forbid.

We're very, you know, all of those things we're like, no, we're just

gonna go and get a bottle of something and go to a house and talk about Star

Wars and history and have debates.

And drink.

And that's what we did.

So, um, I, I was very thankful that I have a very, very wholesome group

of friends when they're not drunk.

So there you go.

Yeah, yeah,

absolutely.

There you go.

So there is

debauchery in the book if you want it.

So,

yeah.

So, with just a few words you summarized.

It takes an open heart to live.

Yeah.

I elaborate on that.

Yeah, I, I love that quote, by the way.

Yeah.

One of the things that I think is very important for anybody

to realize, and I think most of us do eventually realize it, is that you

can't be an island unto yourself in terms of your life and how you live

and how you interact with others.

It's more about the people around you as opposed to yourself.

And so you obviously need an open heart to be able to understand all of the different

perspectives of the people around you.

And life is built of so many different things that you as an individual can't

represent or be aware of all of them.

So in order to get a full life, you need to be able to experience

the great diversity of things in the world, and that involves being able to

talk to people who don't agree with you, being able to break out of your shell

in terms of, oh, I think it would be scary to go to X place for X reason.

You need to be able to go there and see that they're just people,

you have to be aware of the fact that.

What you live in, your bubble is not the world.

And you have to have the ability to be humble enough to know that in order to

actually see the world and live, you need to be able to go out and see these other

things and accept them into you as part of what makes you human and defines the human

experience, which is common to all people.

So it's one of those things that you need to be able to have not only an

open heart, but an open mind, really.

But a, a. It's about also enjoying yourself.

And that's, I think, where it's more your heart than your mind because you have to

have fun while doing all of these things.

Right.

So,

I, I really liked the part, it was just a paragraph about

visiting barbershops and salons uhhuh, but not because you just

wanted to see what they're doing, but you wanted to see the diversity

Right, right.

Of our culture.

Right.

Right.

And so you kind of took those drives and, and

went around and I think that.

You're seeing the world from a very logical

mm-hmm.

Point of view and perspective.

And you're seeing it from a point of view of acceptance.

Right.

Right.

And that is a great positive imprint.

You were in Boy Scouts and you.

Yeah.

Anything you wanna share about some of the things you do outside of work?

Yeah.

I, once I started my master's degree, my, my, uh, time definitely fell off.

Yes.

And I graduated with that a year ago.

So I'm now getting to the place where I have starting to get more free time back.

But before that, I was on the, the board of the Great Southwest Council of the Boy

Scouts of America now just scouting BSA.

, and that was a very interesting thing to sort of see the, the high level,

, behind the scenes, how, how the scouts work and function, which was really

an interesting full circle moment.

, so now I rely on, , , my stepbrother Frankie, he's on a, a charitable board

and he has a lot of very interesting,

, opportunities for involvement . So I do a lot of my volunteering through him now

because he's , oh, this thing's happening.

I'm like, I'll do that.

So we were planting, , trees about a month ago with, oh, I

think it's called Tree New Mexico.

Nonprofit that, uh, essentially plants, trees for free all across the city.

And you know, people volunteer to take these trees, but they don't wanna

have to buy the trees themselves.

So they say, I'll take care of it once you plant it.

So it involves planting trees for people.

So yeah, I like looking for little things like that to sort of be in the

in Albuquerque and make it a better place and make other people realize how

much of a cool place Albuquerque is.

And so, yeah,

You've also inspired, as I recall, it's been a

number of years, some girls.

To join, scouts of America,

right.

I was a board member, charged with trying to help sort of their social

media impact and all of these things.

So I knew of, , some women that I had known younger when I was in Boy Scouts

myself, and they, I brought them along to try and help me do this, the whole thing.

So it was, it was an interesting, an interesting sort of way to view

how anybody can become involved in these great organizations.

It's not about who you are, you know?

It's about who you're helping.

So

there you go.

I love that.

Yeah.

It's not about who you are, but who you're helping.

Right.

Excellent.

So we will get close to ending, but is there anything you wanna

talk about that we missed?

Oh man, I don't think so.

I would say is just please go buy the book at a local bookstore from online,

and hopefully I have a, a couple of new books coming your way in a few years.

Well, the book Brad said you, and by the way, it's S-E-D-I-L-L-O.

Yes.

So friend boats and it's on indigo.

Mm-hmm.

And Amazon.

And,

uh, yeah.

Ingram.

Ingram.

Ingram.

Yes.

Ingram.

Ingram Spark.

Yeah.

So it's, you can buy it online also through Bookwork, which

is a local Albuquerque store or page one, which is also, , an

Albuquerque store if you want it.

A, uh, Kindle version.

It is available on Kindle as well.

Yes.

On Amazon.

Yeah.

As well.

So, uh, internationally there's a lot of listeners.

International.

It's a great book and they, Brad talks a lot about Europe.

His European travels

Yes.

Before we get to your inspirational words,

your last words, let's have a quick toast.

We both love.

Toasts.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

We

both love Scotland.

And

Love Scotland.

Yeah.

I love Scotland.

That will have to be

in another book.

I'll tell you about my trip to Scotland and the distilleries.

Yeah.

Oh, absolutely.

So we have a little bit of whiskey to celebrate our little rendezvous here.

Yes.

Here on your positive imprint.

Lan.

Mm.

That is yummy.

That is scotch whiskey,

debauchery.

Mm-hmm.

to learn more about Brad,

I have two Instagrams.

So it's @bradsedillo or @bradsedillofitness if you

want the fitness part of it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Excellent.

There you go.

But when you Google brad sedillo, you'll find all sorts.

S-E-D-I-L-L-O.

So last inspiring words.

Oh, interesting.

To share

with listeners.

Yeah.

My biggest thing is, again, I'm starting another book on the Holocaust,

, it's weird to think about it that.

Obviously I, I don't look at the world through the Holocaust, but it's one of

the things that I always keep in the back of my mind that look at what people are

capable of doing to one another, and also look at how what you're going through

right now can be put into perspective by the suffering of people in the past.

And that will help you look at the world in a way that will help you be

more productive and more constructive.

Because you have to realize, Hey, what I'm going through right now can pass.

And I need to be able to be the best person that I can be to keep that

from happening ever again essentially.

So it's something that I think about all the time and people asking me

what is the, the lens that I have?

I'm say, well, I'm both cynical 'cause I can see what people are capable of.

But I'm also very, very, , positive about what people are

also capable of doing that.

Is good because I mean, that's the whole thing about reading about people in the

past is you learn about incredible people that you maybe don't always think about,

but that allowed us to get to where we are because obviously the evil didn't win.

, that's the big takeaway is that there were a lot of millions of individual

people who did very nice things to help one another, and that's just something

that I think makes the world a much better place to look at it through that.

So read history and I think that's the the best that you can do for yourself.

. Catherine: Brad Sedillo you're awesome.

Yeah.

This was fun.

You get together.

Yes.

Yeah, . Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Very nice.

Yeah.

Good.

That was fun.

again, it takes an open heart to live

This is part two with Brad Sedillo.

Listen to part one, episode 228 where Brad discusses his bodybuilding journey.

your Positive Imprint is a free podcast.

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Go to buymeacoffee.com/Yourpositiveimprint and any support you offer

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