In this episode of the podcast, we have a special guest, Ed Norwood, President of ERN/The National Council of Reimbursement Advocacy and AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR of "Be A Giant Killer, Overcoming Your Everyday Goliaths." Ed shares with us his personal journey of overcoming challenges and the lessons he learned along the way. He reflects on the mistakes he made in his youth, the difficult season he had to go through, and the importance of unlearning and relearning things to move forward.

As the president of ERN/The National Council of Reimbursement Advocacy, Ed and his team teach their people to serve their way into the hearts of their provider members by retelling the story they are living, editing, and rewriting it for the next generation. He believes in unexpected generosity as a way to build trust and permission to do remarkable work.

Tune in to this episode to learn from Ed's inspiring journey and his insights on overcoming challenges in life.

Purchase Book "Be A Giant Killer": https://a.co/d/hfvvEOX

Connect or Follow Ed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernorwood/

Mentioned in this episode:

1on1 App Information

https://www.thinkmovethrive.com/1on1-app/

Hey, everybody.

We're talking to Ed Norwood today.

What an amazing guy.

He's a husband, a father, a thought leader, speaker, author, and president,

and founder of E R n has some incredible stories about life and business.

He's a great new friend of mine.

You don't want to miss this incredible conversation.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I am Dallas Burnett, sitting in my 1905 Koch Brothers

barber chair in Thrive Studios.

But more importantly, I have a great guest today who's got one of

my favorite titles of a book called Be a Giant Killer, Ed Norwood.

Welcome to the show, ed.

Hey Dallas.

Thank you, man.

here in Southern California, it's sunny, but it's cold.

It's about 50 degrees.

It's a blizzard, but we're making it

You're hanging in there I I love Southern California.

It's so beautiful.

And, I'd love to hear, just tell our listeners what is e r n where

your, what are you doing now?

You've got books out.

you speak.

Just tell us.

tell us what Ed Norwood's into these days.

Hey, thank you.

just once.

I want to just share with you just excited and humbled to really

share this platform with you.

Thank you for making it available to me this morning.

earned Enterprises, we've been in business for about 23 years

and it is my second business.

My first company I started at the age of 19, made a lot of money, made a lot

of mistakes, lost that business and.

in the season of loss, learned a lot of things.

when I was 18 years old, before I started that company, I worked for

a millionaire named Jay Abraham, and he, was a marketing consultant.

Dallas.

This guy had, seminars that he charged $30,000 per person.

This was back then, I'm not gonna tell you how long ago that

was probably over 30 years ago.

And I just told you over 30 years ago, and he had 300 people in this event.

And I was just this guy Friday, took his car down the street to wash his

Lexus, him and his gm, Bill Clark.

And he taught his, attendees how to create a USP, a unique selling proposition.

And, I don't know if you've heard of Unique Selling Proposition before.

Have you heard of that

before?

so I built my entire company around this unique selling proposition.

for dominoes it was 30 minutes, or it's

Yep.

Yeah.

for Nordstrom, for the most part, it's, you can

buy it, spray it for seven days.

As long as you have , that barcode, the very bottom, you can bring it back.

That was their usp, right?

Yeah.

And I used that strategy build My first business,

created a USP it triple in dollars.

And the amount of money I saw just wasn't ready for it.

Oh,

wow.

learned a lot in the transition of working for people.

Again, before I started this organization, we're now 23 years strong and had

the ability to really pour into a lot of great healthcare providers.

We advocate for medically appropriate healthcare, so we challenge HMOs that make

negligent medical necessity decisions.

Oh wow.

That's amazing.

Now we gotta jump back a little bit there, cuz you, you skipped a lot.

I love how you transitioned and thank you for kind of opening up and sharing

where you've kind of, where you started 19 years old, that's, that is really

young to be starting a business.

Did working with, Jay Abraham, did he inspire you in some way to want to

go out and do something on your own?

Or were you just, you always kind of had this burning itch of

entrepreneurship and leadership.

what was it like early on as a young entrepreneur?

really the first inspiration I would have to say is probably my mom.

She was in ministry for herself and, very independent.

I grew up kind of with the mindset, if you want something done, do it yourself.

Wasn't.

Mindset for marriage.

But anyway, different story.

we get trained out of that.

If you've been married for a long time, you get trained out of that

yes, but yet watching her really inspired me to be an entrepreneur.

And I just really learned, I've learned this, that everything has compensation.

And so in the seasons of my life where, wasn't sure the direction I was going,

wasn't sure if I was accumulating what I wanted at that stage of my

career, man, I was becoming something.

And even in the mistakes, the losses,

hmm.

I really feel that I matured quite a bit to the man I am now.

But it was quite challenging.

You I had absolutely no idea what I was doing at 19.

and, I'm grateful that.

, the grace of God kind of just covered me in those seasons where, I made a

ton of mistakes that affected people.

so how long were you in that original

business that you started at?

19.

about seven years, and it's ironic that I was, well, let's

see, 19, yeah, about seven years.

I lost the business two weeks after I was married.

Oh,

And, so the business that I promised my in-laws would take

care of, their daughter was gone.

and really God was just dealing with the, some prideful areas in my

life, where I had to go through a season that I call the wilderness.

a season of temporary confusion where nothing is working, where you're

planting, reaping nothing, it seems, and, learning in that moment, That you have

to unlearn and relearn some things to get yourself to the next chapter of life.

And so I kind of went through that.

but again, just grateful.

I'm not where I want to be, but certainly not where I used to be.

I'm grateful for the process

That's awesome.

to this stage,

I love that.

And I think that's so true.

I think that if you are leading people or you're leading yourself

that life is never, even though we want it to be even, we want our

lives to be that up and to the right.

just that straight line trajectory.

It never is.

It's.

Side turns and circles and you just never know where, so you, even though you're

trying to just have this consistency, sometimes you get curve balls that you

can't control and some that you can.

I'd love to talk to you about the wilderness and your wilderness experience

and as you go, as you kind of transitioned out of that original business, in, was

that, how did you manage that transition?

How did you manage that with your family, your new family?

How did you manage that?

What was that like?

When you say you had to earn, unlearn some things, what did that look like for you?

Well, I got my first credit card at 18 Dallas and it was $500.

And I remember I was working for a company, hadn't gone into business

yet, and I told the coworkers, Hey, I'm gonna take you out to lunch.

Got my first credit card.

There was an older lady named Paula Strode who pulled me to the

side and said, don't you do that.

I see you crazy.

Be crazy.

I'm fine.

I'm taking everyone out to lunch.

we're gonna have a good time.

And little did I know that decision would lead me in a

down hood of bad decisions of.

making poor financial decisions.

And my, credit got to a place where it was at a 500.

And I've learned over the course of time, that you can't pray a bad credit score up

That's awesome.

listen, I, I had to make some different decisions.

I had to pay some things off.

Yeah.

There were some things I had to dispute that were labeling

me, that were incorrect, and I had to change my payment history.

And by changing those patterns of history, I was able to change my destiny.

So my credit score's now 7 50, 7 60, maybe on a good day.

And people can't even see that it used to be 500 unless they watch.

The last 10%

there.

That's right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Well, and that's

they, they won't even, they won't even know that because, man, we

can make redemptive decisions in our life so that regardless of what our

history is, we leave a different legacy.

So I went through wilderness.

I was on welfare, I was in couches, grabbing change, going

to the Green Coin Star machine.

And, went through an embarrassing time where I couldn't take care of my family.

I couldn't, buy Christmas presents for my children.

And, again, just in that season where I became nothing, sometimes

you don't realize all you need is God until all you have is God.

and I was in that place of my life and, just man grew up.

I grew up from this little boy that threw tantrums and.

tried to act as if he was invincible and bulletproof, into a man that God

could use, and my wife would probably attest that I'm still becoming that man.

I'm still in the altar.

I'm still getting there, but, I'm grateful for that wilderness

season that matured me,

I love that.

And I love how you talked about, you just took ownership of so much of your

routines and like how those routines.

Contributed to, essentially the loss of the business and just the financial ruling

of your credit and so many other things.

And then you just kind of, kind of got to this kind of sounds like a rock

bottom place and started a trajectory that was in a different direction.

Can you talk

I thought it could, I could, I thought it could never affect.

I thought that my decisions would never catch up with me,

oh really, that was so going into that

you were like, I can do this.

Kind of like you said, invincible.

I'm good.

I'll figure it out.

yeah, this kid on the on, on the Buffalo Bills, DeMar Hamlin who died

twice and they brought him back to life.

I was watching Ryan Clark, espn, and he said something

that I really resonated with.

He said, when I was 24, I didn't even know I could die And so

though.

So true.

yeah, I mean as men, it's intrinsic in our masculinity,

to think that we're bulletproof.

To think that we're invincible and can do things without consequence and overcome

things in our own strength or willpower.

we don't often admit the things that are stronger than us, that we are

imprisoned, that we're addicted, that we're traumatized or misunderstood,

and too often we minimize the effect of family dysfunction or

the effect of trauma, the effect of mistakes that we've made, for years.

but we can't outdo the trauma and the mistakes and fill the

gaps of our life with things that distract our in your date.

Us.

we can't outwork what happened to us in a gym

That's so

or outwork what happened to us at a office or drown it

with alcohol or sex or addiction.

We can't build a business over the pain.

and really that's why I wrote the book Be a Giant Killer, to identify

the hurts and the triggers that kept rearing its head in our lives that

were sabotaging our dreams to show people that regardless of what has been

written in history and what people have labeled them by, we can edit chapters.

We can, we, we can change the.

labels are the narratives that people have placed upon us because God is a

master screenwriter and no matter what segment of our life that we're in, he

can write a sequel that was better.

Watch this.

He can write a franchise like Fast In Furious, that continues into the next

generation and keeps getting better.

And really that was the inspiration, of taking my life story and showing

people how they can transform theirs.

Wow.

That's awesome.

so to be a giant killer is a life story, is your life story.

That's what the, that's what the book is about.

and just kind of walking through that's a, that's awesome.

And I I love how you frame that up.

I love how you talk about editing segments, and rewriting scripts.

And I think that sometimes that people get trapped, like you said, in a

pattern of thinking that l that keeps them existing in the past, it's like,

it's like Groundhog Day over and over again because they've made a mistake.

They've gone somewhere.

They've done something that was a blunder.

It was just a miss.

And then whether it's shame, guilt, fear, anxiety, whatever it is,

It's like that view of the past is so great that they lose sight of

a different, more hopeful future.

And I think it keeps them there.

And I think that's one of the things about, anyone that's leading people

in an organization, one of the things that you're, as a leader, you're

trying to do is not only inspire people to, the mission, the vision,

values of the organization, whether it's a business or a nonprofit or

a ministry or anything like that.

You're also inspiring people to hope, you're inspiring people to believe

that they can be better to improve that their situation is improving,

that they're moving forward.

And so I love how you framed that up and how you kind of, kind of

looked at that and said, we can edit scripts and we can change the ending.

and that God is that script writer.

And if we do our part like you said, and you couldn't pray your way out of

the 500, but if you put in that and you change those behaviors, it's amazing.

It's amazing what transpires, you

We, we really under, I can't agree with you.

more, we really underestimate how family history impacts everything that we do.

the work, the book Be a Giant Killer is a dive into how the Israelite

nation had to conquer seven giants to get to their promised land, and each

of the giants were related to them.

it really is a book on diving into some of the things that are related to our family

history that's impeding us from reaching or accomplishing our wildest dreams.

we have a tendency to carry shame for what others have done to us, things beyond

our, circumstance or beyond our control.

Rather, that happened to us when we were children or watch this.

We have a tendency of giving people what others have given to us.

Experts say that 80 to 90% of how we observe things occurs

by the age of five or six.

Just imagine that for a moment.

How we love and how we forgive, how we process pain and conflict.

We started that trajectory or downhill motion of how we did that.

From the age of five or six, our kids have been watching us and we have been

watching our caregivers for years.

And so our history shapes our relationships, how we respond

to people, places, and things.

Our histories, our hurts, and our insecurities can often

produce lifelong triggers.

Sometimes when we are responding to a person in our present, we are

really speaking to someone in our pasts who hurt us, who abandoned

us, who didn't validate us.

And when there is unresolved trauma, it's intrinsic rather than our

human nature, to preemptively react.

So history doesn't repeat itself.

I'm a recovering helicopter parent.

And, man, I was a great encourager when I was younger with my kids

Dallas, but I wasn't a great comforter.

and for the most part, when I was growing up in high school,

my mom traveled for ministry.

So if I was sick, I had to make myself chicken soup.

Right, right,

didn't feel like going to school, I had to tell myself,

get up, it's time to go to school.

If I was watching television and I had homework, I had to tell

myself, Hey, turn the TV off.

It's time to work on your studies.

I had to wheel myself because I didn't have a comforter in the home, per se.

I had to encourage myself that despite not having a parent in the home with me,

that I could accomplish incredible things.

I think by the age of 16 I had a, an advice column called Dear

Ed instead of Dear Abby, happy

I love it.

and here I was Dallas, trying to encourage 16 and 17 year

olds with the courage I needed to show up every single day.

So I raised my kids, if they were going through something and

they were, and they were sick.

I was the one saying them.

Hey, you could, you're more than a conqueror.

You can do exceedingly and abundantly and far above what you asked.

Dream, think, hope, or imagine if they had a sickness and they were gonna miss

a big test or a big game the next day.

I was pushing them and.

Praying over them and telling them that you'll be fine.

You have to push through it.

and but rarely did I sit on the edge of their bed and say to them, Hey, I know

you've studied really hard for tomorrow and prepared really hard for tomorrow.

It must be crushing you that you may not make it, that you can't make it.

How are you doing with that?

Hmm.

and that's where in this season of my life, I've begun

to excavate unresolved hurts that I feel my kids might, may have carried

from childhood into adulthood.

And I'm going back and I'm having conversations saying, Hey, son, when

you were 14 and Dad made you do this in front of the entire team and in front

of your coach, I was wrong for that.

I was angry, I was prideful.

Should have never happened.

Will you ever forgive me for that?

Because we transmit.

The traumas and the fears.

We don't heal to the next generation

that is so powerful and I think it's so challenging to

any parent that's listening to the last 10% because I love how you

approach the challenge that you've kind of put out in front of yourself.

You've recognized something and you've laid out a really difficult,

scenario where you were growing up.

And having to kind of will yourself to win and pull yourself up by

your bootstraps and go and do it.

And it's, and your experience came with its own challenges

and you didn't have that person.

But then I love how you took that and said, okay, that's not good enough.

Cuz a lot of people stop, and I think this is important to our

listeners, self-awareness is huge.

you were just talking about a lot about self-awareness is like, how

do, how well do you know yourself?

And you're looking backwards, you're looking inside, you're looking

outside, you're talking to people.

and then once you discovered, hey, look, I've got this wound from my past

that has caused me to make certain decisions that I was unaware of, right?

Most people would say, yes, I see it.

Oh man, I hate that.

And then they would stop there and they would either feel sorry for themselves

or be like, well it's not my fault.

Or they'd make excuses.

So they've got that self-awareness piece.

But I love how you went the next step and said, So what am I gonna do about it?

I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go and get him, and

I'm gonna get my son and we're gonna have some conversations.

We're gonna fix this.

We're gonna work on this.

and they're really hard conversations because I came

from a generation where children were to be, seen and not heard.

right.

and oftentimes in our generation will hear people say

things like, well, I did the best.

That I could.

Hmm.

and that's not good enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or will say things like, well, it is what it is.

It is what it is, right,

it is what we, our people have made

That's right.

That's right.

That's

And so I, I've learned over the course of years, in this season

of my life that it's important to have hard conversations, speak the loving

truth, but have hard conversations.

I was on a show one time and someone said, one of the most difficult conversations

you can have is with yourself.

And I said to them, I'm not sure if I agree, but if I were gonna

agree, I think the second most difficult conversation to have if

they're living is with your parents.

having the ability to say, I wasn't raised with a dad

Dallas, so I had a conversation.

I must have the courage to have a conversation with my dad and said

to him, Hey, dad, why weren't you in my life when I was growing up?

I, I really needed a father.

When I went through this at 16 and this at 17.

Why didn't you and mom make it?

I just wanted to know what my family history was and God kind

of warned me before I did this.

You may not get the answer that you want, but he responded and said, son,

I'm not even sure if I'm your father.

Good gracious.

And I was angry at first Dallas.

And then I tried to counsel his bad family history or his family history

and wonder, how his dad was with him.

But after a while, I begin to realize that I can't heal the

family history of other people.

I'm responsible.

For the next generation,

Yes.

what I do in my life affects them.

And having those hard conversations may not, cuz you'll talk yourself out of it.

you'll say things like, it doesn't matter.

They're never going to change.

Shut up.

Don't say anything.

Just ignore them.

Yeah.

But here's the thing, having those hard conversations may never

change them or change the circumstance, but it allows your voice to be heard.

Yeah.

when you allow your voice to be heard, the little boy and

little girl in you matures faster, heals faster tantrums, decrease.

No longer silent, no longer violent.

Right.

Ah, that's true.

That's great.

I love that.

And I think that's such good wisdom for leading your family.

Or leading a team in an organization because those really difficult

conversations, we may try to avoid them.

We may try to dismiss them, we may try to justify why we don't need to have

'em, why it's the other person's fault.

and we might say, and it might be justifiable in the sense that they

may, we could say, w if we're gonna sit down and talk to this team

member, we're gonna talk to our kid.

They're not gonna change.

I'm gonna tell 'em this and I'm just wasting my time.

But it's not a waste of time, like you just said.

It's not a waste of time because when we say it, we hear ourselves saying it

and we know we're speaking the truth.

We know we're trying to develop someone, we're trying to heal a relationship,

repair, repair some damage that's been done, whether it's our fault or

theirs, we're coming to the table.

And I think if we are changed, then it definitely changes the

dynamic because it changes us.

So even if the person doesn't change, it's worth the exercise cuz it changes you.

I think that's, I think that's fantastic advice.

and you really think about it.

by having that conversation with him, it changes you, it affects

every relationship connected to you because you don't grow up.

I heard someone say this some years ago that the heart knows no time.

Hmm.

That's why something that happened to you 20 years ago can feel

like it just took place yesterday

Oh, that's, that's good.

because we have to rewire our hearts.

that's why a 50 year old man can throw a five year old tantrum,

right,

or a 40 year old woman who was abused as a child

has trusting issues as an adult.

And so our hearts are like black boxes.

When you think of a black box, you think of that indestructible piece

of metal underneath a pilot seat.

And Dallas, this black box is profound because it can

withstand catastrophic disaster.

And still remember...

that's awesome.

remembers the good welcome to United.

We'll have a six hour flight to South Carolina movie in the cabin, a movies in

the cabin food, in the food in the cabin.

Put your feet up.

Enjoy the flight.

It remembers the bad mayday mayday fire in the cockpit.

Prepare for a crash landing.

And even if this plane plunges, God forbid, into the ocean and breaks

up in pieces and hundreds of people die, the government will send divers.

Pass the debris and the chaos to find this little black box

to find out what happened.

Because it remembers,

Hmm,

and that's our heart.

Hmm.

It remembers the good.

Every celebration, every achievement.

It remembers the bad, every betrayal, every abandonment, every rejection.

And if we don't spend time to rewire that heart

Mm

and to give that heart expression, the little boy and

little girl in us never grows up.

mm I think that's so powerful.

I've never heard that analogy before, but I love it.

I love that idea.

The black box and the heart doesn't really recognize time.

It just is.

And I think that is fascinating.

I really do.

I think that's so true.

And I think that it's interesting because that is what we're spending

time with when you're working.

either yourself or you're working on a relationship with someone else,

or you're working on a team, you're having to unpack a lot of stuff and

you talk about unpacking a lot of, if you're going to therapy or you're

seeing a coach, or you're just talking to a friend or a pastor or whatever,

you're unpacking a lot of stuff.

And the reason is that you wanna move forward and you wanna keep going.

And yet you've got this recorder inside of you that if you don't get

rewired, it just, it makes it much more difficult to move forward.

I think that's really interesting.

I love that.

I love that analogy, huh.

Thank you for sharing that with our listeners today.

So let's talk about this, cuz you've, we were talking a little bit with before

the show, speaking of family history, you have an amazing story about your

family and kind of a tragedy that, that you had a lot of people, a part of.

What would you mind sharing that with us?

Yeah, I lost, 27 relatives in the Jonestown dying, a tragedy

behind Jim Jones back in 1978.

And tell everybody what that is because some people

may not even know, what that is,

Yeah.

In 1978, cult leader Jim Jones, led about 900 people to a

remote South African jungle.

He promised to create a paradise on earth, and, really in

the process, Dallas, he had.

Gained the trust of thousands of people.

he had politicians in his pulpit, the president of the United States,

the first lady was in his pulpit.

Mayors were in his pulpit.

he had positions over housing, units in, in San Francisco.

And as a result, he convinced 900 people to migrate from America to

south, America, to promise them a land free of hate, of racism, of prejudice.

When they arrived, it was a concentration camp.

He had them in the fields picking, cotton in many areas.

He didn't feed them, he malnourished them.

And when they all arrived, they confiscated their passport

so they couldn't leave.

Good

So a congressman named Leo Ryan visited the jungle, right

on November 17th to see if people were held beyond their will.

And, reluctantly some people came forward and agreed to leave the day of.

They were terrified.

Some of the survivors stated they were terrified to say they wanted

to leave the day before fearing they wouldn't last the night.

So the morning of a few of them said, we'll go, we wanna leave.

And Jim Jones ordered the assassination of Congressman Ryan killed several

people on the airstrip, and then ordered the deaths of 900 people by saying to

them they were going to drink, cyanide laced flavor aid, to their deaths.

And the autopsy report showed that 90% of the people who died were actually

killed by injection of cyanide.

Bullets are crossbows to the back or the chest, cuz they wouldn't take it.

That is so tragic.

That's where the phrase Dallas comes, don't drink the Kool-aid for years.

I've hated the phrase because it's really, the front page and not

the backstory of what take place.

Jonestown was the single loss of us civilian lives before nine 11.

Oh my goodness.

I did not

realize that man.

yeah.

it, it was.

and the backstory is this though.

How did almost a thousand people get to Jonestown?

Families following families,

Right.

mothers following grandmothers, children following parents.

Into the jungles.

And that's where the premise and the synopsis of the book comes in terms

of trying to be aware of how fatal family history can be the children.

About a third of the victims of Jonestown were children,

Oh my

and these children were radiant jewels, for us

to showcase to the world.

And on that day, almost 45 years ago this year, purpose and legacy and

doctors and attorneys and presidents and scientists and history makers, future

moms and dads died in that jungle.

And although I use biblical and personal stories of giants we face and be a

giant killer, it's not a religious read.

It's a radical read.

It reminds us not to stay into relationships with anyone where our

Fifth Amendment rights are violated.

the people of Jonestowns, they built this infrastructure into this jungle on soil

that would later become their graveyards.

Ugh, that's awful.

That is so awful.

And so you said 27 members of your family was in that and

tragically lost their life.

Absolutely.

Seven of them close cousins.

I had a grandma who I loved to, I saw her the night before she left for

Jonestown packing, and I was grabbing hold to her waist, asking her not

to leave, and never saw her again.

Never saw her again.

That is a tragedy.

did your mom think about, potentially going with, the grandmother?

Or is that, was she just Nope, I'm not, this is not my deal.

This is a powerful story.

My mom's gift saved my life.

She began to have prophetic dreams that Jim Jones was going

to kill our family in a jungle.

telling our family members this dream.

And eventually Jim Jones put a hit out on me and her and said that

he would kill her if she didn't stop saying what she was saying.

And she actually came off the road, hid me in a suburb called Daley City because she

had a also a vision that, there would be a kidnapping plot for some of the children.

And sure enough, my seven cousins, my uncle came home from work, he was a

butcher at Petron's in San Francisco.

He came home, his house was ransacked, his wife was gone, his

kids were gone, never saw them again.

And so her gift literally spared my life.

I should have been one of the kids kidnapped into Johnstown.

Oh my gosh.

And this all happened in the US though.

These, the, they, these were kidnappings that were made in the US

and then taken, that's, that is mine.

And he put, and he actually did put out a threat to.

to, hurt or kill you and your mom.

he actually did that.

Oh

yes.

That's

and it was, he, he really paralyzed people with fear.

I remember, as a young kid going into the people's temple and there was

an eerie dark feeling in the air.

And a young boy couldn't be more than five or six, had, broken a

young girl's leg while roughhousing.

And his punishment was three rounds with an eight or nine year old boy

who pounded him into unconsciousness.

gracious day.

And, in between rounds, the eight or nine year old boy would

go and get a drink from Jim Jones.

While this little five year old boy sat slumped over into another corner.

And I remember watching that and reflecting back on how he used the fear

of that to intimidate people, to tell them that no matter who you are and

what you do, if you misbehave, what happened to him will happen to you.

Oh

And that's what family history tends to do.

It tends to intimidate us with things that have happened prior to that,

so that if you lost a father to a massive heart attack at the age of

50, around 50, you become frightened

that perhaps the same thing will happen to you.

Yeah.

Jones, stole families and dreamers who wanted a, better life than.

the racism and the segregation and the dysfunction of their family and

communities and through their, through his false dream for their lives.

He told them that it was better to run away from problems than face them.

But I share with people that they ask me all the time, How did you

stay in the church after losing people in a religious cult?

Well, number one, Jim Jones was not a part of the church of Jesus Christ.

He was a cult.

He was a socialist.

He stomped on the Bible.

He told people that he was their Messiah.

And secondly, what happened in Jonestown happens in America every single day.

We run from problems.

We fail.

We make mistakes.

We stay in comfort zones.

We ignore red flags.

We stay in abusive relationships.

We fight bouts of depression.

We die prematurely taking our dreams to the grave.

But we have an opportunity to rewrite.

As we talked earlier, the chapters in our life.

We may not be able to change our family history, but we can restore it.

And when God restores something, he never repeats.

The old, he makes it better than new.

Better than new.

Ah, I love that.

I love that man.

That is so powerful.

I am still just processing everything that you just said.

when you talked about your family history and you said, know, I grew up without

a dad and you confronted your dad.

I was like, oh man, that was intense.

this was before you just said that story where you're watching as a boy,

you're watching this cult operate from the inside and you've gone

through all this cult experience.

Your mother's had these visions.

She's kind of saved both of you from this Jim Jones character who is crazy.

and then you're growing up without a dad.

you had a lot of different choices to make at that time.

You saw this violence and fear and threats and intimidation.

And I think you could have easily gone that way.

you were, you didn't have a dad.

You could have easily gone a different way, but what kind of pushed you

into moving into a healthy direction that really allowed you to grow

and thrive and that's coming out of a very difficult childhood.

you know, when it first happened, I remember like yesterday

again, the heart and nose, no time.

Right?

And how we observe things occurs by five or six.

I was eight years old when it happened, and I remember going into.

the living room at night watching.

when you see Star Wars, you see the wording from Star

Wars kind of go up the screen.

I remember watching the names of family members, the names of my cousins pass

on that spring, and I remember at a very young age saying to them that I

wanted to live the life that was stolen from them, that they never had to live.

I wanted to find a way to fulfill the dreams all in one if I could, that

they would never be able to pursue.

And so as a young age, I think that drove me.

That's why, at 16 I was a, I was, an advice columnist.

I'm not sure how the advice was.

If you're listening, you got it.

it.

didn't work, I apologize, but But I remember having that desire to help

young people at a very young age after seeing my young cousins lose their life.

I got involved in youth ministry early because of that.

Again, still making my own mistakes in life, going to church on a

Sunday, but in the club on Saturday, still struggling with identity and

who I was going to be as a man.

And I remember, growing up and all this with my mom there, and she tried

to, God bless her heart to do the best that she could without a father.

And when I got married, my, my wife would say things like, man,

it must have been really tough not having a mother and father.

I said, no, I was fine.

I had my mother, she was my mother and my father.

And, she took care of it all.

And I was in this sort of denial, so to speak.

I remember Dallas being in a men's conference years down the road, and

my pastor stops by and he kisses me on the cheek and he says, I'm kissing

you on the cheek because you've never experienced the kiss of a father.

You never experienced a father telling you that he loves you.

And I want you to know I love you.

And I just started crying uncontrollably.

And I grabbed tissue and I would wipe, and the tears would continue to flow.

And it was in that season I realized that I had diminished or minimized some

things that had taken place in my life.

I'd minimize the impact of an absent father in my life.

And too often we minimize the effects of tragedy and trauma.

that's impacted us.

And we say things like, well, that was then, this is now.

Or as I mentioned earlier, well it is what it is.

Hmm.

We say things like, well, whatever doesn't

kill you makes you stronger.

I don't wanna talk about that anymore.

But then why does it hurt?

Yeah.

Why do we still get angry or triggered or reminded

of some of those things?

And I've learned over the course of time that unless we confront the giants

in our past, generational giants pass down to us, we will tolerate toxic

behavior in relationships today and teach our kids to do the same thing.

And so it really took a while, just really growing up.

Out of that, the season I'm in now, I can honestly tell you I just came into

this season probably four years ago.

That's amazing.

So I would say what you're, what you've said is very impactful because

one of the things when you're talking about, it's almost like people.

Would choose to just want to be done with whatever the issue was.

Like if they had a crummy childhood or if they've gone through a

messy divorce or a death of a loved one or a loss of something.

It's the tragedy.

Just a tragedy.

It's some people may respond instead of, trying to kill that giant and

just, and be okay with saying, I'm gonna deal with this now.

I'm going to, I'm gonna open up, I'm gonna open up the box and deal with it.

They would just rather say, I want it to be over cuz it's hard enough

to have gone through it and I'm just gonna push that down and I'm

not gonna deal with that right now.

And then it just starts coming out and leaking out in all these

other areas and it takes, I think a

It's a coping

Yeah, it's a coping mechanism.

But the problem is that it's just coping.

It's not actually dealing with it.

I, there's Willie Nelson had this song I heard, I guess a couple years ago

and it was one of his newer songs.

I, didn't even know he was still writing songs, but it said it was a title.

It said, it's not something you get over, it's something you get through.

And I was like, oh, that is good stuff.

And so it's like when you, when you're talking about that, I, you

know, it, that resonated with me.

Cuz you have to get through stuff sometimes.

It's not just something you just push away you, and then I think it takes a

lot of courage to say, I'm gonna face this giant and I'm gonna open it up

and it's gonna be ugly and messy and I'm gonna get through it versus that

I'm gonna suppress it, put it down.

And I think especially, I think men would struggle, I think sometimes

struggle with that more because there's this identity that they have

to be like, Rambo or whatever the latest action figure is, that, that

they have to be that image , Mr.

Tuff, they can't, express some things that they just dealt

with that was crummy, you know?

So.

Yes.

And, and, and in Jonestown there was a sign that hung over Jim Jones's

chair and the bodies that were had died that, that day before when they

arrived, they saw this sign that said, those who do not remember the

pass are condemned to repeat it.

And so I've learned in my own life that time doesn't heal, but God heals.

And what was broken by men are by your perpetrator.

or by the person who rejected you, because we can pass

rejection to the next generation.

We can pass abandonment that we've experienced to the next generation.

But everything broken by people can be restored by Jesus.

And, I just get encouraged when I talk about that because, man, regardless

of the past, our family history today is still being written by us.

That's great.

Just think of that credit story I shared with you earlier.

Regardless of that credit score, I was still writing my credit.

Yes.

And our family history is still being written by us.

history is the study of change over time.

Change is something different than what occurred in the past,

and it comes suddenly when opposites push against each other.

And when we push against our history to be the best in our

generation, we become history makers.

We have the ability to change the things that have transpired and have been passed

down and passed down for generations.

A friend of mine was estranged from his adult children and he was

really angry at the estrangement.

And I shared with him, his wife had shared with me.

My husband doesn't know how to apologize.

He has a British background and he never heard his father telling me, loved him

or say, I'm sorry, a day in his life.

And I looked at her in clear with clear, transparent eyes, with tears in my eyes,

and I said to her, isn't it awesome that we get to change that in our generation?

That's very encouraging.

And that's why I wrote the book, be a John Killer to

Defy the family history that keeps repeating itself in generations.

I love that.

I love that.

And I love your thoughts on you.

You made a, a quote before we got on the show about not depriving your kids of the

blueprint for accomplishing their dreams.

and it was like, I'm gonna be the parent that's going to be engaged,

that's going to show them the way.

And I just thought that was awesome.

I thought that was an awesome idea.

And it goes with what you're saying now.

It's like we're creating our future.

we're creating new histories.

and, I just think that's super encouraging.

and I think that, it's, our duty, it's our responsibility.

One of my favorite quotes is Mitch Alba, who says, love is how we

stay alive even after we're gone.

I like that.

So our kids have been observing how to process things

in life since age five or six.

I wrote Be a Giant Killer because I realized that my kids were carrying.

some things from their childhood into adulthood.

How did I know that?

Because there were some things that I carried

Right?

that I needed to hear from parents and caregivers that I had not

heard in my childhood, and as a 45 year old man struggled with it today.

And so my wife and I have just determined that we're gonna leave

a legacy of love no matter what.

No matter how far our kids may run, no matter, what they might do.

We want, we never want them to question how extravagant and present

Hmm.

love is for them.

When they put me in the ground, Dallas, I never want them to question how much

they reprised, cherished, chased and loved because watch this fathers chase.

They're sons and daughters

I love that.

I love that.

That's awesome.

that's a good word.

Very good word.

And I would say too, if you are leading a team, if you're leading an organization,

if you have people that are under your care, no matter if it's a for-profit

business, if it's a Fortune 500 company or if it's a nonprofit or ministry, you have

the opportunity to engage with people.

we're not saying you need to be a counselor to everyone

and a trained therapist.

That's not what we're saying.

But I am saying this, that you have no idea many times what a pat on the

back or a compliment, or reward or some type of just recognition would

do for other people, because they may have not heard that or been a

part of that, or may be wounded by that somewhere in their whole life.

And that someone stepping in the gap, even if it's not their parent, to believe

in them, to see their potential, to see where they could go and what they

could do, could make all the difference.

And it's not that you have to go back and solve their past, but it

is something that you can do to help them, write a new and better future.

And I think that's a challenge for every leader and every

coach of, and every parent.

I think your words will resonate with a lot of people on that.

And thank you for sharing that.

I so appreciate you just for saying that because I was thinking to

myself now as you were talking, man of our impact and influence in the workplace.

I was at a men's conference some years ago and they challenged us to

write our life story and tell it to our wives, and they said, you get

to determine how transparent you be.

And they ended by saying, tell your wife your story, because

your story is her story.

She's been living it.

and if I can leave something for the business leaders today, it's this.

People relive the stories we don't tell.

And so as you make a decision to tell your story, you give permission people

permission to share their story.

Because whatever we want to do in this industry, we need three things.

We need influence, we need authority, and we need permission.

And what we do with our influence, what people know about us, what we do with

our authority, what people demand from us determines the permission that we get.

How do we earn influence?

We earn influence in our industry by helping people being a resource.

Being selfless, we learn our gaining influence by building

trust and giving ourselves away, expecting nothing in return.

I started this entire organization just by doing free talks, giving free advice

out, becoming an expert by giving myself away, expecting nothing in return.

My, my honorarium that I charge now is, anywhere between three

to $5,000 for a keynote, but it started free 20 something years ago.

Wow.

And even today, there's certain sessions I'll do absolutely free

to give myself away to individuals that may not have the budget to bring me in,

because I understand that unexpected generosity catches people off guard.

And when people trust you, , they will give you permission to do your

finest work, to do awesome work so that an industry can stand in all of

you to be so remarkable that people remark about you to other individuals.

And so at our company, we teach our people to serve their way into the

hearts of our provider members, to take upon that mantle and that duty

to constantly retell the story that they're living, that they're editing

and rewriting for the next generation.

Oh, that's so good.

That is so good.

If you are listening today and you missed what he just said, the unexpected g

generosity is such a powerful concept and I think I would love to challenge

our listeners to ask themselves, when is the last time that you just

gave yourself away for something?

Just gave yourself away.

It's just, it's a free gift, a free act of generosity.

I love how you say that.

you charge for the value you provide in sharing your story and all this and

speaking and I know that your calendar stays booked up because you do such

a good job and you're so well spoken.

But I also love how you say, but there's sometimes that I just need to give

myself away and I'll do it at no cost.

And I think that's so important, not just.

For how we help others.

And I think that is a, I think whenever something is unexpected,

I think there's so much power.

There's so much power in that because it isn't expected.

And so the, it's not like one plus one equals two.

It's one plus one equals a hundred.

It's just amazing the impact that has on people.

And they're that much more appreciative in there.

They're much more to pass it on and, and do that as well.

But I think too, it's the value that it gives to you and the

value that it gives to you inside.

And as you're writing and rewriting and adding your story, how powerful

that is to us individually.

When we do give that away, there's that peace and there's

that joy that comes from that.

We just can't buy, there's not amount of money that you can ascribe to

that same feeling of peace and joy that you get when you're able to

give some unexpected generosity.

So if you haven.

ThinkMoveThrive.

and last 10% listeners, please go out there and do something.

make it a point this next week or this next month to do

something unexpected for somebody.

Do something unexpected.

If you do that, reach out to me and ping me on LinkedIn.

Let us know.

Let us know how that goes.

We'd love to hear about it.

All right, so Ed, we've talked about your book.

We've talked about your amazing history.

We've just talked about everything that you're, you've gone through and how you

have come and triumphed in terms of rewriting that story and that new history.

I just love, I love how you've worded that, put that together today, and

how you engage so intentionally with your kids and your family,

with your work, your team at work.

I just, all that is fantastic.

tell people how they can, get a, and get in touch with you, how they can touch

base with you and what you're doing today.

love, love to connect with your listeners on LinkedIn.

That's, a great place business for us, that we have the ability to

impact people who have been in our training sessions or people that

we've, touched through podcasts.

I'm on all social media channels though.

You can look up Ed Norwood on LinkedIn, on Instagram as Champions unleashed.

Facebook is Ed Norwood, but.

LinkedIn is where we primarily connect with business leaders.

don't just follow me there, connect with me.

I'd love to grow with you, and you'll see some, a link there where you can actually,

access the book, be a giant killer, how to overcome your everyday Goliath as well.

I love that.

We'll put that in the, show notes as well, a link to your LinkedIn.

And, one last question.

We always ask this to every person, every guest on the last 10%, who is someone that

you would like to hear on the last 10%.

definitely, author and pastor Tory Roberts.

He's an author of businessman.

he also, pastors of church as well, but he has a tremendous gift in

impacting the lives of business men and women of how to transform their

organization through influence.

I've learned.

Through his leadership principles.

just I heard him once and I just learned so much about how imperative

it is that we be legacy builders.

And so I'd love to see, Tory come, I'm gonna connect you guys through

a text message or you guys can talk, but I'd love to see him on this show.

I think he'd be a huge benefit to your listeners.

Awesome.

Well, thank you.

Thank you for that.

We will definitely reach out and, get Mr.

Tory Roberts in that sounds like an awesome epic episode, So thank you

again, ed, for being on the last 10%.

We just appreciate your spirit.

We appreciate your service.

Thank you for sharing and giving unexpected generosity to those around you.

And just a great deal of wisdom to all of us at the last 10%.

So thank you for being on the show today.

Thank you.