228. Drunk at His Desk with Dan Flanagan

232. The Patterns Running Your Life With Dr. Kevin Mays

You're not failing because of lack of skill or effort. You're failing because of patterns you picked up before you were old enough to choose them. Dr. Kevin Mays, leadership coach and author of Lead Yourself First, built a career helping executives see that the behaviors driving their success are often the exact same ones quietly sabotaging what they're trying to build. What You'll Learn * Why childhood patterns like people-pleasing and humor as a deflection tool show up in the boardroom decades later * How to shift from being run by unconscious programming to making intentional choices from a place of presence * The difference between geographic disruption and internal disruption, and why the latter is the harder and more powerful path * How to reprogram your subconscious using 'I am' statements rather than 'I would like' statements * Why comfort is the true enemy of growth, and what to do about it when you're not at rock bottom * What it really means to step into the void with no plan B and why that clarity can change everything About the Guest: Dr. Kevin Mays is a leadership coach, speaker, and author based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Through his company, Upgrade Your Leadership, he works with executives and founders to uncover the unconscious patterns holding them back and develop the self-awareness needed to lead at a higher level. His book, Lead Yourself First, recently made the Amazon best-seller list. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 — Cold open and show introduction 01:25 — Welcome and breathing exercise before the call 03:36 — Kevin's upbringing in Michigan: the car company culture and what it programmed 05:22 — Birth order, family patterns, and the youngest child's drive for attention 08:11 — How Kevin began studying self-awareness and what opened that door 09:12 — The motorcycle trip: riding to the Pacific Coast until the bike broke down 12:50 — Aeronautical engineering, near-miss in the airplane, and choosing a different road 15:48 — Identity falling away piece by piece and the moment of real surrender 19:22 — How to strip away constraint without hitting bottom first 22:48 — Quitting his job, moving to Michigan, and committing with no plan B 27:06 — Overcoming early programming: affirmations, rewiring neural pathways, and the piano analogy 31:48 — Releasing constraint vs. replacing it: Kevin pushes back on 'brainwashing' 34:37 — Music, Rumi, and how Kevin finds presence and energy 35:18 — Lori's five key takeaways from the conversation 38:12 — Closing Connect with Dr. Kevin Mays: * Website: https://upgradeyourleadership.com/ * Book: Lead Yourself First (available on Amazon) * Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-kevin-mays/ * Guest Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maysleadership * Kevin's hype song: Friday I'm In Love by The Cure [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGgMZpGYiy8&list=RDmGgMZpGYiy8&start_radio=1] About the Show: Fine Is a 4-Letter Word is the show for leaders who are tired of pretending everything is okay. Host Lori Saitz brings on guests who get honest about what it really takes to lead with empathy, vulnerability, gratitude, and courage. New episodes every week. Subscribe so you never miss an episode, and if this conversation hit home, leave a review. It helps more leaders find the show.

231. Promises You Make To Yourself With Scott Lackey

Scott Lackey grew up as a free-range kid roaming the woods and building forts, convinced he had all the time in the world. Then three questions from three people in the span of two weeks turned everything upside down. What followed was a winding path through the military, a failed invention, a Ponzi scheme, and a long list of promises he kept breaking to himself — until one sleepless night during Covid changed the trajectory of his life. In this episode of Fine Is a 4-Letter Word, host Lori Saitz sits down with Scott to unpack the stories behind his upcoming book, including why crossing the finish line is never the actual victory, how military service wired him differently than the civilian world could handle, and why the Ironman he completed wasn't really about endurance at all. Scott shares the moment he realized broken promises to himself were the root of his unrest, and why learning to listen to your inner voice, whether you call it God, instinct, or something else entirely, changes how you move through every challenge. Key Topics Covered: 1. How Scott's free-range upbringing shaped his sense of adventure and created the blind spots that nearly derailed his early adult life 2. The two-week period where three questions from a coach, a teacher, and his father forced him to think about the future for the first time 3. How an Army commercial became the clearest sense of direction he had ever felt 4. Serving with the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, and why four years of military service were irreplaceable 5. The Wire Dog invention he built in the desert, the $10,000 Ponzi scheme that ended the dream, and what those failures actually taught him 6. Why Scott believes the gifts are always in the pain, and how that principle shaped his leadership philosophy 7. The danger of taking advice from people who have nothing at stake in your decision 8. How broken promises to yourself erode self-trust, and the internal wake-up call that led him to register for the Ironman 9. The practices Scott uses to stay connected to his inner voice, including journaling, fasting, long workouts, and meditation 10. What the Ironman's question 'What are you willing to sacrifice?' ultimately revealed to him If you've ever felt stuck at 'fine' and couldn't put your finger on why, this conversation will hit close to home. GUEST BIO: Scott Lackey Scott Lackey is a US Army veteran, entrepreneur, Ironman athlete, and author whose life story reads like a series of pivot points, each one forced by failure, chance, or a voice he couldn't quite ignore. He grew up in rural America, joined the Army after seeing a TV commercial that spoke to something he couldn't articulate, and served with the 1st Infantry Division across Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. After leaving active duty, Scott pursued an entrepreneurial dream built around an invention he'd prototyped in the desert, only to have it derailed by a Ponzi scheme. What followed was years of building, failing, learning, and ultimately creating something worth sustaining. His upcoming book draws on all of it, examining why failure and pain carry more lasting value than the victories people celebrate, and why the hardest promises to keep are often the ones made in private, to yourself. Scott completed a full Ironman (140.6 miles) after a period of quiet internal reckoning during Covid, a decision he kept to himself for six weeks because he didn't yet trust himself to follow through. He's a husband, father, and dedicated student of what it means to live with integrity to your own inner compass. Connect With Scott: * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottlackey1/ * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thescottlackey/ * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Thescottlackey/ * X: https://x.com/thescottlackey You may find some of the topics in his top 10 most requested keynotes of topical interest. Link on his website: https://scottlackey.com/speaking/ Another area of possible interest is his published short stories: https://scottlackey.com/published-work/ Subscribe to Fine Is a 4-Letter Word wherever you listen to podcasts. Invitation from Lori: This episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit. Smart business leaders know trust is the foundation of every great workplace. And in today’s hybrid and fast-moving work culture, trust isn’t built in quarterly town halls or the occasional Slack message. It’s built through consistent, clear, and HUMAN communication. Companies and leaders TALK about the importance of connection and community. And it’s easy to believe your organization is doing a great job of maintaining an awesome corporate culture. Because you’ve got annual all-hands and open door policies, and “fun" team-building events. But let's be real. Leaders who are serious about building real trust are finding better ways to strengthen culture, create connection, and foster community. That's where I come in. Forward thinking companies are hiring me to produce internal/private podcasts. To bring leadership and employees together through authentic stories, real conversations, and meaningful connections. Think of it as your old-school printed company newsletter - reinvented for the modern workforce. I KNOW, what a cool idea, right?! If you run, work for, or know of a company that wants to upgrade communication, facilitate connections, build community, and maintain culture, let's chat. Message me at Lori@ZenRabbit.com. Because when people feel heard, they engage.

230. The Walmart Love Story with Dr. Andrena Phillips

Raised in a household steeped in integrity, respect, and love, Dr. Andrena Phillips credits her upbringing and the strong leadership modeled by her Marine father and telephone company manager mother for shaping her approach to life. Those early foundations became the fuel for a lifetime of showing up authentically, keeping her word, and encouraging others to live by values that go farther than any resumé line or professional accolade. And Dr. Andrena carried all of that — through a nursing career, through raising three kids as a single mom, through earning her doctorate, through building a business that certifies coaches and develops leaders — into every chapter of her life. She met her late husband in Walmart when she walked up to a tall, bald, hazel-eyed stranger and told him his wife was a lucky woman. He followed her to the hair gel aisle and told her he wasn't married. They were together from that moment on. When he got sick, they had what she calls the "hard truth conversations." He was a military man — practical, prepared, purposeful. He told her two things to hold onto: never question the man above, because He knows our beginning and our ending. And run your race, Andrena, whether I'm here or not, because you had purpose from the very beginning. And so she did. She kept showing up. She kept building her business. She kept dancing — because she and Mr. Phillips used to dance together on social media and people loved it, and dancing still brings him close. From the outside, people saw her and thought, she's fine. But what they didn't see was the therapist, the long walks, the internal work happening behind the scenes. She wasn't fine. She was just getting through and those two things are not the same. Three years later, Dr. Andrena is still doing the deep work and letting it show up in how she leads, how she loves, and how she lives. She's still grieving — she'll tell you straight up that grief has no timeline and no rulebook — and she's also still growing, still coaching, still owning her greatness. Hype Song: Affirmations by Flippa T Affirmations (Radio Edit) [https://youtu.be/_ctAxQtkW24?si=hWgJ1zb3E-9zph3L] Resources: Dr. Andrena’s website: https://KeepMovinWithAndrena.com [https://keepmovinwithandrena.com/] LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/andrenaphillips [https://linkedin.com/andrenaphillips] Facebook: https://facebook.com/KeepMovinWithAndrena [https://facebook.com/KeepMovinWithAndrena] Instagram: https://instagram.com/Keep_MovinWithAndrena [https://instagram.com/Keep_MovinWithAndrena] Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndrenaKMovin [https://twitter.com/AndrenaKMovin] Dr. Andrena’s book: https://keepmovinwithandrena.com/walkingagain/ [https://keepmovinwithandrena.com/walkingagain/] Invitation from Lori: This episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit. Smart business leaders know trust is the foundation of every great workplace. And in today’s hybrid and fast-moving work culture, trust isn’t built in quarterly town halls or the occasional Slack message. It’s built through consistent, clear, and HUMAN communication. Companies and leaders TALK about the importance of connection and community. And it’s easy to believe your organization is doing a great job of maintaining an awesome corporate culture. Because you’ve got annual all-hands and open door policies, and “fun" team-building events. But let's be real. Leaders who are serious about building real trust are finding better ways to strengthen culture, create connection, and foster community. That's where I come in. Forward thinking companies are hiring me to produce internal/private podcasts. To bring leadership and employees together through authentic stories, real conversations, and meaningful connections. Think of it as your old-school printed company newsletter - reinvented for the modern workforce. I KNOW, what a cool idea, right?! If you run, work for, or know of a company that wants to upgrade communication, facilitate connections, build community, and maintain culture, let's chat. Message me at Lori@ZenRabbit.com. Because when people feel heard, they engage.

229. Grief, Golf, and Van Life with Kym Coco

From a childhood shaped by the loss of her father and the blending of deeply religious family values, Kym Coco developed an early appreciation for spirituality as a lived sense of connection and empowerment. Her journey began with the awareness that we are spiritual beings within physical bodies, a notion both comforting and inspiring when navigating life’s difficult moments. As Kym grew older, especially after her father’s passing, she felt compelled to internalize and reinterpret her spiritual upbringing, seeking an authentic alignment with her own experiences and needs. This was the foundation she leaned on when her husband Steve became ill. Their rich conversations about meaning and connection to something greater became the foundation of Kym adult life. Before he passed, Steve told her plainly: "Kym, you're gonna need structure when I'm gone." So she bought a van. (He wasn't thrilled about it.) But that van became a beacon of hope and the centerpiece of a solo golf adventure across the western U.S. where Kym played courses from the Oregon coast to Montana to Wyoming. She met wonderful people, played in the rain, dodged lightning, and caught a double rainbow. Meditation, learned in her twenties, became a lifeline, a practice to quiet the chaos, cultivate presence, and forge mind-body-spirit alignment. For Kym, meditation was about learning to witness and gently release the tension, angst, and old energy patterns of childhood and young adulthood. Her willingness to try different modalities, whether a 10-day silent retreat or simply stepping away from her phone, reflects a growth mindset and playful curiosity that infuse her journey. Kym’s not someone who pretends the hard stuff isn't hard. She recognizes that the stubborn patterns of worry or fear don’t dissolve overnight; instead, it starts with small acts of awareness, self-compassion, and the willingness to let go of static definitions of self. She highlights the importance of sampling different “flavors” of transformation, just as one might experiment with various styles of yoga or tea. Because who you are today isn’t fixed, and your resources for change evolve alongside you. Hype Songs: Real Good Feeling by Oh the Larceny [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UapKNvpzrtM] Andy Grammer - Damn It Feels Good To Be Me (Official Video) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDza6TCO-RA&list=RDnDza6TCO-RA&start_radio=1] Resources: * Kym’s website: https://swagtail.com/ [https://swagtail.com/] * LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/swagtailyoga [http://www.linkedin.com/in/swagtailyoga] * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swagtailyoga [https://www.instagram.com/swagtailyoga] * Attention is our greatest resource, and we can train it to focus on what matters most. I'm sharing a free 20minute class to start boosting it now. https://swagtail.com/podcastbonus/ [https://swagtail.com/podcastbonus/] Invitation from Lori: This episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit. Smart business leaders know trust is the foundation of every great workplace. And in today’s hybrid and fast-moving work culture, trust isn’t built in quarterly town halls or the occasional Slack message. It’s built through consistent, clear, and HUMAN communication. Companies and leaders TALK about the importance of connection and community. And it’s easy to believe your organization is doing a great job of maintaining an awesome corporate culture. Because you’ve got annual all-hands and open door policies, and “fun" team-building events. But let's be real. Leaders who are serious about building real trust are finding better ways to strengthen culture, create connection, and foster community. That's where I come in. Forward thinking companies are hiring me to produce internal/private podcasts. To bring leadership and employees together through authentic stories, real conversations, and meaningful connections. Think of it as your old-school printed company newsletter - reinvented for the modern workforce. I KNOW, what a cool idea, right?! If you run, work for, or know of a company that wants to upgrade communication, facilitate connections, build community, and maintain culture, let's chat. Message me at Lori@ZenRabbit dot com. Because when people feel heard, they engage.

228. Drunk at His Desk with Dan Flanagan

What if everything you’ve gone through in life — the chaos, the loss, the addiction, the grief — was the exact preparation you needed to save someone else's life? Dan Flanagan grew up surrounded by strong values of integrity, hard work, and loyalty, anchored in the rhythm of small-town Ohio life and Catholic faith. His childhood had a kind of Norman Rockwell quality to it — a baseball field in the backyard, dirt bikes, snowmobiles, his mom ringing a bell to call the kids in for dinner. But underneath that idyllic surface, something harder was brewing. Dan's dad, his hero, his best coach, was secretly battling severe clinical depression. When Dan was 15, his dad went away to a psychiatric unit an hour from home to undergo treatment and was gone for over a year. His mom held down the fort working 12-hour days. The sudden loss of his parental anchor left Dan and his siblings with too much freedom, few role models, and an onslaught of confusion and pain. He went off the rails. Started drinking, making bad choices, falling in with the wrong crowd. The darkness in his family didn't stop with his dad. His brother Sean also developed mental illness in college and attempted suicide more than once. Dan managed to earn a degree and build a sales career out of sheer determination and grit, the unresolved trauma and anger simmered beneath the surface. He masked his struggles with alcohol and bravado, insisting that everything was “fine,” when he was far from it. The turning point came on May 6th, 2019, when he finally said enough. He enrolled himself in an intensive outpatient program at the Cleveland Clinic, started showing up at the gym at 4:45 AM, and began listening obsessively to Eric Thomas, Tony Robbins, Jocko Willink, and David Goggins — anyone who had built something from nothing and come out the other side. About a year into his sobriety, he was listening to a Jocko podcast and heard about Dr. Daniel Amen, a world-renowned psychiatrist who developed brain SPECT imaging, a tool that shows what's happening in a living brain rather than just guessing. Dan ordered the book “The End of Mental Illness” before he even got home. And sitting on his couch that Saturday, something cracked open. He describes it as a spiritual moment, followed by a question that felt like it came from somewhere bigger than him: what if all of this was the preparation? Motivated to make a difference, Dan leveraged his story and his sister’s expertise to launch the Brain Enrichment Initiative, a peer-to-peer mentoring and mental wellness program for students. Rooted in authenticity and vulnerability, the program aims to help young people break the silence around emotions, teaching them proactive brain health strategies and creating space for real connection. The urgency behind BEI is very real to Dan. He is out there doing the work every single day — for his family, for those kids, and for every version of himself that didn't have someone showing up to say: your brain can get better, and so can you. Hype Song: Dan’s hype song is Zach William’s “Survivor” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R4tdF2s42w [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R4tdF2s42w] Resources: * Dan Flanagan’s website www.bei-neo.org [http://www.bei-neo.org/] * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-flanagan-a4934850/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-flanagan-a4934850/] * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dqflanagan [https://www.facebook.com/dqflanagan] * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dqflan/ [https://www.instagram.com/dqflan/] Invitation from Lori: This episode is sponsored by Zen Rabbit. Smart business leaders know trust is the foundation of every great workplace. And in today’s hybrid and fast-moving work culture, trust isn’t built in quarterly town halls or the occasional Slack message. It’s built through consistent, clear, and HUMAN communication. Companies and leaders TALK about the importance of connection and community. And it’s easy to believe your organization is doing a great job of maintaining an awesome corporate culture. Because you’ve got annual all-hands and open door policies, and “fun" team-building events. But let's be real. Leaders who are serious about building real trust are finding better ways to strengthen culture, create connection, and foster community. That's where I come in. Forward thinking companies are hiring me to produce internal/private podcasts. To bring leadership and employees together through authentic stories, real conversations, and meaningful connections. Think of it as your old-school printed company newsletter - reinvented for the modern workforce. I KNOW, what a cool idea, right?! If you run, work for, or know of a company that wants to upgrade communication, facilitate connections, build community, and maintain culture, let's chat. Message me at Lori@ZenRabbit dot com. Because when people feel heard, they engage.