Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change

What does real growth look like when leaders reinvent themselves, rebuild systems, and rediscover purpose? This special Shift & Thrive compilation brings together unforgettable stories and lessons from some of the year’s most thoughtful leaders. Listen to our guests share insights about transforming AI’s evolution into human-like teammates and the profound clarity that comes from surviving a life-threatening disaster. Across technology, mindset, communication, and personal resilience, each guest offers a different lens on what it means to lead with intention. These stories remind us that progress isn’t just about scaling companies or refining strategy; it’s about identity, patience, preparation, and meaningful service.

Takeaways:
  • Design for human experience, not just efficiency. As AI becomes more agentic, users need support in shifting from command-based tools to true collaboration with technology.
  • Presence is a leadership skill. Balancing ambition with mindfulness prevents burnout and allows leaders to show up more effectively for their teams and families. A grounded leader makes better long-term decisions.
  • Habits and endurance fuel sustainable growth. Whether training for triathlons or scaling a business, progress comes from consistent behaviors and the willingness to push through discomfort. 
  • Identity drives behavior change. Seeing yourself differently, as a CEO, an athlete, or a healthier person, creates the conditions for new choices. When identity shifts, habits follow naturally.
  • Strong systems prevent overwhelm. Like sports teams that rehearse repeatedly, businesses need documentation, practice, and structure so challenges stay manageable.
  • Purpose elevates leadership. When leaders orient their work toward service rather than self-preservation, they build deeper meaning and stronger impact. 

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This show is sponsored by Magnetude Consulting, bringing you the thinking-Power of a Growth Consultancy and the Getting-It-Done Power of a full-service B2B Marketing Agency. 
Learn more at: https://www.magnetudeconsulting.com 

Creators and Guests

Host
Natalie Nathanson
Guest
AJ Meyer
Guest
Bill Flynn
Guest
John Graham
Guest
Matt Darrow
Guest
Nathan Whittacre
Guest
Pete Jones
Guest
Pete Martin
Producer
Rebecca Leberman
Guest
Rich Walker

What is Shift & Thrive: CEO Insights on Driving Change?

In today’s business world change is the only constant, and mastering transformation is the ultimate key to success. Welcome to Shift & Thrive!

Each week, Host Natalie Nathanson will bring you conversations with CEOs, who delve into how they successfully drove critical change in their organization.

This show is sponsored by Magnetude Consulting, bringing you the thinking power of a Growth Consultancy and the Getting-It-Done Power of a full-service B2B Marketing Agency.

This is your host here, Natalie Nathanson. As I look back on this year of episodes on the podcast, there were so many amazing conversations and insightful moments, and a few in particular that really stood out, not just for what was shared in the moment, but really for how they've stuck with me and with others in the months since.

These include lessons, ideas, stories that have really sparked reflection, and in some cases, real change in thinking long after the mic was turned off. So in this compilation episode, we've pulled together a few of these moments to share with you. You'll hear guests reflect on things like the mindset shift that fueled their business transformation.

We explored parallels between personal growth and company growth, some practical ideas for how to successfully rally a team towards a business transformation. and some insights around how to think differently in the current world that we're in, being redefined by ai. And then to close out the episode, we have something truly special and riveting.

A guest chairs an amazing and honest story of his near death experience that really changed how he leads and how he lives his life. That's a clip that I've played for so many people in my life throughout the year, and excited to draw some new attention to it For all of you. So these are just a few of the clips from the many standout conversations we had in 2025.

I hope they spark something for you. I hope they drive you towards the full episodes, and I hope that you go back and listen to the many amazing episodes we aired throughout the year. Thank you for being a listener. And with that, let's dive in.

Matt Darrow: how do you structure a system that has to operate like a human? How do you make it behave like an expert, right? These are the things that are really different. Um, so what our AI team was able to bring to the table is, well, how do you actually model human expertise? And then that's differentiation sort of number one.

And number two is, well, how do you create a user experience, uh, that actually makes it feel like. You're working with your best team member who is just doing the work for you, uh, versus sort of slogging your way through a CRM application or a project management application, or name your other SaaS tool that, uh, a lot of users sort of, uh, fear going into every day to just sort of be accountable for their manager.

So that's what we see. The big changes are is the, the, the ability to sort of create the expertise needed to do the work, uh, coupled with a very, very different user experience that is more akin to working with your best team

member.

Natalie: Yeah, yeah. I love that. And that's really interesting to think about Yeah. and of what it feels like to work with your best team member, even when they're technology.

Do you have any examples of what that looks like to kind of help bring it to life?

Matt Darrow: Well, the big thing that we focused on is, um, the things that we're accustomed to doing in SaaS with, uh, I'll give you simple examples, um, folders, buttons, links, save, cancel, back, forward, all these typical actions that you normally sort of go through as a day to day user in a SaaS application, uh, that's not really relevant when the mode of interaction is either text, speech, or video.

Um, I think that's big difference number one, uh, is that when you're working with an agentic AI solution, You shouldn't be feeling like you're operating on a computer. You should feel like you're having a proactive discussion with a team member that's bringing things to your plate for review. Um, the second thing that leads into that, which is very different is, SaaS applications don't really do the work for you.

they give you a place to organize your life so you can do the work. Now, the difference with agentic AI is you expect your best teammate to always be proactive, to come to you, Natalie, and say, Hey, I'm This is what I did for you today. Here are the four things that I've actually created that have never existed before that just need your review and sign off.

So you can go and use those. So that level of sort of proactivity, putting the work for review on your plate that is actually completed work, and then giving you a very different experience that's either video speech or tech space, that's, what's going to give you a very, very fundamental, different experience where the best thing about a digital team member is they never go on vacation.

They never sleep. And they're around 24 seven, which is a. Which is this, sort of this amazing infinite potential.

Natalie: Yeah. Yeah. I was just talking to a colleague recently, just about the 24 7 component, and that's just, you know, one of many benefits, but, um, it's just, it can be mind boggling to think of all of them at once.

So kind of piece by piece, I feel like we each need to kind of wrap our heads around what, what the differences are and how we need to be working, how we'll continue to be pushing ourselves to work differently.

Matt Darrow: Well, it's a, it's a lure. It's a new learning muscle as well, because we've all been so accustomed to using email, using Google search, using Salesforce in

our day to day lives,

And what we find when we onboard new users to an agentic experience, there are a little bit of deer in the headlights at first, and it's, and it's a little bit of a, Uh, I think maybe false pretense to think that everybody is already sort of used to using services like ChatGPT or Anthropx Cloud or even Gemini from Google.

Um, a lot of folks don't. So, so they sort of sit there and AI is producing things for them. And they go, well, that's not quite right. Or I'd like it in this different format, but because there's no SAS workflow and buttons, they, they sort of freeze on how they engage. And, and you talk to them and you're like, well, how would you tell a human to revise the work, or how would you give feedback to the human?

And they go, Oh, I can do that now. You're like, totally, that's how that works. And I think there's this big learning curve that we're pulling people through the knothole through, and that's a big part of the product design, is how do you remove those barriers when folks are really experiencing this type of software for the very, very first time.

And it's, uh, it's quite intimidating for them, or it can be.

Pete Martin: Like don't grab the steering wheel so tight. Um, you know, I think like there's, you know, it's good to be ambitious and it's good to, um, have passion and excitement. Um, but I think if you just are only focused on going forward, um, it's hard to appreciate the present.

And so I, you know, I think for me early in my career, maybe. I took things too seriously, but I think almost had like an intertwining of like who I was as a person and who I was in my job and career. Um, and you know, I, I, you know, as you have a child and like as you start to have, um. You know, memorable experiences in your life, like being able to be present, um, I think is something that, that I, um, could have done a better job at.

So I'm, you know, I, you know, kind of leave the job at the door. Uh, it's important to be passionate, um, but just like not grabbing the steering wheel too tight, um, is I think something that I'm, I'm really focused on trying to be better about.

GMT20250612-143010_Recording_separate1: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think, uh, for me, being more present is a, a focus and I think a lifelong, uh. Uh, lifelong work in progress.

Pete Martin: Totally. Exactly.

Nathan Whittacre: Uh, I was overweight and having a lot of lower back pain and went to the doctor and he gave me two options. Um, he said you can probably have your back fused

In the

next couple of years and live with pain your entire life. or you can lose a bunch of weight and start exercising and live a healthier lifestyle. And I said, I'll, I'll choose door B and went to physical therapy for a while. Got on a good, uh, uh, eating program.

I don't call it a diet because I feel like it's just was a lifestyle change for me. And lost a bunch of weight. I had a friend that

was doing

triathlons and he said, you know, it's a, it's a great way to get fit. Um, so I started, uh, biking and, and running with him. Um, it was very slow to begin with because I, needed to lose a bunch of weight to be able to, uh, improve

speed, but it's just

grown over time.

Uh, but it was a good friend that kind of drive me along and saw that I, I needed something. And, uh, it's just been a great community to belong to, uh, you know, Just learning from a lot of people that are very interested in, in both mental and physical fitness. And that's why I like endurance sports

is because

it requires both.

It's not just something that you can do physically. You have to, uh, you have to do it mentally also. And

there's

just so many great benefits from it.

Natalie: Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I, uh, I've been a runner for many years, but, uh, more recently did my first sprint triathlon actually encouraged by a colleague of mine. Uh, and it was such a cool experience and I know exactly what you're saying as far as Um, kind of the, the mental game you need to play with yourself, uh, as well as like the physical training.

Um, and I think there's a lot of parallels to, uh, like running a business, right? Like that's an endurance sport in and of itself with minus the physical component.

Nathan Whittacre: It very much is. And, you know, it's, having the habit and developing habits for, you know, running

or biking

or whatever, you know, athletic endeavor you have, I think are, it's a similar type of habits that you create inside your business of being a great business leader. So it's taught me a lot about being a better, um, better leader inside my company, uh, to learn, you know, just overcoming challenges.

Developing those habits to, you know, get up at my alarm went off at 4 30 this morning and I was on my bike and, uh, didn't want to get up as I don't ever do in the morning to do that in the cold and dark, but did it and over, you know, overcame that mental block and, and I do it every morning.

And so

it sets me up right for the day.

Natalie: Yup. Yup. It always feels good on the other side of that. You never do a workout and then regret having done it. You do regret hitting the alarm, uh, the snooze button.

Nathan Whittacre: Yes.

Natalie: Yeah. Um, so Nathan, I'm curious to hear, before we wrap up the conversation, you know, knowing everything you've learned over the years, is there any advice you would have given to young Nathan in college or shortly after as you were just starting your, uh, your career?

Nathan Whittacre: I

think it's very similar advice to what

my dad

gave me. And sometimes I remember it and sometimes I don't, he was a business owner when I was young and, uh, you know, he said things take. often twice as long and cost twice

as much

as what you expect and often I have ignored that. Um, but as I've learned to take that advice well, um, you know, it's helped me be more successful uh, you know, just assuming things don't go as fast as what we want them to and just be patient.

Uh, it is, you know, as they often say, it's a marathon, not a, not a, not a sprint running a business. It takes a long time. for things to happen, uh, in the market and in business for people to change. Um, and you know, you, you have to endure a lot. So I think that's, that's the biggest thing to remind myself, you know,

just be

patient and the process will work itself out with, with a lot of patience. Um, I, I still have to remind myself of that often. It's not something that comes easily to me as a patient. So, uh, that's, that's probably the biggest thing.

Natalie: Yeah, yeah, I like that. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna remember that one as well. I think I could use some of

that.

GMT20250213-175325_Recording_640x360: Um,

Rich Walker: What if I acted like I was the hired CEO by the shareholders instead of being the shareholder who also runs the company?

And by asking that question, I started to think about how would I act? How would I make decisions differently? And over about a week or two, I started thinking differently about it and started seeing, well, wait a minute. I would treat that situation different. I would make that decision differently. So then I decided, you know what, it's time for me to ditch the persona, the identity of founder.

And treat myself like I am the hired CEO and be accountable to the shareholders and the board of directors, even though I'm on it, be accountable to that team as a CEO. And it has led to actually a massive transformation for me because I have made some really, really hard decisions in the past two months that I was not willing to make otherwise.

But when I looked at it from the hired CEO's perspective, I started to analyze what products make us money, which ones don't, which ones are profitable, which ones aren't. If we want to double growth, what do we have to do to make

that happen?

How many sales do we need of each product? What do we need the team to look like?

Where do we need to spend our money? And that has caused us to make some pretty big shifts in our organization and our product focus and really in our sales focus. And I attribute it all to that one thought of what if I actually do become a fortune 500 CEO, how would I act?

Natalie Nathanson: That's, uh, it's tremendous. I find it so fascinating, and I'm sure our listeners will as well. Um, I'm curious, you talked a little bit about, you know, where it came from, like how that notion originated, but what did it look like to get started? Like if me or one of our listeners wanted to go down that path, how would you suggest we start?

Rich Walker: Alright, I'm gonna give you a different example altogether, because I also have spent from 2012 until, uh, 2023, I spent with severe back pain, disability back pain.

In fact, if you had met me in July of 23, I was walking with a walker. And in October of

23, I discovered

cold immersion bath cold plunging, which allowed me to heal that inflammation so much

that I

could go back to the gym and not get injured, which then led me to lifting weights again and helped me see that I could get stronger finally.

And

because I love that, I decided I really want to pursue that, that sport of bodybuilding.

So the thing I

asked myself was, how do I become a bodybuilder? And the answer is. You become a bodybuilder first, and then you do the behaviors.

So

it's the, it's the idea that you take on the identity first and the behaviors will follow because you start to think that way.

I've been in my business for 23 years. I haven't worked under a CEO for a very, very long time. I can't model somebody that was a mentor or something

like that

in the same way that had I been VP and, you know, some other level for 10 years and then advanced into that role. So I really, truly think it is.

You, you say to yourself,

I'm taking

on this identity and then you become it.

AJ Meyer: But you do need an operating system and, and you need to align everyone to it. I think that

the

way that I have come to think about this in the last year or so is that. There's a certain volume of problems that you can keep up with. You know, they're small enough to be solvable.

They're in the future enough that you have time, and if you can make them be a stream of small problems, you can tweak the plan and fix the problems and keep up with it. Where you get stuck

is when

the plan. You know, the whole thing needs to go in the garbage and we need to go right back

to the

drawing board.

And I've been through that a few times. You know, at some point the volume of problems, they overwhelm you. Uh, and so, you know, that visibility, that operating

system should

be designed to never let that happen. And I think where those, you know, sizes come into play, the 2050 whatever,

y you

know, you need processes in place, um, for the information flow to have you deliver small problems to you on a regular basis, as opposed big problems to you on a quarterly basis.

And you you know, I really wanna be adjusting the plan of record every single week, not every quarter. And the way that we do that is by adding, you know, a hierarchical construction

so that

there's a roadmap at

the executive

level, but the individual teams have roadmaps and you know, and then now even, we're starting to want teams below that to have roadmaps with processes in place.

And it's not, um. Not easy to get people to agree to invest the effort that it takes to do this. You know, they say, I've got problems to solve, I've got deadlines and you want me to spend a bunch of time, you know, aligning with my team on what steps we're gonna take

and how

it's gonna work. That feels like programmatics and it feels like, like, um, uh, you know, some people call it a waste of time, but honestly it's, it's eating your vegetables.

Um, and I think I.

I. The metaphor of a, of a startup company or any company being like

a professional sports

team, which came, comes right from Patty McCort, you know, is a great one. And sports teams. One thing I always, always bugged me about business is that there's no rehearsal. There's no rehearsal, there's no practice.

They don't train, train and then execute. They just execute all

the time.

There's

no,

maybe

there's, like, you go to an afternoon of training or you go through a webinar or something, but that's not how a sports team works. A sports team where they rehearse

the same

play over and over and over again, and then during the game they've got the teamwork down.

And so if you don't have a list of plays and your playbook that you're doing over and over and over again, you're not gonna get

any teamwork.

And so it's really important to, to,

make space for, for writing

down the plays.

Pete Jones: it,

it was a real

light

bulb moment I think our, our mission

is

to improve business through improve communication. and.

And we

We were doing it in, in various ways. You know, making things better, making people more emotionally engaged with products, making comms clearer through visual interaction.

But this was an opportunity to do it on a

whole different scale.

And I think, you know,

know,

every single.

there's so

many use

campaigns

that were racing through my head at the time, you know, whether you're trying to sell something and, and somebody can't see it. they order it and it's not quite the color they expected, and then they send it back and all the costs.

You know, my background, you know, was in, I did a lot of TNM studies where you're looking for efficiency gains and I, I was just thinking it's so inefficient. Every word costs money

and

we're using so many words to describe things.

and often

it's a guessing game and somebody's paying for all of that.

Whereas if you could see, you could get to the point so much quicker, more efficiently, and do it in a more engaging way.

You know?

So I think we're all customers of call centers and when I was imagining some of the calls that,

you know,

I'd had lately, it made perfect

sense. I had one call where I was booking a vacation and.

I talked to this nice lady in the Philippines. She was absolutely

brilliant.

I understood her perfectly and I was booking a trip for a party of us to go to Nice in the south of France, and it was amazing. We were gonna go and watch the rugby. It was all systems go,

and I

I talked to her

and she

did it, and I couldn't get it on the website.

And I was delighted. 20 minutes of my life. I was really pleased to spend. And then when I got the booking,

going on holiday to

Leeds.

And it

didn't occur to me that maybe she wouldn't understand my accent. So again, the ability to see the booking at the time, I'd have been able to go, no, no, no, not Leeds.

Niece. Niece in France. So it would've been fun. But then you have to ring back, spend another 20 minutes, cost them money, cost you time, and this is happening millions and millions of times a day. So yeah, I think we knew where, where our. Heart would be for the next, you know, decade ahead and, um, you know, it's, it's bearing out in everything we do.

Natalie Nathanson: Yeah, I think we all have those kind of, uh, stories and experiences of our own, uh, contact center experiences that leaves much to be desired. Um, and I think, you know, eight years later, we, we still feel that today. So I think there's tremendous opportunity. Ahead. I'm curious to hear, you know, what did it take to get you on, on that path?

Can you talk about the product, the team strategically, you know, what did you do to, to move you, uh, towards this transformation?

Pete Jones: So, um, yeah, a, a great question. We, we had to find the right people to lead because it was a very different mindset. I think that the biggest,

the

biggest challenge, and it's a challenge I always wanted to solve, but we never

did

up until this point, was having a system that

could adapt to any industry, product or service

without the

need for a single line of code.

And that. Required immense thought.

So

before we put finger to keyboard, before we did anything regarding product, we spent the first, um, eight months just looking at what we'd done before refining it, taking those learnings, understanding what they gave us that Deep knowledge gave us, that would allow us to build a system that was.

Totally not, not highly, totally configurable and all the other good stuff that goes with it, mobile first, all of that and the design of the system was imperative because it's like creative. I've run marketing agencies and, and the, and the thing about good thinking is you never come up against a dead end you can think well, and you build a solid foundation.

You can build anything on it. If the foundation's got a problem, everything you do thereafter, you're just waiting for

the cracks,

you're waiting for the issues. So that, that solid foundation required, um, a, a really different approach, which, which

we

took and different people, we brought a new team in, um, uh, led by the, you know, incredible, um, person from the top.

And I think that was the pivotal change in.

Approach that

gave us something that was replicable and scalable. And we also, um, uh, started partnering with, uh, BPOs who

are

phenomenal in their, their core business model, as well as being a user and, and distributor. They, they work with every type of business on every type of call and campaign type.

They are truly the experts in call centers. So once you get that knowledge behind you, um, you make sure that you don't get the dead ends and you test and, and constantly test and check your thinking and the foundation. And I, and I have to

say it's stood

up remarkably well. And I think that, that, that was the biggest, um, swing shift in, in the way that we did things.

Bill Flynn: I have an idea of what I want it to look like when we're, when we're out of this mess. And so let's discuss and debate and decide what that looks like. And then I want each of you to draw a roadmap from where you are now to, to there, and what you need from me and from us to help you get there.

Um, so they did that, um, and it worked. You know, wonderfully, uh, it was for those who know the world, it was sort of like a, an EOS kind of model that I put together. You know, I sort of said, here's what you know, here's what I'd like to do. Here's the process I want to go through. Um, and, uh, the numbers are great.

If you look at my LinkedIn profile, it has on there, all the stats were great, but the best part was two of the people I worked with sort of said the same thing to me when I left to go do the next startup about 18 months later or so. Um, and they said, I just want you to know that thing. You made me do that roadmap.

Hated it. It was really, really hard, but I'm so glad you made me do it because now I know how to do it right. It was sort of teaching people how to fish. Um, and, uh, so, so that went, so that sort of put a thing in my, the back of my brain, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing now, uh, is that I, I wanted to do that again.

You know, all the other stuff was great. You know, we, we. We increased customer service, we doubled the size of the company. You know, I didn't lose any of the 60 employees who were, who were getting yelled at. Um, did all sorts of fun things with them. So, so learned a ton of stuff. Um, but I wanted to have that experience again with those two guys, right?

Where, where I can help someone really, you know, teach them how to do stuff. So I went on, I went on and did four more startups. These were, they were all miserable. Uh, none of them, I don't, I don't think any of them is still around or they're certainly not around in the same way that when I was there. Um, but in 2015 I sort of said, do I wanna do an 11 startup or not?

Uh, and I said I would do one, um, but I needed to figure out if I could interview a founder so I could find the right one. And I couldn't really convince myself that I didn't know how to do that. 'cause as you know, all founders are sort of crazy. They have to have this reality distortion field, et cetera.

And, um, and it's much too easy to start a company now than it was when I first started in the nineties.

Um,

so I said, you know, let, what can I do to, to have that experience again? So I went out and looked a bunch of bus business operating systems. I did look at EEO SI looked at, I looked at like, I think five or six different ways to do it, and I settled on something called Scaling Up, which I became certified in.

Um, I'm no longer in scaling up, but I still use a lot of the principles there.

John Graham: I'm wondering, I'm running out of money and a

friend of mine says,

look, you do have this gift of gab, John.

Uh, you're good on your feet.

You

know, that cruise ships. Cruise ships pay a lot of money for people like you to tell stories, uh, to tell, to talk about things like foreign policy, for example, you're a UN diplomat. So get a job on a cruise ship. Oh, okay. I get a job, the very first effort, I get

a

job, uh, lecturing on a cruise

ship going from Vancouver

to the Far East and back.

I,

I get to take my daughter, then 13, Mallory, with me. So Mallory and I journey out to Vancouver, uh, and get on board this cruise ship. My job is to, excuse me, is to, um, is to tell, is to give two lectures. And the whole trip about, oh, they didn't care what I talked about, foreign policy or whatever, NATO, whatever.

Um, because I'd also learned, uh, that a cruise ship is mostly older people and that a good part of my job was to look handsome in my tuxedo and wealth little old widows around the dance floor. I did. But okay, fine. I wondered why they wanted me to take my tuxedo, but there it was. So I'm lecturing on the cruise ship and, dancing little old widows around the dance floor.

three days off the coast of Alaska, the ship catches fire. and, ultimately we'll sink nine days later, but they tried to put the fire out

and they fail

and they give us all kinds of messages that there's nothing to worry about. But we're supposed to come up to the ship's promenade deck so they can air the ship out, get rid of all the smoke.

So Mallory and I, my daughter, are completely disarmed, and we go up to the promenade deck, and it's pretty clear the fire has not been put out. It's getting blacker and thicker, and it's cold.

This is

October in the Gulf of Alaska, freezing out there. So we, we can't go into the ship's lounge or the restaurant because they're full of smoke too.

So

people are ripping, uh,

curtains off the windows, or taking up tablecloths, trying to stay warm, wrapping themselves in tablecloths. And we're all out on the promenade deck and looking kind of worried

because the smoke continues to get blacker and thicker. Clearly the fire's been put out. The ship's captain has been lying to us the whole time about the fire's been put out.

So this is like two o'clock in the morning now, three o'clock in the morning. Everyone's getting a little scared. So we're taking, we're told to go to the stern of the ship. The fantail, uh, where free drinks will be served, etc. And they give us more reassuring words, but it's not very reassuring. A helicopter flies over and drops CO2 canisters, and guys in firefighting suits are disappearing into the ship, and the smoke is now curling up the sides of the ship, not just through the stairwells.

Uh, and, uh, uh, it's looking pretty bad. People are getting scared. So the captain then says, gives the order. He says, okay, I'm afraid we've lost the fight with the fire. I want you to all go to your lifeboat station. So Mallory and I go up to lifeboat number two on the port bow. And,

uh, uh, and look

back, uh, and I, the ship looks awfully, the little lifeboat looks like it's going to be very crowded, and there are like 75 people waiting for it to get in the lifeboat, um, but the sign on the side of the lifeboat says it's made for 45, so that's not good, um, and then worse, uh, the fire finally burns through the last of the, of the retaining walls and windows in the, In the lounge and the restaurant, and a huge pillar of flame about 20 feet high erupts from the center of the ship, right?

This huge tower of flame erupts in the center of the ship, and now people of course are really scared, and they're backing away from the flames. fall into the Gulf of Alaska in October, um, because you'll die of hypothermia in five minutes.

And so, I mean, people have seen Titanic, well that's the situation we were in. So anyway, he gives the order to abandon ship so we all get into these

lifeboats

and, and, uh, luckily, uh, everybody gets into a lifeboat and nobody is killed. Um, even though the ship's crew seems incompetent in terms of lowering the boats, we all get into lifeboats and we're all, um. Begin to drift away from the Princeton Dam, the name of the ship, um, and, uh, wait for the dawn, and at dawn, a big oil tanker arrives, answering the S.

O. S., and helicopters arrive, but we're 140 miles from the coast, so it takes a while for helicopters to arrive, and when they arrive, they start lowering, um, a metal chair on the end of a chain, kind of like, uh, you might, you see, Maybe at a county fair, you know, kids go whirling around in a metal chair.

Anyway, so they lower a chair, and one at a time, we put one person into that chair, they get hoisted up into the helicopter, and when the helicopter has maybe seven or eight people, it flies off to the deck of the tanker, drops the seven or eight people, comes back for more, but it's a very slow process. only that, but what is calm, when the ship, when they were put into life

force,

a typhoon is bearing down, Typhoon Victor is, is bearing down on us, so the weather is getting worse and worse and worse, so it's a fight against time, and I watched my daughter Mallory lift it off, um, uh, about noon. And by the way, you might wonder, people might wonder, how we knew who goes first.

Well, the only guidance we had was from all the grade B movies we'd seen, which is, of course, women and children first. So, we put the women and the children. There weren't many children. This was a cruise ship, so old folks, but the women and the old folks. So, about noon, there's only about 20 or so men left, and lifeboat number two, everyone else has been taken to, uh, safety on the, on the, on the, uh, uh, the, the freighter, the, actually it was an oil tanker. And so we're left there, the helicopter makes one more trip, two more trips, until there's only about eight of us left, but then the helicopter can't fly anymore,

because

we're in the middle now of a typhoon, and it's deadly for a helicopter to try to, hover that close over a lifeboat in the middle of a typhoon.

So the helicopters are gone for good. And our only chance, either of us in lifeboat number two, is for a coast guard ship, a cutter, uh, to, uh, to find us. And now the storm has hit full on and the visibility is down to around 100 yards, 100 meters. Um, and we're all dying of hypothermia, and it's a one in a million shot, so it seems, for the helicopters to, to find us in, sorry, for the Coast Guard cutters to find us, uh, in, in most

conditions.

but it's the only chance we have, uh, and I figure, knowing My experience in

mountaineering,

that we have four or five hours to live.

I know what hypothermia is like. You start getting really cold, but then, then you get warm again. Then you go to sleep and you don't wake up. That's what hypothermia, that's how you die from hypothermia. So we're in the middle of that sequence. And, and if a coast guard cutter doesn't come soon, we're going to be dead.

And they'll just find our bodies in that lifeboat if we're not thrown out on a storm. The key thing though, is the light. The Coast Guard Cutter is looking for us in shallow daylight, uh, and with poor visibility. And the odds are poor enough that it'll find us. But if it gets dark, we have no flares, we have no lights, uh, we have no mirrors, we have no way to

signal the.

Coast Guard Cutter, we have no radios.

Um, so if it gets dark, the odds are being found by that Cutter disappear to zero. So now it's about a half an hour until dark,

And

I, I realized then that, hmm, I've escaped a violent death a dozen times in my life up to that point, uh, and, and every time I've walked away from it,

but now,

now it looks like I'm going to die, it looks like my luck has run out,

That

doesn't seem right to me, I mean, so I want to check in, I'm not a religious person, right, but I figure I know nothing else to do but to

try to

GMT20250312-190158_Recording_640x360: pray

John Graham: Whatever prayer is, but I, I want to talk to God.

I want to talk to the guy upstairs. So I, I, I, I, I try to pray and I start by saying, Hey, wait a minute. I know, I know, my early life was pretty damn shallow, but then I got into the United Nations, and I almost got those people out from being hostages in Iran, and I've done a lot of good work at the UN, and now I'm being wiped out.

I mean, I went to a Jesuit high school, I knew about order in the universe, right?

I mean, there's an order in the

universe. I mean, we're snowflakes of order, so the whole universe is ordered, but there's no order in wiping me out now, because now I'm a good guy. I'm doing the kind of stuff that I thought you, God, wanted me to do.

I'm a good guy, and now you're killing me, and it makes no sense whatsoever. So my prayer turns into this angry bleat. I get really mad at God for wiping me out, and it didn't make any sense at all, um, until I hear a voice. The other seven guys in that lifeboat don't hear a thing,

of

course, but I hear a voice like it's a loudspeaker surrounding me. And this voice, maybe it was my own adult brain, maybe it was

the wind.

maybe it was God, to this day I

don't know, but

I heard

this voice.

And it said, basically, excuse the language, stop bullshitting me. That's what it said. It said, look, you got, you got your lecture, you did some good at the United Nations, great.

And, and,

but now you got worried about money and you panicked. And now you're lecturing on cruise ships and, and dancing widows around the dance floor. And if you get out of this, it's such a sweet life, you're going to lecture on another. Uh, and your ideals, your ideals of service, the ideals that led you to take those risks with the Cubans and the Iranian hostages, they're going to disappear.

You got to get serious about your ideals. You have to devote your life to these ideals or you're going to die and you might as well die because the next 50 years aren't going to be worth anything. Make a choice. Basically, God said, Pierce will get off the pot. I was, I, I, I, My ego was deflated. I, I was dying.

I knew I had only a short time to live. Uh, and, and, and, so I just turned my face into that storm

And I

said, yes. Okay, it's a deal. And I know this sounds like that grade B movie, but in that instant, in that instant of submission, this Coast Guard cutter, the Boutwell,

comes crashing

through this violent storm.

It was so right on, it would have cut us in two at the lookout and not finally seen us. And so we're all rescued. And I never looked back on that promise. I came back to New York. I joined the Giraffe Project, which, as I said, was started by this wonderful woman whom I soon married, named Ann Medlock, and, uh, and the rest of my life has been devoted to fulfilling that

promise.

Of trying to be as much service as I can, and, and by, by talking about things I know something about, like risk taking, courage, um, and I never look back. So, you know, that's, that's a story I, I tell a lot, um, because it's a good story, but it, it also, it's a story of, um, of what's important, you know? What's important wasn't my physical risk taking, wasn't important, what's important certainly wasn't making money on cruise ships.

What's important was living a life. But had real meaning that I knew was real meaning. I had a taste of that at the United Nations, the things that I did. And there was more than just the Cuba caper. I call it lots of things.

And it was important. That's what was important.