right. Yeah. Yeah. Me too.
Anywhere but here, right now.
Matt.
Well, hello. Hello, hello.
Welcome to another edition.
A rollicking edition of What's Good with John and Joyce.
I'm John Cadillac Seville, from iHeart Radio and John Seville
Entertainment with my co-host Logan.
We are rollicking.
You know, I don't know why I came up with that, but, you like that?
You like that.
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with us to uplift and enrich the lives of our listeners and viewers.
But speaking of rollicking,
we have an amazing gentleman who rocked all the way down from his
abode to get to our studios here in Branford, Connecticut.
Gentlemen, I had the pleasure of meeting, you know, several years ago.
He's written some books.
He's been an attorney.
He's just been an absolute inspiration to so many.
And on Facebook, he has his, column called the Friday Fix
that I look forward to every single Friday.
His wisdom that he imparts.
But he's a real gentleman and just become a really good friend.
And welcome to our studio is here in Bradford, Connecticut.
Carl Fix. And I'm so happy to meet you.
You know, it's your article.
It's it on Facebook also it's on Facebook and it's on LinkedIn.
Okay. Every Friday.
And this is what I call season six.
Year.
And I've posted continuously every Friday
the Friday fix Friday fix a perfect name.
Yeah. Last name.
But I tell I'm just really I've always been intrigued
and really just,
inspired by, by your career, you know, where you've come back in the day.
I love the way you talk about your family.
I love the way you Revere your dad, your mom and dad.
And that's really appealed to me in so many ways.
Tell us a little bit about you, Carl. Sure.
I, I grew up in central Connecticut, in Berlin, and,
I went to college in Providence, and I decided at that time to go to law school.
It was, a bit of a default career.
I was an engineering major for two months.
For two months?
There's got to be a story behind that.
Yeah.
It was a rollicking, right, right, rollicking flavor.
I like that.
It was pretty much everything.
Returned to Connecticut
and practiced for more than 30 years.
And, I enjoyed the profession tremendously.
I met some fantastic people and wonderful clients.
But then I pivoted in 2021 for many reasons.
One of them was I did not think that I was fully
in service to the community and others.
I did a lot of corporate law, which is basically moving
money from one side of the ledger to the other.
And while it was satisfying at some point it became unsatisfying.
So I decided to make that pivot.
Actually it's described in that book the difference on on my thought process,
which I highly recommend.
The difference please by that book.
My pivot came about.
Yeah. 2021.
Coming up on five. Wow.
And you've had a satisfying run since then right.
I mean has it been something that you've really
looking back saying wow, I did the right thing.
No regrets.
No regrets at all.
Not a rearview mirror.
I have very few, if any regrets.
And I don't regret, leaving the practice of law aside from one major thing.
And that's the IT department at my old law firm, because now I have to figure out,
Yeah.
Same here.
I'm not the most technical person in the world at all.
Having a, skilled IT department on speed dial.
Right, right.
Yeah.
No longer.
Now, what do you mainly focus on nowadays?
You're talking about being a service to other people.
You've been quite a consultant, a coach in so many ways, to so many
while leadership training and,
rising executives that I help, one on one.
But I also do one too many.
It could be one to many. Yeah.
Focusing a lot on emotional intelligence,
which is something that I wish I knew more about back in the.
Me too.
Maybe two.
Yeah. Same topic.
We're sorely lacking in it, and,
I'm trying to do what I can to raise awareness about that. Yep.
2 million. You're right. Joyce. Go ahead.
Well, when you meet with, someone, let's say the head of a company,
and they need your guidance with something.
Do you work on emotional intelligence with them?
Yes. And that that's been a training session that I've done
with a number of companies where, you know, between 6 and 10,
it could be C-suite executives, or it could be middle management.
And we'll have, and it's it's fairly elastic.
I can do a two hour training session, a four hour.
I can elongate it to six hours.
And you take a really deep dive in the emotional intelligence.
I mean the recent study
shows that only 36% of us
are able to understand or recognize our emotions,
and we all act in response to those.
And if you can't recognize them and
things can get out of control.
So so you're telling them, explaining like how to recognize that
within yourself and others that you're having a meeting with.
Right.
Basically four principles self-awareness, self-management,
social awareness and relationship management.
So the self-awareness and the social awareness is
basically are basically how you feel.
And then self-management and relationship
management is how you react to the way you feel.
So you can you can tease those things out and,
have really robust and wonderful training sessions and get people talking.
And, it's it's very rewarding.
That's important to get people talking.
It's not outlined in the book. The difference?
No. That is not that.
Emotional intelligence is something that, I've been working on after.
Oh, okay.
The different stripe.
Yeah. Because Carl has to.
Yeah.
But we we we got together for a business summit that Carl
put together a couple years ago over in Avon, Connecticut.
And it was just great.
A bunch of philanthropist business people getting together and just sharing
breakfast and lunch together, taking a walk up a mountain, out
and out and out in the beautiful nature of of Avon, Connecticut.
And we really developed friendships about that.
And just we'd have free conversations and just share wisdom with each other
and learn from each other.
And I really, really like that and appreciated that so much.
Wonderful to have you.
And that was that was a wonderful day.
I've done other since the outcomes and the,
I don't do it for the feedback.
I do it just to make a difference in somebody's life.
Life? Excuse me.
And, it's just a wonderful experience.
You know, we'll we'll start, for instance.
Joyce.
I'll say to everybody, just as an icebreaker of sorts.
Write down every emotion you felt in the last 24 hours.
And people kind of look at me.
But then they do and then we talk about it.
And if you took an inventory of every emotion you had in the last
24 hours, it would be quite the roller coaster. Yes.
You know, quite the roller coaster.
I remember one training session that nobody wanted to go first.
So I said I'll go first.
I said I felt nervous in the last 24 hours.
And they looked quizzically at me and said, why?
And I said, well,
I put my 18 year old daughter on a flight today with Delta Airlines.
So they now have care, custody and control of her,
and I hope they get her to Atlanta safely.
And that made me nervous.
Yeah.
That's a for instance. Wow.
You know you were talking
about emotional intelligence which I think is so important nowadays
because most of us make decisions based on emotion and not pragmatism.
And that's what gets us into so much trouble.
And most of us react rather than respond.
Exactly.
That's also gets us in trouble as well.
So we need to have, you know, like a spiritual, mental, physical
discipline, all of that stuff with the emotional intelligence,
I think is so key, especially immediately under control.
Right. The more you work on it. Right.
And most of us just kind of react right away without thinking.
And that can really get you in trouble, especially in
not just your personal life, but in business.
Very much so.
And in the practice of law, I was, that can be an emotional,
profession.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sure, sure.
And, when I would mentor young lawyers, I would say,
if you want to prepare an email with, some vitriol drafted
and go back to it, because you may have to read that email in front of a judge.
And, if you wouldn't read
what you're about to write to your mother. Yes.
That is such a good point, because think about the times
you've texted people, right? Choice.
And have you ever done that?
Send a text and go, oh, I shouldn't have done that.
Wait, before you send it.
Especially if it's,
kind of a challenging one and you wait 24 hours.
Read it again and you'll probably decide not to send it.
Right. In most cases.
And there's so much, so many other things lost in the text.
There's inflection. There's tone.
Yeah.
There's just human.
Right. Humaneness.
Excuse me.
So texting that's just as dangerous.
Because the thing is,
you don't know where that person's emotion is on the other side at the time.
You know, they could be in a very, down state,
or they just had a fight with their wife or their kids, and they can respond to it
differently than if they were in a different state, a happier state.
So that's why I learned a long time ago.
I leave voice text with everybody because they can hear
the inflection of my voice and and know that I'm saying it in the right way.
Yeah.
And to your point,
you absolutely have no idea what other people have on their plates.
And everybody has something on that respect.
Sure do. Period. Full stop.
God crosses to bear and burdens.
Many of them cannot be seen to the naked eye.
So you need to be mindful about
drawing down on
people because we're all carrying something.
Correct. Yeah. Yeah.
If you peel back the layers and everybody's battling something,
we say all the time, be
kind to everybody, you know, because everybody is battling something.
You wake up every single day and they may look like they have it
all on the outside house, car, family, you know, the picket fence.
But every one of us is battling something you can just pause
and take that deep breath, relax and think about that before you speak.
And you can do that in nanoseconds.
And once you keep doing that. Right.
And yeah, checking in with people, you know.
Yes. Yes.
You're very good at it.
And it's not fox checking.
You're genuinely interested. Yeah.
Last week's Friday,
I got a comment from a friend
and it wasn't ominous, but she said,
I'm paraphrasing this landed for me today because I've been going
through a few things, so that was rather oblique.
I have her cell number I texted her.
Are you okay.
Can I help you.
I just wanted to make sure she was okay.
Based on that public Facebook comment.
See that.
But I feel weepy.
Yes. I mean so much to someone.
You know how much it means to somebody
if you just reach out to him and say, you know, I was just thinking about you.
Yeah.
And for how that can make somebody's day.
Because most of us are so engrossed in our own lives.
And I've learned a long time ago, Carl, if you're having a really tough day,
reach out to somebody else and help them, and you'll forget about yourself.
We're we're just too self-absorbed in so many ways.
And I'm guilty of that at times.
Well, we got to get out of our own way,
realize that we're all here for each other. Yeah.
You know, your your comment is interesting in the difference.
I go into a bit.
My wife had four brothers, one of whom
in 2014 disappeared in the state of Arizona.
To date, has never been found.
Now his father, my my father in law.
He's excuse me, was a rather,
prominent figure in the construction industry.
And when they were still looking for my brother in law, Paul,
so many people came up to me and said,
I want to talk to Angelo, my father in law, but I don't know what to say.
And I would say to them, just reach out and say, hey, I'm thinking about you.
That's it.
You don't have to ask him a question.
It doesn't have to be heavy.
Just let him know you, whoever you are.
You're thinking about him.
Yeah. Is it worth its weight in gold?
So that was my very simple advice.
Many many years.
I bet Matt is now going back
to your law practice because every single lawyer has stories.
You know what.
What was like the most challenging part of it.
Or do you have any kind of antidote to the story that's kind of like humorous or
humorous?
Oh, yeah.
But one thing that that
the practice of why that a lot of people watch legal shows.
Oh, sure.
Everything happens in 59 minutes.
Doesn't work that way.
I once litigated a case that took eight years.
Eight years?
Wow. That is, the litigation can be like an endurance sport.
Yeah.
You're a biker.
I just love it.
And so it kind of fit.
But there were there were humorous events.
I would take a deposition.
My standard question is, what did you do to prepare for today's deposition?
They'd say, oh, I read this, I reviewed this, I spoke to my lawyer.
I had one guy who said, I brush my teeth.
Okay.
Where were you born?
Kind of get some background.
And he says a woman's prison in Texas.
So I remain motionless.
He said you didn't see that one coming?
Times like that.
You know, and even in court, I was in Brooklyn federal court.
Now, federal judges, as we all know, are appointed for life
so they can do pretty much what they want.
And I was trying to move this case
out of Brooklyn and get it into Connecticut.
And the judge takes the bench and he says all right whose attorney fix.
I said that's me, Your Honor.
He said, what's your problem with Brooklyn?
Your Honor, he said, well, apparently
you do you want to take this case from me and move it to Connecticut?
Right.
That's correct.
He said, tell me one good thing about Brooklyn
when you come to Brooklyn, what's a good thing about Brooklyn?
And I said, I get to read the late city final of the New York Post.
Well, that's reason enough to keep the case.
Right. Wow.
And the client called.
How did it go?
Well, it was fun, but I.
Right.
So. Yeah,
like that where you would just you would just get a lot of laughs.
There were also very somber, very serious times.
And I'll give you, for instance, when I was a very young lawyer, I defended
an after a garbage truck
had rolled over to women,
killing one, young woman.
Her leg was amputated on site.
And I will never forget this.
Long as I live.
She was giving a deposition and and the lawyer said.
Do you remember what you said at the scene?
She said, absolutely. And what did you say?
Will the flight surgeon or the flight nurse was holding my hand?
And the fighter says everything will be okay.
And I said, no, my leg is over there.
And I'll never forget that. The clarity,
yeah.
And to think, to say that, to say that the the awareness.
That critical.
Yeah. Yeah.
And, that was a big part of that case getting settled
because this woman would have been.
Oh, fantastic. Yes. Yes.
So there were I have dozens of those anecdotes from mom,
plus a practice.
It's, it's a very interesting and a rewarding career.
So you think you made a difference?
I'd like. I'd like to think so.
And I've said this on other podcasts and in training sessions.
You know, I dealt with a lot of multi-million dollar stuff.
Yeah. Helped other folks.
There was a friend of mine who got into a dust up
over the closing of his house, and I stepped in and we resolved that.
He wrote, you know, he and his wife, he said, girl, thank you for believing in us.
That was it. Wow.
And you probably.
And I bet you saved it, right?
Not a lot of words.
Yeah.
Thank you for believing in us. Right.
Because nobody before did. Yeah.
So, yeah, that was very, very, very fun.
Yeah.
So can you tell me
I want to talk to you about forgiveness because you brought that up.
And forgiveness has really changed my life.
So can you share something about
how that related to your life.
Like whether it was when
I, I don't know, I almost want to say.
Was there a pivotal moment in your life, whether
when you left being an attorney to go on
to do something else, the forgiveness has something to do with that?
No forgiveness.
And I, I write about that in the wisdom collection.
Is that available now?
The wisdom collection. Okay.
That is another anthology.
I've got a chapter in there, and it's called Here to Forgive.
And, my another one of my brother in law was was involved
in the corruption scandal involving Governor Rowland 20 plus years ago.
Right.
So, without giving away everything that's in that book, suffice it
to say that I was a little salty about what went down
and, how he seemingly had everything and squandered it.
And I was driving to federal court,
New Haven, to sit through his sentencing after he pled guilty.
And despite my personal feelings, I asked my brother in law,
what can I do to help him?
And at the time, there was a 91 year old rabbi
in New Britain who was a rock star.
And he said, would you give the rabbi a ride to court?
I said, sure.
So my wife and I picked up the rabbi.
And in that plus or -one hour journey
turned me around, gave me a I did a 180 listening to him.
He said multiple times he, meaning my brother in law,
needs our forgiveness and needs our love.
And the rabbi survived the night of broken glass in 1938.
He was a survivor.
Wow. And, he said he was.
He was a survivor.
And because he survived, he was put on this earth to be God's helper.
And he basically said, if you, are dismissive
and not forgiving you, you then think less of people.
That that you are above them and they are beneath you.
But everybody was the same.
So he opted to live a life of,
embracing anyone and everyone despite whatever flaws they may have.
So in the course of that ride, I thought, well, this guy survived.
What the Nazis did to him, and he forgave them.
And I could, in fact, forgive my brother,
which I did in the course of that. Right.
And then that set up, us going forward
and my wife and her two daughters would visit him in prison on Saturdays.
And that led to a more, robust relationship.
And I quote Mandela in that book, and
resentment is like drinking poison, and, you know, it's
going to impact the other guy. Yes.
Wasn't that so liberating for you? Yes.
Yes. So I didn't
the rabbi helped me not drink the poison, basically. Yes.
So that is what my chapter in the wisdom collection is about.
It's about forgiveness.
And believe me, when I got in that car and picked up the rabbi,
I was not in a forgiving.
You needed that, Rabbi I needed.
Yes. Yeah.
Amen. Live to 100. And.
Really? Wow.
Forgave everybody. Maybe.
Maybe that's just how we live.
Longer and better.
He preached four or had the Connecticut Department
of Veterans Affairs, and I quote an official with that department
who said the rabbi would reach in
and squeeze your heart.
Wow, what a visual, Yes.
Was your heart was remarkable. And,
you know, I point out in the in the chapter that I was in the presence we,
my wife and I of greatness, not the Hollywood glitterati.
Yeah. And the rest of that, I'm talking.
Oskar Schindler and Martin Luther King.
I mean, this rabbi was a spectacular man,
and he, he changed things for me.
Yeah.
And I'll tell you, Carl,
I've become a lot more forgiving as my faith is deepened,
because I think about all the stupid stuff I do every day.
And God forgives me
each and every day.
He never turns his back on me.
I think about that.
I hold this unforgiveness for years, for years, and I manifest in the body.
It eats the inside of you out.
And then when I let go, you know, it was,
it was like, I can't even put into words.
Yeah.
You know, what I felt like and how it affected the other person.
And I didn't even have to tell them.
I didn't even have to say I forgive you.
I just showed up
and everything just worked out and probably like with you.
Yeah. It was a it was a clarifying moment.
It really was.
But I go into a little more detail. Yeah.
That's the sermon substance that I had the good fortune.
I was blessed to,
spend time with this incredible man. Wow.
Tell us about.
You are really, really big into fitness as well as Joyce and I are.
And you love the bike.
So pulling on the emotional intelligence thread,
you've got the self-awareness and self-management.
I'm firmly in the camp of if you can't manage yourself, you can't manage others.
And part of that self-management, I think, is just maintaining
your mental, your emotional and your physical well-being.
So I walk the walk and talk to talk,
and I invent a lot of physical fitness.
Because that's what keeps me resourceful.
I talk about the wheels service.
If you think you're in the center of this wheel and the spokes are
family, friends, community colleagues, clients.
What a great metaphor for what you do for physical fitness I love it.
And, church groups elder care.
And if you're not showing up in vertical, the whole real wobbles.
So, And I have fun with it.
You know, I turned 62 last October,
so I went off road 62 miles an hour. Wow.
And then every mile was.
I thought about a year in my life.
And I was thinking on the write down.
Miles 20 through 30 were.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Yeah.
You know, so every every mile represented, a year in my life.
Yeah.
God willing, when I turned 63 in October,
I'll go out and ride 63 miles straight.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just.
That's what I do.
And you get in that zone, don't you?
Where you can feel like you can go forever.
Once you hit that certain groove.
So it not only makes me feel good and helps me show up,
but I get to create moments.
With my daughters, I have a 25 year old daughter
and 21 year old daughter and, well, what are their names?
Oldest is Leah. The youngest is Sarah.
And your bride, Carol.
I've.
I've run road races with Leah,
and as I run, I think I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
I get to run this race with my daughter.
My youngest is at Auburn University.
She's coming home this weekend.
She texted me this morning and said, hey,
you want to go skiing on Saturday?
Yeah.
If I if I'm not in shape, I can't do that.
So these are just more connections.
But I also, I'm modeling certain behavior and I'm not going.
Well. Yes. Intentionally. I'm going to correct myself.
I'm modeling this behavior for them, saying, hey, this is work for me.
So I invite you to be curious.
I love that phrase.
I invite you to be curious.
That's that is that's great wisdom there.
Well I like it because it's not preachy.
My training sessions I will lay out what worked for me
in a very high stress career
and I, I give them what worked for me.
And I say if I invite you to be curious you can try one.
You can try them all.
You can reject one, reject them all.
This is what worked for me.
See if it works for you.
Because I it's not there's no staples.
Easy button.
I'm not saying if you do this, all your problems will disappear.
All I know is to to work the 70 hour weeks.
I needed the physical.
Absolutely.
In the morning because then nobody can take it from.
The day gets in the way.
I do the same thing first thing in the morning.
You know, do my 20 minutes of meditation in motion.
Tai chi every single morning after I do my prayer for work.
And it just sets the tone for the whole day
because God gave us an amazing temple
to steward.
And we need to take care of this joy.
So I know you do the same thing.
Well, I was just invited to write an article.
The Connecticut Bar Association has a magazine, CQ lawyer,
and I was just invited to write an article on the term wellness.
Just the general topic of attorney wellness.
No specific. Right?
I just submitted the article, and it's basically about the asset.
Your body is your asset.
And what I talk about is
newly minted lawyers are bombarded with, offers all around finance,
disability insurance, long term care insurance, life
insurance for own case, mutual funds, all talking about
Nobody talks about the asset that produces
the money that you need to protect from creditors.
Well, creditors in real life are anxiety,
depression and addiction and all.
So why don't we protect the asset to keep
those creditors at bay and then everything else will follow.
Oh, I love that.
What an illustration really is.
That's pretty much what I'm talking about.
And interestingly, lawyers have what's known as the rules of professional
conduct.
If you have a license, you are duty bound to follow them.
One of the first rules is that a lawyer
must represent clients competently.
And competence is defined as the mental,
emotional and physical ability to do the work.
So what I'm saying is right there in that room
confidence talks about the mental emotional physical well-being is wellness.
Yeah. So we're actually duty bound.
And a lot of people just gloss over that, right.
But that applies to really. Yeah it does.
Pilots are taken out of service
if they if they have a certain number of hours, commercial truck drivers,
surgeons, all of that, you think about those professions.
Those are personality flaws.
They're they're it's risk management. Yes.
And that applies to a lot of professions.
Carl if somebody wants to get in touch with you with
well let's show that book one more time to there is a lot of wisdom here today
because somebody wants to get in touch with you for coaching.
I mean, I've learned so much just sitting with you, but I've had a chance.
The the privilege of calling you a friend and deepening a friendship.
But if somebody wants to get in touch with you for some coaching, small group.
Large group. How do they do that?
Right on my website, Carl.
And we'll have that link and we'll have that link.
Yeah. Or email me Carl and Carl.
Can you make it me real simple.
But thank you so much for all you contribute to the world, Carl.
So much for having me.
You've been a great guest and it has.
And thank you so much for tuning in to what's good.
But John and Joyce 30 minutes every week of hopefully inspirational,
uplifting and and feel free to subscribe on YouTube.
It's free and share it with everybody you know who needs
a 30 minute fix of what's good.
Till next time. God bless.
Now. Hey, I heard you got engaged.
Congratulations.
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And that's where we come in.
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