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Take Charge - The skills that drive Professional Success.
Welcome to my journey. At one point in my career I had it all. I had built and led one of Canada’s prestigious law firms. I was one of the most successful film finance lawyers in the country. I sat on the board of directors of a Hollywood studio and represented companies like Warner Bros, MGM, Sony, Lionsgate. Then in 2014 the bottom fell out. The law firm collapsed. It was devastating to watch what I spent twenty-five years building disappear – just like that. They say overcoming adversity builds character. I was about to find out.
Show Notes
Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
One on One Video Call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
One on One Video Call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting
https://normanbacal.com/
Welcome to my journey. At one point in my career I had it all. I had built and led one of Canada’s prestigious law firms. I was one of the most successful film finance lawyers in the country. I sat on the board of directors of a Hollywood studio and represented companies like Warner Bros, MGM, Sony, Lionsgate. Then in 2014 the bottom fell out. The law firm collapsed. It was devastating to watch what I spent twenty-five years building disappear – just like that. They say overcoming adversity builds character. I was about to find out.
With the help of family, I picked myself up and began my redefinition. I call it rewiring. It began with a suggestion from my wife: to capture my life experience. She handed me a blank notebook and a pen. That was the first step.
Two years later I retired from practice. Three years later, I published that memoir, Breakdown, a Globe and Mail bestseller. I tried my hand at fiction. There was so much to learn, calling on a whole new set of skills that I had to master in my sixties. In October 2019 I published Odell’s Fall, my first novel. My second novel, Ophelia, followed in 2021 as well as my second non-fiction, a teaching manual for young professionals. My rewiring led me to understand that it was time to give back to the profession that so generously rewarded me, to the community in which I flourished. I have always felt a deep commitment to community.
For these reasons I continue to lecture on the university circuit, to consult with firm and professionals seeking career advice. To answer calls and emails from students and young professionals on how to manage their careers. I have never forgotten that I used to be young and inexperienced. That without the helping hands from more senior people along the way, I might never have become me.
Whether through my instructional books or my fiction, let me help you to become a better you. Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter below; browse through excerpts of my books; get in touch with me – do me the honour of helping you with your own career and life decisions.
Welcome to my journey. At one point in my career I had it all. I had built and led one of Canada’s prestigious law firms. I was one of the most successful film finance lawyers in the country. I sat on the board of directors of a Hollywood studio and represented companies like Warner Bros, MGM, Sony, Lionsgate. Then in 2014 the bottom fell out. The law firm collapsed. It was devastating to watch what I spent twenty-five years building disappear – just like that. They say overcoming adversity builds character. I was about to find out.
With the help of family, I picked myself up and began my redefinition. I call it rewiring. It began with a suggestion from my wife: to capture my life experience. She handed me a blank notebook and a pen. That was the first step.
Two years later I retired from practice. Three years later, I published that memoir, Breakdown, a Globe and Mail bestseller. I tried my hand at fiction. There was so much to learn, calling on a whole new set of skills that I had to master in my sixties. In October 2019 I published Odell’s Fall, my first novel. My second novel, Ophelia, followed in 2021 as well as my second non-fiction, a teaching manual for young professionals. My rewiring led me to understand that it was time to give back to the profession that so generously rewarded me, to the community in which I flourished. I have always felt a deep commitment to community.
For these reasons I continue to lecture on the university circuit, to consult with firm and professionals seeking career advice. To answer calls and emails from students and young professionals on how to manage their careers. I have never forgotten that I used to be young and inexperienced. That without the helping hands from more senior people along the way, I might never have become me.
Whether through my instructional books or my fiction, let me help you to become a better you. Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter below; browse through excerpts of my books; get in touch with me – do me the honour of helping you with your own career and life decisions.
One on One Video call W/George
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting
Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meeting
Support the show:
https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US
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Legal Disclaimer / Release of Liability for Podcast:
This content is for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this transmission constitutes legal, financial, or professional advice. I am not your lawyer, financial advisor, or telling you what to do.
This podcast documents historical events, analyzes publicly available information, and explores hypothetical scenarios. Any actions discussed are presented as educational examples of how systems work—not as instructions or recommendations.
You are solely responsible for your own decisions and actions. Any application of information presented here is at your own risk. I assume no liability for consequences of actions you choose to take.
By continuing to listen, you acknowledge that this content is educational commentary, that you’re responsible for researching applicable laws in your jurisdiction, and that you’ll consult appropriate professionals before taking any action that could affect your legal, financial, or personal situation.
Creators and Guests
Host
George Monty
GEORGE MONTY George Monty is a podcaster, interviewer, cultural provocateur, and professional trespasser into forbidden questions. He is the creator and host of TrueLife, an ongoing experiment in conversation conducted somewhere between a philosophical laboratory, a psychedelic séance, and the moment at 3:17 in the morning when you suddenly realize the universe has been fucking with you. The premise is beautifully inconvenient: What if reality is stranger than the story we’ve been given about it? Monty has spent years following that question into the wilderness. Not the wilderness of mountains and rivers, but the stranger wilderness behind the eyes: consciousness, psychedelics, artificial intelligence, mysticism, neuroscience, trauma, addiction, technology, language, mythology, power, culture, death, transformation, and the great unresolved mystery of what the hell a human being actually is. His guests come from wildly different worlds: scientists and mystics, philosophers and psychonauts, artists and technologists, researchers and rebels, therapists and troublemakers, people who have spent decades studying reality and people who have simply stared at it long enough to realize something is wrong with the instruction manual. Monty does not interview people to collect answers. He interviews them to find the questions hiding underneath the answers. That is the rabbit hole. He is interested in the moment certainty begins to fracture. The instant a scientist discovers something their textbook did not prepare them for. The moment a mystic realizes language has become too small. The moment a psychedelic experience rearranges the furniture of the self. The moment artificial intelligence forces us to reconsider what intelligence was in the first place. He is suspicious of finished maps. Suspicious of institutions that confuse authority with truth. Suspicious of anyone who claims to have the universe completely figured out. Especially himself. Monty’s intellectual lineage runs through the beautiful troublemakers: Alan Watts, Terence McKenna, William Blake, Carl Jung, Philip K. Dick, Marshall McLuhan, Rumi, the Upanishads, Joseph Campbell, and the long subterranean tradition of people who looked at consensus reality, raised one eyebrow, and asked: “Is that all you’ve got?” But George Monty is not an academic, guru, therapist, prophet, or self-appointed master of consciousness. He is something considerably more useful: a curious bastard with a microphone. A lifelong student of the strange. A collector of impossible questions. A cartographer of the territory that begins where certainty ends. TrueLife is his laboratory, but the laboratory has no walls. Every conversation becomes another experiment. Every guest another doorway. Every strange idea another match struck in the dark. Sometimes the result is philosophy. Sometimes it is comedy. Sometimes it is terror. Sometimes it is revelation. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, the whole fucking architecture starts to wobble. Because beneath all the conversations, all the books, all the theories, all the psychedelics, all the technology, all the arguments about consciousness and civilization and the future, Monty keeps returning to one primitive human impulse: to look at the mystery without immediately trying to kill it with an explanation. That may be the real rebellion. Not believing everything. Not rejecting everything. But remaining curious enough to walk through the door. TrueLife is the experiment. Conversation is the psychedelic. Curiosity is the contraband. Reality is the rabbit hole. And George Monty is still climbing down.
Guest
Norman Bacal
https://normanbacal.com/ Welcome to my journey. At one point in my career I had it all. I had built and led one of Canada’s prestigious law firms. I was one of the most successful film finance lawyers in the country. I sat on the board of directors of a Hollywood studio and represented companies like Warner Bros, MGM, Sony, Lionsgate. Then in 2014 the bottom fell out. The law firm collapsed. It was devastating to watch what I spent twenty-five years building disappear – just like that. They say overcoming adversity builds character. I was about to find out.
What is TrueLife?
TRUE LIFE is a long-form descent into the questions that become impossible to ignore once the surface of reality starts to crack.
Hosted by George Monty, TrueLife explores consciousness, psychedelics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, language, technology, power, culture, philosophy, spirituality, trauma, addiction, human transformation, and the strange future of being human.
For more than six years, George Monty has built TrueLife as an independent media platform, bringing hundreds of long-form conversations to a growing global audience. The podcast has produced 850+ episodes, reached 22M+ YouTube views, built an audience of 40K+ subscribers and followers, and accumulated 160K+ podcast downloads. TrueLife has also been recognized by Listen Notes among the top 5% of podcasts globally.
These are not simply interviews. They are encounters with people who have gone far enough into a subject to discover that the subject changes them. Scientists meet mystics. Artists meet technologists. Researchers meet rebels. The personal collides with the planetary.
The central question: What happens when we stop treating reality as fixed?
Across hundreds of conversations, TrueLife follows recurring territories — consciousness → perception → language → technology → power → transformation → the future of humanity.
For seekers, rebels, researchers, creators, entrepreneurs, and anyone who suspects the official story is incomplete.