After Peter Pan: Growing Up to Purpose

Motivations from a Guy who Ran 100 Marathons in 100 Days | Croix Sather

• Season 1 • Episode 5

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Episode Overview:
In this episode of the After Peter Pan podcast, host Pat Tenneriello interviews Croix Sather, a motivational speaker and ultra endurance athlete. Croix shares his incredible journey of transformation after surviving a near-fatal accident, emphasizing the importance of mindset and personal growth. He discusses his experiences running a hundred marathons in a hundred days and delivering inspirational speeches, all while encouraging listeners to pursue their goals and live extraordinary lives. The conversation highlights the power of resilience and the profound question: What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

What You'll Learn:

  • Transformation often begins with a life-altering event.
  • Mindset is crucial for personal growth and achieving goals.
  • Setting clear goals increases the likelihood of success.
  • Resilience can be developed through challenging experiences.
  • Helping others is a key aspect of personal fulfillment.
  • The importance of asking profound questions to inspire action.
  • Surviving adversity can lead to a greater purpose in life.
  • Sharing personal stories can motivate and uplift others.
  • The journey of transformation is ongoing and requires commitment.
  • Every individual has the potential to live an extraordinary life.


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Croix Sather (00:02)
The police report said that my body flew 50 feet before it hit the ground. The local hospital couldn't handle my trauma injuries so they sent me down to New York City.

where when my parents got there, the neurosurgeon from where I fractured my skull came out and told my parents, if your son survives the night, he'll be a vegetable for the rest of his life. And so my mom collapses into my dad's big arms and they cry and they pray for a miracle. I was in a coma for four days. And when I come out of that, my parents are both there, they're holding my hand and they're just waiting for me to wake back up.

But through that process, the transformation I got out of it is my parents will regularly tell me, like, you were saved for a reason. what are you going to do with that now? Why are you here? And that always sat with me.

Pat Tenneriello (00:45)
Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the After Peter Pan podcast. I'm your host, Pat Tenneriello and today I sit down with Croix Sather, a carpenter turned motivational speaker, ultra endurance athlete and mindset expert. After surviving a near fatal accident, Croix turned his second chance at life into extraordinary achievements.

He ran a hundred marathons in a hundred days, delivering a hundred inspirational speeches along the way. His passion is helping people crush their goals and live extraordinary lives. In this episode, Croix shares his remarkable transformation and the mindsets that he coaches, starting with a simple but profound question. What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

I'm excited to share this one with you, especially as we kick off the new year full of resolutions and goals. Enjoy the conversation and you can find the video of the interview on YouTube.

Croix Sather (01:45)
Well, I guess what I'm most known for is my run across America. So I ran from California to New York, a marathon a day for a hundred days. So it's a 26 mile marathon every day. But the part a lot of people miss, which is maybe just as important, if not more important, is that every day I also gave an inspiring speech to a different audience. And these audiences were different groups in challenge. So what that means is,

addiction centers, homeless shelters, the United Way, Wounded Warriors, Hope for the Warriors. I spoke in a couple of prisons, a couple of halfway houses. One place I spoke into a prison for kids, which I didn't even know they had these things, and it was locked down as hard as an adult prison, which was kind of crazy. I spoke to one male adult prison where these guys, I mean, these guys were all like monsters in there. The tattoos, you know, like the whole thing. These guys are hardcore.

But I get to go in there and the fun part of that, that's one of my favorite stories is the men's prison. Cause I get in there and there's, I don't know, 40 guys, 50 guys in there or whatever. And they got the guards, they're standing around, they got their guns and they're like around the perimeter and everything. like, so it's kind of intimidating a little bit. And then my buddy who was a, politician, not the, was a state representative there was down in Louisiana. He's down there, but he's watching from like a safe place up away from the visitors. Which I'm like, thanks dude.

Pat Tenneriello (02:53)
Sure.

Yeah, nice guy. He probably has the bodyguard too.

Croix Sather (03:06)
Good buddy, But we get in. Yeah,

he did actually. That was the guard right next to him. And then we're in there and we're talking about it. And I almost ended up down the same path as these guys. I came really, really close to ending up in jail. I got into a lot of trouble as a teen doing stupid stuff, which would have continued to accelerate because of my personality. I want to do all the extreme stuff I possibly can. So had I not gotten into trouble when I did for relatively minor offense, I wasn't minor, but-

relatively speaking, I would have been down a different path. So when I connected with these guys, I told them my story and I picked the biggest guy in the prison. I mean, this guy was a monster. He looked like the guy from the green mile. I mean, it was just, he was like monster. And so I picked him up, I picked on him and I told him to come up to the front and I got into his face and I started chest bumping him, know, chest to chest. And I started pushing him a little bit. And this guy's like three times my size and he's just sort of laughing at first, but I kept pushing him until he got angry. A little bit, just a little bit angry, just a little bit.

I'm pushing on them and we started to get angry and I was like, do you see what just happened? He's like, no, what are you talking about? Then I asked the whole audience, do you see what happens? They're all laughing at him. They're like, no, what's going on? If I go into a gas station and some guy gets out, and I'm just pumping my gas, I'm minding my own business, and some guy gets out of his car and he's had a bad day, he's caught his wife cheating on him or he lost his house or got a cancer diagnosis, something terrible has happened and this guy is just off the rails that day.

And he comes over to me, we make eye contact. He's like, what are you looking at? What are you looking at? If I go and get back into that guy's face and try to be the tough guy, we're going to get into a fight. And then if it's these guys, they leave prison and some other guy goes and gets in his face with his problem and you start the fight, you're going back to prison. You're going to be back in these orange jumpsuits again for another three to five years. It's like, do you want that? And the guys, now they're starting to realize it's like, you know, that's

Pat Tenneriello (04:59)
Thank

Croix Sather (05:01)
somebody else's problem doesn't need to become your problem. And so now these guys realize that, and I had heard from the, through my friend, through the prison guards, I had heard later on that that speech impacted these guys. And when some of these guys got back out, cause most of them were close to going back on the street, when these guys got back out, they used that and to change their perspective in life. So if you can change somebody's life like that, that's, that's extraordinary. And it doesn't have to be prisoners. could be anything. It's like,

Pat Tenneriello (05:05)
Right.

Croix Sather (05:29)
We all struggle procrastination, right? So what do you have to do to not procrastinate? There's a couple of rules. Mel Robinson talks about the five second rule. When you're procrastinating, you count down five, four, three, two, one. And then when you get to one, you got to start taking action. That's one way. The way I do it now is I think about it when you're in summer, you're in some place, you're going to the lake or the pool, the air is warm, but you know the water is just a little bit chilly. And so what do you do when you know the water is a little bit chilly?

You hesitate, right? Like, yeah, don't really, yeah, it's hot out, but I don't really want to go in the cold water. It's not that cold, but it's cold enough that like you hesitate. But when you jump in and it's on a nice warm, hot day and you jump in the water, it always feels good after a few seconds of shock and you adjust. And now you're in the pool and you're having fun, you're playing or you're playing with your kids or whatever you're doing. So you just have to remember, it's just that initial couple of seconds of shock. Then you get to work and you stop procrastinating or you get past fear or you get past resistance.

Pat Tenneriello (05:59)
Right.

Croix Sather (06:28)
and then you start taking action. And for the prison guys, it was how to not take action that's gonna get them back in jail. But for us, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Pat Tenneriello (06:36)
Right, got it. Yeah, that's a good message. Yeah.

No, I mean, you never know what sort of day someone's having, right? If someone, if you're in the car and someone honks at you or maybe you're getting a coffee and someone's serving you and you don't like the way they served you, they were rude or whatever. It's like, you never know what's going on in their life. You never know what they've been through that day. And so I think it's important, you know, to

take that into consideration to not get dragged down into that sort of day with them but also because you don't know what's lurking underneath and how things can escalate really quickly. That's a good lesson especially for inmates.

Croix Sather (07:15)
I learned that from Dennis Waitley. This was back in the day when personal development and self-help was not a big thing. It was almost kind of taboo. People made fun of you you listen to the self-help stuff. He told this story about where he was in a train and these kids were being rowdy and disrupting things, knocking people's newspapers on the ground and briefcases over and things like that. Finally, the guy said to the dad, it's like, you please control your kids? He just kind of woke up out of his own doubt.

And so he wakes up and he looks up and goes, I'm sorry, we just left the hospital and their mother just died. And so you just don't know. But the same thing goes the opposite in terms of procrastination. If somebody's stuck and they're not getting the things that they want, they're not losing weight, they're not starting the job, they're not starting the side hustle, or they're just not getting what they want, well, what's causing that? There's something else going on. And so how do you get past that?

Pat Tenneriello (07:52)
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (08:13)
And so when I heard that story from Dennis Waitley, that was one of the things way back, way, back when I was a fairly young guy. And that changed the structure of my life, which eventually led me to here many years later.

Pat Tenneriello (08:25)
Right. So, You started off by telling us about this incredible run that you went on across the US. the equivalent of a marathon every day is what you ran. And then when you got to each destination,

You aligned speaking engagements like the one at the prison that you just described. that is so cool. What led you to deciding to do something like that? Like that's crazy.

Croix Sather (08:50)
It's funny because when I was giving speeches, whether it was on the Run Across America or after, and I've been on some of the biggest stages in the world, I always get three questions from the audience at the end. One of them is, how much did I eat? So I ate almost 10,000 calories a day, and I ate anything and everything. If it wasn't nailed down, I was eating it I just needed the calories. When I left California, I was a vegetarian, but once you start getting away from California, they don't understand vegetarian, especially not back then.

And so I ended up going back to a traditional diet and Texas has the best barbecue bar none in the world. Then the second question I get is how many sneakers did I go through? And so I wore out 16 pairs of sneakers just flat out bald. And so I sneakers and went through. And the funny thing with the sneakers is that as my feet, as I was running, my feet grew partially in swelling, but partially they just got larger muscularly. And so I had to keep buying bigger sneakers as I was going along.

But the third question is that your question, which is actually the more important question is why? Why would you run a marathon a day? Why would you do this crazy thing? And the reality wanted to do something extraordinary. I was a carpenter before this. I wasn't a speaker or author or motivational anything. I was a carpenter, just like my dad and my uncles and my brothers and we're all carpenters. We came up blue collar as you get.

Pat Tenneriello (09:48)
Wow.

Croix Sather (10:13)
And I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so I kept asking myself this question. It's like, what would you do if you knew you could succeed? If failure was impossible, what would you do? And I didn't know, but I kept asking myself that question over and over. And I had heard of a guy who ran across America. And I'm like, that is the coolest thing I have ever heard of. And he ran, he actually tried to break the world record at the time. He didn't succeed, but he tried to break the world record. I'm like, what if I could just do that? But I wasn't a runner.

And so I had only one year of training. And so why do something like this is because I was called to do it because I wanted to do something great. Cause most people, they go through life and they just sort of take what's what they end up with. You know, for example, you go to college, you get your first job. And if it's a good enough job, you just kind of stay there, even if it's not related to your college degree. And you just, maybe you stay there, maybe you move jobs once or twice and you just end up in this job, which is okay. And it's fine, but it's not what you really want to do.

Pat Tenneriello (11:03)
Hmm.

Croix Sather (11:11)
or you're living someplace that you don't really like and most people don't move from the place that they grew up in. The majority of people stay in the same area that they grew up in, even though it's not where they want to be. I grew up in New York, right outside of New York City, and it's cold here in the winter and I hated it. I couldn't wait till I could get out of this area. But I got family up here, so I'm actually up here again at this moment. But you're living in a much better climate right now. You're where you are. You're over in Italy, which is extraordinary.

Pat Tenneriello (11:38)
Yes, we're pretty lucky, pretty grateful to be able have two amazing, beautiful countries that we can split our time between. But let me ask you something because what you just described, a lot of people think about, they think about doing epic stuff. think about how they'd like to change their situation. But the difference between most people and you is that you actually

did something epic and you left, your trade as a carpenter, by the way, that's, that's a great trade. There's nothing wrong with that trade. You wanted to do something different. You were aiming at something different and you actually did it. What was the aha moment where you just say, I'm going to do it. I'm not just, I'm going to stop thinking and I'm going to move to action.

Croix Sather (12:21)
I was telling all of my friends and family and anybody who would listen to me, know, I got this idea. I'm going to run across America. I'm going to run a marathon a day for a hundred days. And not only that, but I'm going to give a motivational speech every day as well. And what do you think my friends and my family and everybody else said? There's like, you're crazy. It's stupid, or you're going to die. It's impossible. But then I'm telling one of my friends who was also on a very similar journey to me. She's also becoming a coach, had a previous career and it's just like, you know, this

doing sort of same thing as me. like, this isn't what I want to do for the rest of my life. And she's going on the same thing. And I'm telling her about it. And she looks at me directly in the eye and she says, Croix, not only can you, but you must. And I was just like, I must. What do mean I must? And then I thought about that for a few days. She's like, she's right. I have to do this. I feel this. I'm called to it. I want to do it. And so now I need to train and make it happen. So that's when I started training. I also wrote a book at that time while I was...

in the same training period, I wrote a book and I launched a book so that I could give the book away to the audiences that I was speaking to. So at the end of each speech, I would sign the books and I would meet the kids or the adults and give them a book.

Pat Tenneriello (13:28)
And how did you fund that transition? Because a carpenter pays the bills when you go and start running across America and writing books and giving them away. Like how did you fund that?

Croix Sather (13:41)
Carpentry was very good to me. I did very, very well in that. I didn't only do carpentry, I eventually started flipping houses. So actually did really, really well in that. So it came out of savings, a little bit of credit card and stuff like that. And it was extremely expensive to do that. Very, very expensive. I had gone to college, but I went to community college and paid my way. So that was inexpensive for me compared to my daughter who's now in Penn State.

And it's an absolute fortune. But I paid for my way through college, but this was like another college for me. And this was a learning experience. And I made a lot of business mistakes during this, because I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know anything about media. I didn't know anything about writing or publishing a book. I didn't know how to get talks. I didn't know any of that stuff. And I had to figure that out along the way. to some extent, I'm still figuring it out. I'm changing my business now after hearing some guys that have this one person business.

Pat Tenneriello (14:08)
Yeah.

Croix Sather (14:33)
that they're running two, three, four, five million dollars a year. And it's just one guy with maybe a VA, know, virtual assistant. And they're running these multimillion dollar businesses. It's like, okay, that's better than what I'm doing now. It's like, I need to start moving towards what those guys got and figure that out.

Pat Tenneriello (14:48)
Well, it sounds like you embrace a growth mindset where you're always looking to learn and pick up new sets that will help you and enable your transformation. was there even a transformation before this run across America that you want to share?

Croix Sather (15:04)
My life has been one transformation after another. The one thing that nobody can say about me is that my life has been boring. It's been interesting since pretty much from the start. I grew up as, we weren't dirt poor, but we're about as poor as you get being in a regular neighborhood. My family would sometimes have to skip meals. My parents, I should say, would have to skip meals so that me and my brothers could eat. Not always, but there was some really, really tough times.

Then my dad goes out into business. He was a carpenter working for a fairly big construction company and he goes out into business. And I remember when I was 13 or 14 years old, I would hear my dad say pretty regularly to me, my worst year in business for myself was better than my best year working for this other guy. His name was Gunderson. And so that planted the entrepreneurial seed. was like, if your worst year working for yourself is better than working for somebody else, why would I ever get a job?

Pat Tenneriello (15:58)
that quote, it mostly financial or is it the way he felt about it?

Croix Sather (16:02)
Well,

it was both, but he was talking about the finances, but it was both because he had a better quality of life. He wasn't working weekends most of the time anymore. When he was working for the other guy, he was working six days a week. He was a preacher on Sundays. So he would work all week, prepare a sermon, and then go, he would give his Sundays to the church. So we didn't get to see him all that much because he was always working. I we was always home for dinner, so we always had dinner together.

Pat Tenneriello (16:07)
Okay. Okay.

Croix Sather (16:29)
And when he wasn't working, he took me to the lake to go fishing or something like that. But when he worked on his own, all of a sudden he was able to take days off when he needed to or wanted to. Now we could afford to go to Disney. I mean, we had to go on a budget, but we could still afford to go to Disney, which he never would have been able to afford with working for the other guy. So you could imagine the four kids and my mom and dad all packed into a station wagon driving from New York to Florida to go to Disney World. We had to do it on the cheap.

Pat Tenneriello (16:48)
Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (16:59)
but we still got to go. And because my dad had the time to go to get off. So that was one. And then when I was, gosh, what was I 14 years old or was I 15? I don't remember now. I was driving home on my bicycle, 15. I was driving home on my bicycle. And as I'm riding home on my bicycle, my friends and they're on the other side of the road and they're riding on the shoulder and we're all going home, but I'm riding on the right side with traffic. A lady comes up over the little crest of the hill.

Pat Tenneriello (17:01)
Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (17:28)
and it's about four o'clock in the afternoon and she's drunk and she sees my friends and she kind of panics and she swerves away from them over the double yellow line. She never sees me and she crashes into me. My bike crushes below her big metal bumper. I hit the windshield and I go flying up into the air. The police report said that my body flew 50 feet before it hit the ground. The local hospital couldn't handle my trauma injuries so they sent me down to New York City.

where when my parents got there, the neurosurgeon from where I fractured my skull came out and told my parents, if your son survives the night, he'll be a vegetable for the rest of his life. And so my mom collapses into my dad's big arms and they cry and they pray for a miracle. I was in a coma for four days. And when I come out of that, my parents are both there, they're holding my hand and they're just waiting for me to wake back up.

But through that process, the transformation I got out of it is my parents will regularly tell me, like, you were saved for a reason. Like, what are you going to do with that now? Why are you here? How are you going to make a difference in your life now? And that always sort of sat with me. It kind of put a higher level of pressure on me in a sense to do something. But I didn't do anything right away. I mean, I got into construction, I started a business, I started making a lot of money right away.

I ran my own company by the time I was 24. I went through the traditional, you know, make money sort of hustle and grind lifestyle. But at some point that that seed was planted in me that was like, you know, I want to do something more. What is it? And so if I should have died at 15 years old and I have all this extra bonus time, if you will, then why aren't I making the best out of it? You know, why would I work for somebody else at a job I don't like? And if you have a job that you're working for somebody else and you love it,

great, stay there. I'm not against working for somebody else. I'm against working for somebody else if you don't like the job or if you're not getting paid nearly enough money to survive. That's something I think is a really bad decision. But we stay there because it's comfortable. We stay in a job, for this example, we stay in a job that we don't like because it's comfortable enough. It pays the bills, it pays the mortgage, the house that helps you send the kids to school and all that stuff, puts food on the table, but we don't like it. So it's comfortable.

Pat Tenneriello (19:29)
Hmm.

Croix Sather (19:42)
But it's not uncomfortable enough that you make a change. So either it gets uncomfortable enough and that's when people actually change their lives when something happens, or you have to create enough discomfort in yourself to be able to make that decision. You got to make that change. So how do you do that? You imagine yourself, okay, when I'm 65, 70 years old and I've retired from whatever work I'm doing, do I want to look back at my life and say, you know what? That last 40 years really sucked.

What I want to look back and say, thank God, when I was in my thirties, I changed jobs and I went and I did something that I found something I really loved. And that could be another job that you really love, or it could be starting your own business, or it could be a lot of other things. But if you're not happy, then make a change. Because this is the youngest you're ever going to be. I mean, it's cliche, but it's true. I'm 53 now. I'm about to turn 54 tomorrow, actually.

Pat Tenneriello (20:29)
Yep.

Croix Sather (20:33)
I look back when I was just talking to a guy yesterday, he came to look at the heat system here and he is 37. And we're having a really good conversation. I was like, you got to be careful. You're 37. My 40s flew by. Like I don't even know, I did a lot of amazing stuff, but I don't know where they went because it just, happened so quick. And now I'm at the age that I'm the cusp of getting old.

And so I see my friends who are 10 years older than me and I look at them and their faces changing, their hair is getting gray, or they're balding or whatever. so like there's a substantial change in your late 50s, early 60s. And I'm like, I'm just on the edge of that. So I got maybe a 10 year runway to figure out and get things done that I want to get done. It's a short runway. You're in your 30s, you got a 20, 30 year runway. I got 10 years at best. And not to say I can't be productive after that, but 10 years of my prime.

Pat Tenneriello (21:23)
you've said a lot of remarkable things. you nearly died when you were a teenager, you made a full recovery and that gave you a new lease on life or gave you a perspective that said, okay, I have this gift. How am I going to make the most of it? And like many young people, I think financial gain was probably at the top of the list for a while, but then

Like that got old quick. And then you ask yourself like, what's next?

people that you coach or the people that are in your programs, how do you get them to make that extra push? Like that 37 year old was at your house and you were having that conversation. it is really difficult to move away from a comfortable situation, even though you know, deep down that you could, and you might be happier or you might fail. what sort of advice do you give to

people in your program to give them perspective, to help them make space and to push them into that, unknown direction.

Croix Sather (22:17)
We all need a cheerleader in our life, for one. Because very few people have people that say, you know, yeah, you can do it. Keep going. You how's that going? You're making progress. Is there anything I can help you with? Very few of us have anybody in our life like that. Even spouses. know, our spouse often has their own challenges and desires and dreams in their lives. And even though they may support you and love you indirectly, very few people are like, yeah, you can do it. Go ahead. I'm all behind you. If you have that, fantastic.

You're doing better than most but most people don't and that's where a coach comes in and whether it's me or if it's somebody else What our job is is want to help you get clarity, you know What is it that you want? A lot of people don't have clarity if you don't have clarity How can you hit the target? know, if you don't know what the bullseye is or even where the target is then there's no way to get there and Sometimes you have to go through that transition, which is figuring out what target do you want to hit and I'm hit I'm

doing that in myself now, I'm reevaluating my life. like, well, where do I want to be? And right now, what do I want to do right now? And so is it the way my business is running now or do I want to do something different? The pandemic has forced many of us into a different lifestyle than we plan, which is a good thing. For the first time as a social construct, most of us became very aware of our mortality. And most people don't think of that. I think of that every day of my life almost because of the accident I had when I was a kid.

Pat Tenneriello (23:35)
you

Croix Sather (23:43)
But most people don't think of that. And that was the first time a lot of people were like, holy cow, I could die because we thought it was so serious at the beginning. But that's a great perspective to have in life. What if I die? My friend's sister's husband, was 48 when he died of a heart attack. Young guy, just boom, he was gone. We were having a barbecue together. We're all there. There was 30, 40 people of us together.

and we're just, having the barbecue, having a good time. I leave, I get a phone call from my friend a few days later, you know, that my sister's husband died. And it's like, we were just there. And you know, it's hard to believe. My brother died at 45 of the same thing, of a heart attack. He was in a courtroom and there was paramedics there at the courthouse and they couldn't save him. It was just his time. So you don't know when that's going to happen. And that's one way to keep a really good perspective. So you got to get clarity and then you've got to decide what's important in your life.

You know, is it important that you start your own business? Is it important that you lose 50 pounds and get healthy and fit again? Is it important that you start dating after a divorce? Because a lot of people don't after that. Is it important that you travel the world? Whatever it is, you got to figure out what's important. Now you have to figure out how do I get there? And then you've got to have somebody along the way that reminds you, you know, are you doing the things you're supposed to be doing? And it's not, I'm not like a David Goggins, you know. David Goggins is awesome, but that's not my style. I'm not going to be in the

screaming at you, yelling at you like it's like do or die, you got to do 50 more pushups. I'm not like that. I think you can achieve things without having that intense screaming, yelling coach motivation. Like lot of people have had a coach in high school that were like that, no, run more, run more. So you don't need that. If you can create the internal motivation, that's way more powerful. Because then you could work from a happy place rather than, my God, I got to do this.

Pat Tenneriello (25:33)
the

Croix Sather (25:36)
You know, it just comes from so much better of a place. If you can create your own internal motivation, then everything just happens automatically. But that's something that has to be maintained and built just like a muscle, just like your biceps, just like having abs, got to build that muscle.

Pat Tenneriello (25:51)
There aren't too many people in your life that act as your cheerleader. someone does stand out when they give selfless compliments. you sent me a message on Instagram when you heard my trailer and you said, man, you have an amazing voice. Like you're going to crush it. that just made my day.

nobody said something like that. Like that stands out to me. And I have a good friend of mine who also selflessly pays compliments to people and they're sincere. Obviously they need to be sincere because if you're giving them out like candy, then people are going to pick up on that. But if you're sincere about it, it shows a level of confidence in yourself. I think that you're willing to make someone else feel good because I think that's kind of what stands in the way of people paying compliments and being.

a cheerleader for the other is that they're deep down, they're not as secure in themselves to be able to do that because they, maybe they feel jealousy if someone's doing well So I completely relate to what you're saying. And so part of what you do is help to build people up. By the way, would you describe yourself as a life coach or like, how do you describe what it is that you do?

Croix Sather (26:57)
Yeah, you could say life coach. I'm not sure I'm crazy about that term, but yeah, it's what it is. One more is as a performance coach to help you succeed in the way that you want to succeed. And so it's a subtle difference. A life coach is more about, it's more of a soft topic where a performance coach is, how do you change your mindset? How do you create that internal motivation? How do you create that internal discipline? How do you create the internal follow through?

which is a big challenge. All things that I struggle with too, as a creative, as an entrepreneur, you I want to jump and do 60 different things at the same time. And I never want to finish something because the start is always more fun. But I have to remind myself to keep the consistency up because that's the most important thing. know, Run Across America wasn't, you know, running one marathon. It was running a marathon a day for a hundred days. That was almost 3000 miles. But it wasn't 3000 miles. It wasn't even a marathon. It wasn't even a mile at a time. It was one step at a time.

for roughly a million times. So million steps to get from California to New York. and some of those days, taking one step, just getting to the next block was brutally painful, but you have to keep pushing through. And so you have to do the same thing in your life, whether it's losing weight or being in a relationship, it's all sort of the same thing. If you're consistent and you have the discipline and the self-motivation, it makes it so much easier. And if you compliment people and raise people up, it just makes so much better. But people don't do that because most people

either have a, they come from a place of fear or they've never received a compliment so they don't have to compliment other people. And so there's all kinds of different reasons, but there's no reason why you shouldn't. When I was a kid, had, my smile was a lot bigger than my face. Like I kind of grew into my smile and my mom always teased me, said I had a Howdy Doody smile. Howdy Doody was a character way back in, I think it was the fifties or something that my mom grew up with. And it was this stupid looking puppet.

Pat Tenneriello (28:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (28:50)
And I thought she was making fun of me. She wasn't making fun of me. She was teasing me a little bit, but like she didn't mean it mean. But I took it as a kid. I understood that as, being something terrible. So I didn't smile for a long time. And then I'm in, I think it was high school at the time. And one of my teachers grabs me and pulls me to the side as I'm walking out. It's like, you know what? You got a great smile. You should smile more. And I'm like, nobody's ever told me I have a great smile before.

And ever since then, I've been smiling and now I point out great things in other people when I see them, because I know people aren't getting the compliments that they need. Most people aren't anyway. And so when I heard your voice on your podcast trailer, I'm like, holy cow, this dude is good. It sounded like a professional voice in a studio. I'm like, whoa, did he have somebody else record this for him? But no, it's you. You got a great voice.

Pat Tenneriello (29:41)
Thank you. I appreciate that. was poking around your website. I came across the seven successful habits and I was wondering if you could cover a few of these successful habits that you believe in to listeners just to

Kind of maybe give them some ammunition right away for some of the transformations or growth that they're trying to implement in their lives.

you don't need to tell us all seven, but the ones that seem to resonate the most.

Croix Sather (30:14)
Well, we've talked about some of it already. We've talked about the consistency, the clarity and things like that. I think the two biggest things that most people need is one, have to get a vision of what they want their future to be. And we've touched on this already because we have to know what we want. And if you don't know what you want yet, then your job, your primary job is to figure out what you want to do. And so...

For me, there was when I was a carpenter and I was switching careers or thinking about switching careers, I went and I tried lots of other things. I tried little side businesses on the nights and weekends to see if I liked them. It all revolved around construction at first. I thought I could make something and sell the product so I don't have to work all day and work for other people at their houses. So I tried all the products and I created things and I had moderate success with some and some were epic failures. But along that journey led me from one thing to another and I realized things I didn't like.

or the lifestyles that I didn't like, and that led me to other things. So even the things that are failures along the way, they're not failures, it's just a data point. It's background to get you where you're going to be going, and you have to keep going forward. I never would have found motivational speaking as a career had I not been in construction and flipping houses, you know, buy, renovate, and then sell.

Pat Tenneriello (31:22)
Hmm.

Croix Sather (31:33)
And then I heard about a conference that was happening in Boston that they called the Wealth Expo, which had a whole bunch of different speakers that were speaking there. But I went because I wanted to learn more real estate techniques to be able to make more money, know, flip houses and be able to do that better because there was a speaker there for that particular topic. And I show up and there's speaker after speaker after speaker, and they're all talking about their program and they're selling their program. So one guy talked about real estate, one guy talked about stock market, one guy was an attorney.

And then this guy comes on, great big guy, big smile, big hands, and he's talking about motivation. And I wasn't 20 minutes into it. I looked up at him. like, that's what I want to do. I was like, I want to inspire people. want to be, I want to, cause like I felt so good inside. Like after just 20 minutes, was like, that's what I want to do. I want to help people feel the way I feel right now. And that changed my life. But I had never spoke before. I had no idea. But those steps after the other, after the other led me to that event.

And I didn't even know speaking was a career. The only speaker I ever saw on stage was like if a politician is speaking or if my dad was a pastor was speaking in front of the church. I didn't know it was an actual career until I saw these guys one after the other, after the other. And so that's when I joined Toastmasters and went down the journey, hired coaches to learn how to speak professionally. And it took me down a multi-year journey to be able to get to where I am. Wrote the book and that led me. So you have to first get clarity.

And then once you get clarity, you got to make a plan. But more important than the plan is taking massive action. You could have no plan, but if you take action in a direction, like, know I want to lose 50 pounds. And if you take action towards that direction, you'll figure out the way to make it happen along the way. If you plan ahead, that's great. You'll maybe get there quicker. But what happens for most people is they plan, they plan, they plan, they plan, they plan, they plan, they plan, and they never actually take any significant action.

where they take a little bit of action and it doesn't work right away after the first day or two or a week or two and they stop because they weren't successful immediately. Had I stopped every time I failed, I never would have accomplished anything in life. And most people that are successful, they never would have accomplished anything in life. because doing it and not getting the results is part of the journey. It's not failure. It's just part of the journey. And when you embrace that, that makes it so much easier to deal with the

the disappointment and the frustration and the failure, what most people call failure, the struggles, the setbacks, they're just part of the journey. And when you embrace the journey, knowing that you have to get there, then it makes it easy to succeed.

Pat Tenneriello (34:13)
made a decision to start this podcast. dove into it.

took some actions, here I am. if you told me a few years ago, hey, you're going to be starting a podcast, you're nuts. but something just compelled me to just move to action and kind of take it a day at a time and just take a learner's mindset. maybe in a few months, I'm not going to enjoy doing this anymore. And maybe I'm going to do something else, but at least I'll have learned a whole bunch of new skills in the process to help me.

into whichever direction I'm going to be pointing next. But I got to tell you, this way of thinking is very new to me. very rewarding. I love the way I feel. It's like something's unstuck.

How do people get unstuck how do they go from picking, 10 things to picking one and then moving to action on that one? what does clarity look like?

Croix Sather (34:59)
You don't have to necessarily pick just one. Go try them all and figure out which one percolates to the surface is the one you like the most. And so you're doing the podcasting now. You may find that you love this and this is where you want to go in the future. And you may get 10 or 100 episodes in and decide, you know what, I'm not really enjoying this. I think you're going to enjoy it. But the difference is doing it enough to be able to figure out how to do it better, easier, faster.

You know, you're better, the show's better, everything. You know, it's a learning curve. You're gonna go through that. And some shows are gonna absolutely suck. You're gonna do some interviews and you're be like, I'm quitting, that is the worst ever. I was terrible, I said something stupid. He said something stupid. That's gonna happen. I've been on stages where I was on one stage, I got paid by a corporation, $20,000 for an hour talk. And one of my mentors at the time is like, no, not bad at all.

Pat Tenneriello (35:38)
you

not too bad.

Croix Sather (35:54)
One of my mentors at times like, you've always got to be selling. So in the middle of that speech, I had a little sales pitch, like a little mini one. It was like six or seven minutes. I get off the stage and they were pissed at me that I was selling. I didn't know that you couldn't sell during a corporate event where they're paying you money. And that was one of the most like horrifying experiences ever. I like, I couldn't do anything. I was like, you know what? I realized it when I was up there and that's why I cut that section short.

Pat Tenneriello (36:10)
Mm.

Croix Sather (36:23)
I knew this just didn't fit here. And I apologized and I was that's okay, we'll move on from here. But it was a huge, huge mistake. if they would have asked me for half their money back or something, I probably would have had to do it. But they didn't, they were gracious as well. So you make mistakes and you gotta keep moving forward. But the clarity will come in the process of trying things out. And you're exploring this now with the podcast. And if it doesn't end up something you're doing forever, or for many, many years,

Pat Tenneriello (36:25)
Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (36:52)
then might lead to somebody, something else. You might meet somebody in this process that leads you to another project. When I was on my journey with this, I met a guy that I was partners with for a bunch of years and we were just buddies at the first time because we were in the same community, same business circles. And we were just buddies. We'd hang out and stuff together. And we never thought about doing business together. And one day he's like, hey, why don't we create a product together? And we talked about it and he was much better at the business side, the mechanical side of it than I am.

And I'm much better at the creation side, the product side of it. And so we worked together and it was a great match for a lot of years. But eventually we split up and went our own ways because we had different visions of the future. And so for a bunch of years, that made me a lot of money. And probably the most money I've made in this business was when I was working with him. And now I'm redesigning my business on my own to do it in a different way. And so I've taken a pay cut in the process of that, but I know in the long-term, it's going to be much more profitable when I get to the other side.

And I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to go through that little bit of financial discomfort to get to where I want to go. Because I know the financial benefit later on will be substantially more.

Pat Tenneriello (38:00)
sounds like on the one hand, you're motivated to help, to genuinely help and inspire people. Like that's your mission. At the same time, you talk about financial gain, So it sounds like you can hold both those things, right?

Sometimes I struggle with that because I feel selfish if I want the financial gain piece. I think, if you want to help people, well, that shouldn't be about money. do you ever struggle with...

wanting both of those things. Do ever find that they're at odds with one another?

Croix Sather (38:28)
You know who Joe Osteen is, right? The preacher.

Pat Tenneriello (38:30)
No, I don't know the name.

Croix Sather (38:32)
He's a preacher down in Texas, I forget where, has the, I don't know if it's the biggest church in the United States or one of the biggest churches. And he's making millions and millions of dollars. And that's a religious guy. And that's not in conflict with his religion or preaching. And it's not in conflict with his congregation of 40,000 people show up every Sunday to meet him. And so there's no conflict of interest in that.

But yet in society as a whole in general, we seem to think that making money is less spiritual or it's less pure or that we should be broken. And we have lots of examples of people who are poor that preach the gospel or Mother Teresa who went out and helped, you know, lots of the poor people and things like that. And lots of people have given up their lives to work for NGOs and other places that, you know, basically working for no money and you're going out and you're dedicating your life to helping other people.

And that's great, but there's nothing wrong with dedicating your life to helping other people and making a ton of money. Like wheelbarrows, boat loads of money. There's no conflict of that other than the conflict in our mind. I used to sell a lot of manifestation products, which is, you know, a little more spiritual side of personal development. It's basically the same thing, but one's just dealing with a little bit more spirituality in it. And most of the people that were buying those products were broke because of what you're talking about.

They have this mental construct, this belief system says that being spiritual, it's better to be, if you're being spiritual, you shouldn't be making a lot of money. And there's nothing farther than the truth other than that's the construct because, and where do we get this from? We get this from the news, we get this from movies, we get this from stories, and we get this from people who have been broke that think that it's more spiritual or you're a better person if you're not making a lot of money.

But it's not true at all. Joel Osteen teaches, you he's brought so many people back to religion, but he's had his critics. He's a great speaker now. But when he first started speaking, he wasn't all that great. But when his dad passed, or his dad passed or passed the church to him, I forget, but he ended up taking over the church from his dad and he didn't want to become a preacher at all. And this isn't about religion. This is just an example. He didn't want to become a preacher at all. But when his dad passed the church to him,

then he had to step up and do that. And he built the church that was relatively small at the time into this massive congregation, making tons and tons of money because it's aligned with being a good person, being a spiritual person, being a religious person and making a lot of money. It's all connected. It's our construct. Why does this happen? When you watch a movie of a rich guy, who is the rich guy usually in a movie? Villain, almost always the rich guy is the villain.

Pat Tenneriello (41:16)
A villain.

Croix Sather (41:22)
almost always. And if he's not the villain, then it usually doesn't make for a good movie because that's what makes a movie interesting. You've got to have a villain. And if the majority of people are living paycheck to paycheck, week to week, and you have this villain that's wealthy on there, well, that's an easy thing to get behind. Like, why am I struggling? You know, and so that's where we get the beliefs. It's like, if you have lots of money, you take advantage of people. If you make a lot of money, you're hurting people or stealing from them or you're lying.

Pat Tenneriello (41:22)
Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (41:52)
or you're a crook or all these other things that we say. And we have all these money beliefs behind it to reinforce this. Money doesn't grow on trees. What do you think I'm made out of money? No, we can't afford that. And I heard all those because we grow broke. So I heard all of these. And so my whole life, I've been working on my money mindset. It's been a super important part for me to get to the next level. And so without that rewiring my mind for that, to know that I can work.

and make a lot of money and still do good. But now I'm rewiring my brain to know that I don't have to hustle and grind, because my whole life's been about hustle and grind. I was like the poster boy for this crazy lifestyle, 14, 15, 16, 18 hours a day, sleeping a few hours and just waking up and doing it again. I was the poster boy for that. Now I'm realizing, wait a minute, I don't have to do that. I can work four hours a day and I can make more money than I ever have. And so that's where I'm working right now is reinforcing that

Pat Tenneriello (42:24)
Yeah.

Croix Sather (42:50)
new belief system. Because I don't want to be in my 60s and 70s and working all these hours, traveling around the world, jumping in a plane, sleeping in hotels to speak for a corporation. I don't want to be that guy, but there are a lot of speakers out there that are doing that. They're going there plane to hotel to plane to hotel, plane to hotel. And it's a tough life. You go to Vegas 15 times and you stay in the same hotel each time. It gets boring after a while. It's not as glamorous as it looks. And so now I'm trying to design my life in a way that's like,

Well, how do I have everything I want? And so you got to get clear on that. you first, you got to get clear on your beliefs. What's the belief that's holding you back? And then you got to start reconditioning your mind to that new belief system.

Pat Tenneriello (43:33)
Right. that question you just asked, like, what is it that I want? That's what keeps you motivated in this moment, but the human condition is we always want more. So you want something, even when you get that thing, it's not like you're satiated or satisfied. Then you're going to, you're going to want something else, in our case, with

with my wife and I, really wanted our first child. And we, had a hard time and, we followed all the steps we needed to, to, make that a reality to, and we finally had our son after some ups and downs and, know, we thought we'd be good with that. And then of course, well, now it's so beautiful to have one. Why not, why not have a second?

What I'm trying to get at is the human condition is we always want more that keeps us going. But at the same time, we never feel satisfied because we always want more.

in your coaching, is this a topic that you cover and how do you recommend that people deal with this?

Croix Sather (44:27)
When I work with people and I coach them, I help them, we find out what's the thing that's holding you back and we work for that. We all have these mental constructs, these old belief systems that aren't serving us anymore. They may have served you earlier in life. If you grew up poor like I did, that mindset of being very frugal with your money and stretching your dollar and everything, those are all good things for a while, but that doesn't serve you for the rest of your life necessarily.

So you have to realize what is it the thing that's holding me back? And then you start destructing, where did that come from? And then how do I stop that? But you don't even have to necessarily do that. That's a very modern concept now. It's like, I got to figure out where that problem started. And there's some people that say that they didn't even start in this life, it started in past lives. There's a lot of past life regression type talk out there. It's like, well, if you're struggling now, it's because you were poor in a previous life or...

You're paying for something you did in a previous life. And that may or may not be true. And it may be true that, or may not be true in this life, that you have this belief system from an earlier experience. But we don't necessarily have to get very woo-woo or psychological, know, pop psychology type on ourselves. You just have to start doing the things that will get you to the result that you want. As Alex Hormozi says, you just need irrefutable proof.

that you're on the right path and you're succeeding the way you want. And how do you do that? Is you just start taking action. Here's the example is if you're overweight and you want to lose weight, you don't need to figure out why you're overweight. I some people do, but generally speaking, most of us can lose weight and get healthy and fit just simply by waking up, going out and exercising the first thing, and then eating better throughout the day. And it will happen naturally. You don't have to change anything.

My daughter's in college now and she's lost weight since she got into college because she's eating better there, because the college has lots of great food choices. And so she's eating better there and she's walking back and forth between these buildings that are far away. She hasn't really changed much. She's just walking a little more and she's eating slightly better and she's lost some weight. And so that's all it takes. And the same thing with finances. If we want to get a better financial life, maybe a cut back on expenses, especially if you're spending

unwisely. People spend money on stupid things. Maybe you stop spending stupidly and you start making a little extra money somewhere. You get a raise, a promotion, you start a job, you start a side business, whatever it is. Then over time, you get wealthier. Warren Buffett, his thing was all about not losing money and making smart investments. wasn't some of the financial stuff we see today. He still has an unpopular way of thinking. It's like, just be smart and don't lose money.

Still, most people don't want to do that. They want the quick hit that's going to make them a crypto multi-decker millionaire in six months. When they don't get that, then they just give up. So the idea is figuring out what is holding you back and then how do you take action every day to counteract that. And so if you're overweight, because it's an easy example, if you're overweight and you want to lose weight, you start going out and exercising every morning. And that could just be going out for a walk. You'll go out for a walk for 20 minutes.

Pat Tenneriello (47:24)
the

Croix Sather (47:41)
And then that leads into 30 minutes. And then maybe that leads into a little bit of jogging. Maybe that leads into going to the gym, joining the gym and lifting a little bit of weights. It's like, well, I'm doing all this stuff. I might as well just eat a little bit better too. Then you start eating a little bit better. Now you start eating a little bit better and then you start eating even better. And then now it's like, well, wait a minute. I don't really understand food very much because most people don't. I don't understand what are good calories, what are bad calories, what is good protein, what is bad protein. And so, well, maybe I should read a couple of books or I should do some research on it. And so it's a cascading effect.

Now, you know what a downward spiral is. know, somebody's going into a downward spiral, they're getting worse and worse and worse. Well, what if we have a cascading effect that we're always getting better and better and better? And that's your irrefutable proof that Alex Hormozzi talks about.

Pat Tenneriello (48:22)
call it like a positive feedback loop. There's, there's a negative feedback loop, me, that would be like, you go out and get drunk night and then today you wake up with a hangover. And so you're not going to do, you know, all the healthy habits that you may know, you may normally do. And then to beat the hangover, you might go and get yourself some, fatty, oily junk food.

to feel a little bit better, you might oversleep. And so that'll lead to having you having a bad day and then it'll come night and you'd like, I've had such a bad day, I'm going to have a drink. And then all of sudden it's just going to spiral and continue. And before you know it, you've been on a seven day or and you just feel awful. And so we all know that that can happen, but the other side of that can also happen. And I've experienced this in my life

The other thing is that the positive changes that you make in your life are contagious. people around you pick up on them, whether you explicitly mention it or not. alcohol is a good example. I used to enjoy alcohol more than I should. I wasn't an alcoholic but I used to have more of a party lifestyle and I used to enjoy at social functions drinking probably more than I should have. when I made that decision,

to just not have a drink at a social function. And people would notice that. And then the next time I would notice other people that were close to me either ask me about it and then also make that decision, maybe I'll cut back a little bit too. Or if they see that I've lost a little bit of weight, they might ask, you're looking good. What are you doing? And then all of a sudden like, well, maybe I'll take a look at myself. Maybe that's a positive change that I can implement in my own life. So this positive.

loop, is okay. I'm drinking less. I'm eating better, which means I'm, you know, when I'm not drinking in the evening, maybe I'm reading a book or learning something new. Maybe I'm going to bed at a reasonable hour, which means I'm waking up at a reasonable hour, which means I have time to exercise in the morning lo and behold, your positive loop And also a contagious one at that. So I could totally relate to what you described You talked about

things that hold us back. there some common patterns that emerge? it self doubt? Is it limiting beliefs? Is it the belief that I don't deserve happiness? what would you say are the common ones that come up over and over?

Croix Sather (50:32)
for the most part, generally speaking, it really comes down to one thing for all of us. And it disguises itself as many different things. So procrastination is a symptom. It's not the problem. It's not having discipline. It's the same thing. It's a symptom. Being overweight is a symptom of the problem. Being broke is a symptom of the problem. And the problem all comes back to your own self-worth. You know, what do you believe about yourself?

And this, belief about yourself, unfortunately, comes from other people, from most people throughout their whole lives. But if you get wise enough that sometime during your adult life, you start to realize that you need to be responsible for your own self-worth. And this isn't some silly woo-woo pop psychology thing. This is the way we function as humans, the way our mind and our souls, our hearts functions. And so I'll give you an extreme example of this.

When I was running across America and I was speaking at different schools and places every day, I was speaking in West Texas. And I gave the speech to like 600 kids at a rural high school, kind of high school that normally doesn't get a motivational speaker because they don't have the budgets and they're just way out in the middle of nowhere. And so it was a really special treat for somebody to be there talking to them. Plus I'm running across America, so it's just kind of a cool thing. And so I give the speech and there's a bunch of kids, they're all like, they don't care. They don't really want to do, they didn't want to go to lunch. They don't really care much about me.

But at the end, was a bunch of kids that wanted their book signed. And so I'm signing the book and as I'm signing the books, and it's a fairly long line, and I see this one kid that's sitting off to the side, kind of leaning against the wall, just waiting. And she's unkempt she's kind of frumpy, know, dirty clothes and stuff like that. And she's off to the side. But I notice her kind of just standing there, which is like, you know, why isn't she in line like everybody else? All the other kids disappear, you know, they get their book signed, they go onto their own way.

And she reluctantly comes up to speak to me after. And you could see it in her face that she just like was scared to death just to say anything. And she finally like through kind of like a big gulp, she says, you know, every morning when I wake up, my mother has said to me, you're worthless. You're a piece of shit. Now get the F out of my house. I wish I never had you. And like I'm about to ball like a baby. And you can see she's holding back her tears as well. And I just gave her the space.

Pat Tenneriello (52:45)
Wow.

Croix Sather (52:52)
to find her next words. You know, I want to jump in there and give her a hug and tell her everything's gonna be all right. But I gave her the space to find her next words. And her next words were, know, Croix, after hearing your speech, I realized that somebody else's belief of me doesn't have to be my reality. I can become anything I want to become. And we stayed in contact for a while after that. But that's the kind of belief structure that we get into ourselves. And that's an extreme one, that somebody is telling us that we're worthless.

But we have our own version of that. We do something stupid, like when I was on that stage and I made that mistake for that, that corporation. Like that was a huge dent in my self-worth for a little while, realizing that I made like a cardinal sin for speaking from the stage for a corporation. And there's so many examples of that that we have throughout our lives that will chip away at our self-worth. If we don't have other people chipping away at our self-worth, we'll also do that to ourselves. So it comes down to that.

But what's going to make you feel better about yourself so that you can get these things? Can you fix all of the things that are wrong with you emotionally, mentally? Yeah, maybe you can, but you don't have to. mean, sometimes it makes sense to go see a psychologist or somebody else that can help you with these things. Sometimes that makes sense for some people. But most of the time, for most of us, for the everyday sort of real things that we deal with, it's a matter of just doing something that's different than what you've done before.

If you sit down, you come home from work, you sit down on the couch, I was guilty of this. You come home from work, you sit down on the couch, you grab a beer, you grab a bunch of potato chips, and you watch the news and TV for the rest of the night, that's not going to help your life any as you go over time. You're going to get fatter. You're going to start drinking more, and you're going to start getting more miserable, especially with the news today in every country. It's just, this is such a toxic environment we're living in now.

And so if you do that, you're going to keep getting the same result. I did that because that's what my dad did. And that's what his buddies did. And that's what I saw all my friends' dads doing. They went out, they worked construction, they went home, they had a beer, and they sat on the couch and they never got up. They never helped their spouse. They never participated in taking care of the kids. They never did any of the things that we do today. For the most part, there was a very traditional relationship, but not always in the good sense. And so that's what I learned and that's what I did. And then I started realizing, like, that's not what I want for the rest of my life. And so you make

that change. And so you don't have to fix yourself. None of us, you know, generally speaking, we're not broken. We just make bad choices. Success is nothing more than making good choices day after day after day. Failure or not having the life you want is making the same bad choices day after day after day. So if you want something different, just simply start making different choices.

Pat Tenneriello (55:33)
your definition of success changed over the years? Like when you think about success, what comes up for you?

Croix Sather (55:40)
My definition of success has changed a lot. It used to be totally revolve around money for the most part. And now I'm realizing that one, I'm not even motivated by money. I love money and I want to be like super crazy wealthy. I don't need to be Elon Musk wealthy, but I want to have all of the great things that multimillionaires have. That's fine, but I'm not motivated by money. And one of my coaches taught me is that if I focus on the thing that will get me the result that I want,

the money will come along with it. So if I focus on my coaching programs and I'm on products and my books and I do the things and I get out there and I'm on the podcasts and I'm doing all these things that I have to do and I create the structure behind it, the wealth will happen. And I don't have to be motivated by making a million dollars a year or whatever it is. The million dollars a year will happen just by doing the things that need to be doing. And so now I've reconstructed my life so like, how do I enjoy the work even more?

and do the stuff that I love even more. Well, one of the things I love doing is like this, being on a podcast. It's one of my favorite things because every show I'm on is totally different. I tell some of the same stories and they come and they go, depending on what we're talking about. But everyone is different because I'm talking with a different person who has a different mindset that sees the world different than I do. And sometimes I get asked a question that's like, whoa, I've never thought about that before. And so after the call, I'll get off and I'll start, you know,

tossing that idea around. I was like, wow, that was really cool. And so now I'm creating the business. So how do I love everything that I do more and do more of that and then get the results that I want as well? So you got to be smart and do that. If we did more of what we loved, we would have so many less problems than we do now. But most of us aren't doing the things that they love. They're going to job they don't particularly like or even hate, maybe, and they're coming home and there may be even a relationship that they don't particularly like.

and why are they in a relationship they don't like is because they're not doing the things that make that relationship great. Relationships are always great when you're dating, right? You're going out, you're going to the movies, you go to dinners, maybe you go on the trips, and you do all these things that are great. And both people are into the relationship and treating each other the best they can at that time. often when people get married, they stop treating their spouse like they treated them when they first started dating. If you continue to date your spouse, you would not have a bad relationship. You'd have a thrilling, loving, happy, fun,

playful relationship if you treated your spouse the way you treated them during their dating.

So treat your spouse great. Do things and work that you love to do. Do fun things with your kids. And do things that make you healthy and feel happier. Everything will kind of work its way out, especially if you get clarity on where you want to end up, which is very important as we talked about.

Pat Tenneriello (58:25)
I think you have two kids. Is that right? Two kids.

Croix Sather (58:27)
I have two kids, yeah. Yeah, they're

now 17 and 18.

Pat Tenneriello (58:31)
You mentioned you have a daughter at Penn State at Happy Valley. With all this transformation in your life and all these incredible things that you've done, it's not easy to balance that, Because the needs of your kids is, a lot of fathers will put them ahead of their own needs and maybe that's the right way to do it. Maybe you have your own aspirations and your own dreams and your own pursuits.

Croix Sather (58:33)
Yeah.

Pat Tenneriello (58:54)
How did you balance being a father with everything else that you wanted to do? Did you find that they were at odds or did they actually compliment one another? And did you ever feel guilty if you dedicated too much time to your own pursuits at the detriment of the time you may have been spending with your family?

Croix Sather (59:14)
When I ran Across America, my kids were three and five at the time. I think it was. And so when I had this idea to run Across America, one of the reasons I did it so quickly is because I wanted to do it while they were too young to realize I was gone for so long. And they don't even remember it. I have pictures of it and everything. They know I did it. They know they were at the finish line, but they don't remember it. And so when the kids are young, it's easier to be more focused on work, but that's a hard thing to balance.

And they are in conflict with each other sometimes for some people. If you have your nine to five and you come home, you're with your kids and you have kind of more of a traditional lifestyle in that sense, it makes it a little bit easier to balance it. But if you're an entrepreneur, it's a lot harder to balance it because we often work more hours than we do when we're at a nine to five. And so that makes, or if you're at a nine to five and you're starting a side hustle to maybe move on from that career, then you're using more time also for that.

But the end result of it is what I believe is that if you're living your life in a way that your kids will see that you're doing the best you can to create a life that you love, that's a better example for them than to sacrifice and to give up and to be miserable.

when you have that moment with your kid, you be the best dad that you can be. So my dad, worked a ton of hours. And so that little bit of time that I had with him when he wasn't working, we'd go to the lake and we would sail these little model sailboats that he made. And so we would make these boats. was a little kid, I helped, quote unquote helped. But we went out to the lake and we sailed these tiny little sailboats. And that was the greatest time where we went fishing.

fishing in this little pond and we caught these little sunnies. weren't real, like, they weren't like, it wasn't real fishing, but it was time with my dad. There was super special moments. My dad teaching me how to do construction when I was just still a little boy. Those moments meant more than if I would have spent a lot more time with them without the quality. So there is a conflict sometimes, but you can make the most out of that. And being the example of living the life you want, I think is the better example than sacrificing, quote unquote, sacrificing.

Pat Tenneriello (1:01:04)
Yeah.

Croix Sather (1:01:25)
and not living the life you want to live.

Pat Tenneriello (1:01:27)
Being the example for your kids of pursuing a life that is maybe the harder path, that brings you purpose and meaning. if you could be that example to your kids, I think if it means having a less time than you otherwise would have, I think is, I completely agree with you is worth being that example.

I also agree with the concept of quality over quantity. Usually in any relationship, when the quantity of time that you have together goes down because of constraints that you can't control,

The quality typically will go up. Like a simple example is my, my siblings and I, when we were living all under one roof, like we would get on each other's nerves, we'd push each other's buttons. We'd be constantly at each other's throats, even though we loved each other. But as soon as one of us went off to college and the other one off to that quantity of time goes down. And all of a sudden you realize like, Hey, we're getting older and we're not going to get to see each other as much as we would like to. So we better make the most of it. And then the quality goes up.

so I agree with that. And then I also think on, this topic even though your pursuits may pull you away from family and your, and, kids, that it also empowers, you know, having that additional responsibility in my life me strength and power that I didn't have on my own.

to make some transformations that I knew I needed to make in my life. because I'm no longer living just for myself. When I got married, all of a sudden I'm living for myself and my spouse, my actions, they also have an impact on my spouse. and then when my son was born, my decisions and my actions have an impact on him as well.

You know, if I decide to not get enough sleep, then in the morning I'm going to be a zombie. I'm going to be moody. I'm going to be, I'm not going to be the father that I want to be. and so that gives me sort of an extra superpower that I didn't have to give me the discipline that I always wanted in my life to be able to implement habits, to help me.

in my pursuits of my passions and in my pursuit for meaning. So I think that having a family can actually complement. Sure, you have a lot less time for yourself, but I think it gives you more strength to get ahead.

Croix Sather (1:03:47)
Having a family definitely changes you for both the mom and the dad. And it gives you an understanding of life that you can't get any other way. And that's generally speaking, that's a really good thing. It helps to create more wisdom in your life because you're not just thinking about yourself, you're also thinking about the children as well. The most important parenting advice that I could give on that is that

when your child is in that moment of crisis, and they happen from time to time, when the child is in that moment of crisis, stop everything and be there for the child. Like when that girl came up to me in the audience and I gave her the space to find her words. If you can do that as a parent, when your kid is in their crisis and allow them to digest and figure out what's going on and then offer help in whatever way that is necessary, that can be one of the most important things.

My daughter and I went to the movies, gosh, what was the name of that movie? It was the one with the, was a Disney movie, Pixar movie with the characters and they each had a different emotion. Do you know what's what I'm talking about? I can't remember the name. In-N-Out, yes. Inside Out, whatever it was, yeah. We went and saw that and that movie had kind of a really dark feel at the end of it. It wasn't a happy feel good movie at the end of it, not at the first one.

Pat Tenneriello (1:04:51)
yeah. Yeah. In and out, inside out, inside out.

Croix Sather (1:05:06)
And so we left that and a couple days later, my daughter is at school and she's just like in this weird depression kind of thing. She's just like, she's feeling, I talked on the phone, the school called me and she called me up. So I went and I picked my daughter up from school and I took her out of school that day. And we went and we talked and we went to the, it was in the summer, so we went to the pool and we're having a good time. And I changed her mood around that, but we got to talking about it. And she was, I don't know, 12 years old or something at the time.

And we got to talking about it at that moment. And she was explaining, you know, that she was just feeling bad and feeling blue and she didn't know why. And it came up that it was that movie that had influenced her into feeling in a way that she wouldn't normally feel because she's a super happy kid. And then we made a decision in that moment is like, you know, we need a code word. If there's something wrong, you can call me up or text me or whatever. And you could tell me this code word and you don't have to tell anybody else. Just tell me. And I know that I need to come pick you up and we'll deal with it.

I suggest rotten tomato. She said, no potato. And so we used it as potatoes. So the rest of the afternoon we're jumping in the pool and we're yelling potato and we're jumping in the pool. We're having a good time. And that moment was probably more important than virtually any other moment or all of them combined in our lives together. You know, was, and we've had a couple of moments like that, but if you can stop and at that moment of crisis, will mean

Pat Tenneriello (1:06:14)
Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (1:06:28)
more to the kid than anything else. And you'll have a better relationship for it. And I had one with my son as well when it was being bullied. Same sort of thing. He came home and he's crying and he's being bullied. And so I asked him, you know, after he explained this whole thing, I was like, well, what do you want to do about it? He's like, I want to learn karate. So that afternoon we went around to different dojos and he chose the karate dojo that he wanted. And we went to karate together for years after that.

Pat Tenneriello (1:06:32)
Got it.

Can I ask you, Croix what's the relationship to faith and religion in your life

Croix Sather (1:06:58)
My dad was a pastor, my grandfather was a reverend. I grew up in the churches or in and around the churches, so I grew up a very religious background. I wouldn't call myself religious at all anymore, much more of a spiritual type understanding of what's going on. And I'm still actually trying to figure that out.

Pat Tenneriello (1:07:02)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (1:07:15)
whichever religion you're in, I think a lot of the religious structures are being misinterpreted and we're learning some bad things from it. I religion is a great thing, but I think our interpretation of some of those religious beliefs are hurting us. Like we talked about before, can you be rich and spiritual at the same time? It's like, well, yeah, absolutely you can. And we have a few examples of that.

Pat Tenneriello (1:07:32)
Mm-hmm.

Croix Sather (1:07:36)
And can you be broke, be spiritual? Or can you be a good person if you're broke? Or if you're rich? Or if you've done bad things and you have all these different things? And so I think a lot of the misinterpretation is what's actually hurting us. It's not the religion itself, it's not the spirituality, but what some people believe and then they say that you should be like. So one of reasons why I like Joe Osteen as an example

Because he has a message I like to hear that's uplifting and it's motivating and he's inspiring people and he's helping them.

to let go of the pain and the problems they've had of the past. It's like, that's a great thing. He went from a congregation that had maybe a couple thousand people to 45,000 people every weekend. How can that possibly be a bad thing? And yet he had his haters, not just some, but the whole church community was hating on him for years And so I like that as an example, because we don't have to go to this prescribed religion necessarily if we're still going along some sort of spiritual path.

to a higher enlightenment. Because I think that's the purpose of this human life that we have here, is to reach a higher level of personal enlightenment. what that means is that, how do you become the best person you can be while you're here? I know amazing people that are atheists, been atheists all their lives, or they're a Buddhist, or they were some other religion. Great people in every religion.

And I know horrible people in every religion. And so it's not about the religion, it's about the person in who you become.

Pat Tenneriello (1:09:03)
a nihilist might ask why, like why bother? Why is that important for me to strive to be the best version of myself? what's the point? what would you say to someone like that?

Croix Sather (1:09:15)
Earlier this year, I started donating blood on a regular basis. I used to donate here and there once, twice a year, just kind of a casual thing. But my kids got to a age where they could now donate. So I went with them and I'm going one and I'm going with the others. was donating every eight weeks for this year. when I got to the fourth blood donation, I started feeling really, really bad. And I didn't realize that was what was going on. So I went to the doctor, had extremely severe anemia to the point where I almost ended up in the hospital.

And I didn't realize that it was from the blood donations until we started figuring out what was going on in my life and why I was being so anemic all of a sudden. the reason I discovered this is because my running was getting worse and worse and worse, almost literally by the day. Like every day I was getting slower and slower. I'm like, what the hell is going on? So go to the doctor, we find out it's from donating blood. So don't donate blood every eight weeks. Wait six months between donating.

Pat Tenneriello (1:10:06)
Okay.

Croix Sather (1:10:06)
But

in that time, the reason I bring that up is because while my iron was so low in my body, I went through a really dark period in my mind. And I started thinking that, you know, what's the point? What's the purpose in this? You know, and I had other challenges that were going on in my life that I sorted out, but they're unrelated. And so I started having these dark thoughts. I started having, I wouldn't call them suicidal thoughts, but I started thinking like, if I got run over by a truck, who cares? It wouldn't matter. My life doesn't matter anymore.

And it was because my chemical balance was so off because that's the exact opposite person that I am. I'm like the most optimistic person you can be most generally speaking. But all of sudden I'm having these crazy weird thoughts and I can't get out of this weird funk that I'm in. And I don't know what's going on. And then once I started taking iron supplements and I got my blood back to normal, all of this went away. So people who think that, I think they're probably in some sort of either a biological or chemical imbalance. And that could be sleep.

I know that if I get eight hours and 15 minutes of sleep, I feel way better than if I get seven and a half hours of sleep or much less. And I used to live on four and five hours and that's just not healthy. If you're eating lots of sugar, which I know I'm almost guilty of that, if I don't sleep enough, I eat more sugar because I need the more energy and I have more caffeine. And so I know sleep is way underrated in terms of your health, way underrated. And so I know if I'm drinking too much, because I went through stages of my life, I drank way too much.

Pat Tenneriello (1:11:11)
Okay.

Croix Sather (1:11:33)
My dad was an alcoholic for a lot of his life before he recovered and then he helped other people. So he went from a preacher to preaching the gospel of not drinking, if you will, for the last 18 years, I'm sorry, 20 years of his life. And so he helped other people kick the habit of drinking too much, which is one of the most beautiful things he's done in entire his life, helping other people like that. But if we have these chemical imbalances, I think that's it. And so if you're feeling like,

like the kind of person you're talking about, if it's not the chemical imbalance, then it's the experiences that you've had in life that make you feel that way. So what can you do to feel better about your life? What can you change in your life that will make you feel better? Because most of us are in situations that make us unhappy. And how do we change that? And it doesn't have to be going blowing up your life, quitting your job, jumping in a car, being nomadic and go backpacking around the world or something. It doesn't have to be extreme.

It can be small steps.

change something. Change whatever it is. You don't like your job? Start looking for a new job. Don't quit. Go start looking. Find out what's out there. You don't like where you live? Go start looking, exploring other places. Go do something.

Your spouse can yell at you all you want. Your coach can yell at you, your teachers, your spiritual advisors, whoever. They can all yell at you all you want, but they're not going to change you. You have to change yourself. Now you may be inspired or you may have had somebody help you see a new direction to change, but you're the one that has to change. And if this nihilist doesn't want to change, well, that's their journey. And some people are on a difficult journey and some people end up doing things that everybody else might think is not a good idea. But for them,

It makes sense. And we might want to change them, but sometimes we just have to let that person be on their journey. And if you're that person and you're like this, at that moment at least, maybe forever, just be who you are. And if you embrace that without letting other people overduly influence you, then you might just realize that either that's who you are or you might realize that you need a change.

Pat Tenneriello (1:13:11)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I did want to make space in case there were any, sort of call to actions or any, additional information about yourself or.

your programs that you wanted to share with listeners or if they wanted to learn more about you, how they can go and do that.

Croix Sather (1:13:51)
You can always Google my name and watch my two Ted Talks that I've given. That's a great place to start. But I realized that related to a lot of the conversation we've had is that the reason people aren't living the lives that they want often is because they don't have a simple structure in place to be able to create the lives that they want. And so I have a program that I call Unstoppable Morning which is designed to help you get, and this is completely free. This is just go there, you can get the program, you can join the community, but it's designed to help you

get the clarity that you need to create the life that you want and then take some steps towards that. So as an example, every morning I journal and I'm actually journaling now with chat GPT. I'm experimenting with that to see if AI can help me a little bit and using it as a coach. And I'm having some successes and not, but the idea is that every morning you journal. It's like, what direction do I want to go and what am I doing that I'm successful with? What am I doing that I'm not successful with? And so the idea is that you get clarity on where you want to go.

and then you get clarity on what actions do I need to take to be able to get there. And that continuously changes my life. And it's a super simple thing that you do every morning. And so if you go to unstoppablemorning.com, then you'll be able to get that program free, get the full structure. And I'll be able to walk you through that on how a simple morning routine can change everything in your life.

Pat Tenneriello (1:15:09)
Okay. And I could put the links also in the description of the episode. Journaling is something that comes up. It's come up almost in every episode, I think, and I haven't recorded that many episodes, but it comes up as very beneficial to the guests who have been on the show. also structuring your journaling is important because usually a blank page can be quite daunting for people. So it sounds like

You have structure in how it is you journal and also a consistency to do it every single morning. And sounds like probably at the same time every day.

Croix Sather (1:15:42)
I usually start my day with that. When I sit down at the desk, it's usually the first thing I do. It takes me a few minutes, maybe 15 minutes at most. Then I do have a structure to it that I've developed over time. In fact, this journal was the bestselling journal on all of Kickstarter for the month that I launched it. It in the top 10 of all of Kickstarter, regardless of the product. It's really super popular and the structure is what helps you succeed more and be able to get a different result.

because it walks you through a proven process and that I've refined and refined and refined over the years. And I use the same thing, except I do it on a blank page now because I do the same format automatically. You know, what went well yesterday? It like, okay, what do I need to work on? What didn't go well? And so the things that show up for me often is, you know, I procrastinate, I'm spending too much time, you know, either on social media or news or something like that. So after a while of doing this, I'm like, I'm spending too much time watching the news.

and being distracted and being angry over it, especially in the climate that we're in right now, especially with politics. So three months ago, I stopped watching news. I was like, if this is getting in my way all the time, I stopped news. And I discovered that through journaling, that the news was creating more problems than it was helping by far. And I haven't been happier and more at peace, internal peace, since giving up the news. And through this whole election, when everybody else is going crazy in the United States, I'm just calm as a cucumber and it's not bothering me at all.

You got the left yelling, you got the right yelling, and you got people in the middle that they're just confused and frustrated about it. And I was just calm through this whole thing. And I didn't turn the news on until after the election just to get the actual stats. But now I'm back off news again. But that was discovered through the journaling.

Pat Tenneriello (1:17:22)
All right, sir. really appreciate the conversation. It was a pleasure having you on. I'd love to have you on again

Croix Sather (1:17:27)
So we'll have to do this again when you hit one year, your one year anniversary, we'll have to do this again. Thanks so much, Pat.

Pat Tenneriello (1:17:33)
Alright, I'll make a note of it.

All right. Bye, Croix.

Pat Tenneriello (1:17:38)
Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode with my guest, Croix Sather. I walked away from that conversation feeling uplifted and motivated and I hope you did too. I hope that it will help you stay on track for your 2025 resolutions and goals. And if you haven't had the chance to do so yet, I would encourage you to write them down. They're much more likely to be followed if you take the time to be deliberate and to write them down. to support the show.

Please share it with anyone that you feel it would resonate or help. And thank you so much for your support and for tuning in. Until next time.


People on this episode

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Pat Tenneriello

Host
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Croix Sather

Guest

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