Overcoming Adversity and Creating a Joyful Rebellion – James Walters’ Journey

Brad Minus: Welcome to another episode of Life-Changing Challengers. And we are really excited today. You've got James Walters with us today. He's an author. He's an entrepreneur. He's a podcaster. He's a speaker and he has his podcast is called a joyful. Rebellion. And he's come through some quite a bit of adversity, traumatic experiences.

We're going to talk about that. So James, how you doing today? 

James Walters: Brad, I'm doing amazing. Thank you for having me. This is going to be a really cool conversation. I'm excited for it. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, me too. So for all of you. I just mentioned that he had a podcast. We're two podcasters and what I just found out recently is we both got serious about it at the same time.

So this is going to be epic. It's going to be a lot fun. And you can hear it, right? You can hear how great he sounds on his mic, almost as good as mine. So it's really. So the audio quality of this is going to be fantastic. But anyway, James, Hey, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, maybe the compliment of your family, where you grew up and what was it like to be James as a kid?

James Walters: Yeah, I grew up on the East coast in Wilmington, North Carolina. So a couple of things going on. It was flat. In Wilmington, it's at the beach, so there's no hills, there's no mountains. And I spent my entire childhood, I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of miles I put on my bike, but I'm from that generation where, from the age of probably six years old, I was riding my bike to school.

I was and I can't tell my kids uphill both ways because it was flat. And the reason I keep mentioning that is because when I got to college, I moved more to the center of the state. And I, Thought I was going to take my bike and go places. And that was a hard stop because I discovered what hills were like to bicycle up and down and it wasn't fun.

So back to childhood though, I just had a happy go lucky existence. I was also from that. generation where your parents weren't around a lot. So I was hanging out with my friends after school, let myself in the house get a snack, watch some Scooby Doo and maybe do homework a little bit. And that was growing up until around high school.

When I went to high school, my, my high school has the claim to fame of is where Michael Jordan graduated from. So that was like 10 years before me. So I never, it wasn't a thing. He was just really getting famous when I was in the high school. So, but now it's all tricked out with Air Jordan.

Still like the gym, gymnasium and everything. I went back there and it's pretty. Pretty spotless and amazing. So that's cool. But I just call a carefree element to my childhood and my growing up. I did a lot of chores. Like I did a lot of chores now that I think about it, I'm the oldest of five kids and I did a lot of watching for other little kids and until I graduated high school, the minute I graduated high school, I.

Moved into the middle of the state, went to start a college and was like, okay, we'll see you guys later. And that was wrapped up childhood for me. 

Brad Minus: So, so what was that what was that dinner table? Like, did you guys have like regular dinners where did your mom was like, okay, no, listen, one time we have to sit around together as dinnertime and you guys all did that.

Or was it get to your, get, make your own, find your own way to get your dinner. How does that work? 

James Walters: It's funny. I do remember really consistent dinners until probably that fourth and fifth sibling or yeah, fourth sibling came along and my youngest sibling was 15 years younger than me. So I had.

Yeah, I had some miles some years behind me before he came along. But once that one came along, it was like a lot. I remember a lot of Domino's pizza, a lot of hamburger helper. Okay. And just quick stuff. And there were still some sit around the table, but the table was getting pretty crowded at that point.

So there was just a lot more like, go grab some things. And I was also in, in fairness. I wasn't around a lot because I was at the age where I could be out working and I could be out of the house just a lot more under my own transportation, things like that. So yeah, the later years were definitely less sitting around the table.

I 

Brad Minus: get that. Yeah, I I. Unfortunately, I was an only child, but I am like you, a latchkey kid exactly the same way. Come home, do my own thing. I was in band and I was playing the clarinet and the saxophone. So it was like, come home. All right. They don't want you. Don't do homework, practice both your instruments, blah, blah, blah.

Then do homework and start dinner. And mom would come in and finish dinner and go from there. But yeah, definitely. And chores, every weekend at gout and mow the lawn, weed, pull weeds, blah, blah, blah, all that. But yeah, same way. Also the bike, I was big on my bike and now I'm an endurance coach and I helped her athletes and I've.

I do triathlon, so I'm still on my bike but but I will tell you. Just so we get this out of the way, my favorite triathlon that I've done about four times is the, is Ironman North Carolina 70. 3, which is in Wilmington. 

James Walters: Okay, how about that? 

Brad Minus: Yeah, it's my favorite one. So it's got beautiful, it's beautiful scenery, great run, great, the run goes through the park and around and back, goes up and down some, a little bit of hills.

There aren't really that, that much, but the yeah the The swim is great because it's downstream, so, and so it's awesome. That's great. Yeah. My favorite one. I'll buy all, by any chance of the imagination. It's just my, yeah, it's just a great race. Done well, the whole bit. I used, it used to be called before Iron Man bought it, it used to be called Beach to Battleships.

James Walters: Okay. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. If you've ever heard, you might've saw it like sitting in a small little paper or something, but anyway. All right. So you went to school at what? UNC? 

James Walters: I went to a little school in Asheboro for photography. I figured out that in high school, if I really concentrated on photography, taking photography classes, I could get out of taking certain math classes.

And so I even took from the community college there in locally to get high school credit because I had already maxed out all my photography classes at the high school. So I guess I was creative at a really early age to try and figure out just how to not do math. That was my real motivation.

And through all the dark room, through all of the things I learned, I really fell in love with. photography and just creating different worlds, different realities through the lens. And that got me to this college is Randolph community college in Asheboro is where the zoo is in North Carolina.

That's what it's famous for now, but back in the nineties, it had one of the top. Photography programs all around the country. I had people who were in my class from Thailand and they came there specifically to that small little town. It was a dry town. You couldn't even buy a beer there at that point.

Yeah, I had a good photography program and that's what I went to do. And I got out of there and went into commercial photography. 

Brad Minus: Oh my God. That's amazing. When did you get your first camera? 

James Walters: Oh, that it would have been like one of those really cheapo Spider Man kind of thing that they took the one 10 cartridge, and had those awful pictures.

Just the worst pictures ever, but I had that and I was fascinated with it. Yeah. But. The pictures were so bad. I just never thought much about it until high school when I went into the pawn shop and I bought this Pentax that was the K 1000 exactly. And it was probably 50 bucks at the pawn shop and put the film in it and started developing that for the classes that I was taking.

I was like, Oh, I'm hooked now because that felt real. And that felt like I could really create something that. I was in control of not just snap with a button on the side of the Spider Man camera. 

Brad Minus: You and I have a lot more things because I also was in the photo club when I was in high school.

And my dad, it wasn't called the K1000 when he, cause he had bought it in Germany. Okay. Like right when I was born, it was called the Asahi. Oh, yes. When it, when they sound like producing them over here, they just turned around and called him the K 1000 and I didn't know that until I was given, I was told someone showed me one, but I got an AE one program 

James Walters: and 

Brad Minus: Yeah, so I started with that and then.

That's the one all the 

James Walters: cool kids had, like, if you weren't, yeah, 

Brad Minus: it was literally was the same camera, the cannons version of the K 1000, just a, an SLR. And it was very cool. And that's how I made my beer money through college. Nice. I got hooked up with a guy that had a photography business where he would go to all of the Greek events.

And football games and stuff. And he would take pictures and he wouldn't develop them there. He would send them over to frickin like, Walmart or Walgreens or something. And he'd get the, he'd get the the proofs and then he'd put them inside of a, put them inside of a, of a. and then give them to the, the chapters and say, okay, here's this, here's the here's a, here's an order form.

Just give me how many you want of what picture. And then he'd make them and he'd put like little things on them and like, that's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah. So I, and that's how I made my money. Yeah. Yeah. That was my, made my money through a college, but yeah. So yeah, we are, I'm, I didn't get creative.

You know what I mean? It was pure money. And I turned that into doing some weddings. Over the summer when I was at home and that did the exact same thing. I brought him into wall, I brought him into Sam's club, they made them and then they were also able to make my enlargements. So I would make the enlargements.

I put them inside of a nice looking album, hand it over and collect 200 and yeah, let's go. Yeah. But anyway, so you went into commercial photography. Did you start working for someone or did you hang a shingle and just decided that. That's what you were going to do. 

James Walters: Now, luckily North Carolina, this little known thing, but North Carolina has some of the largest photography studios in the world.

And the reason for that is in high point, they have the furniture market. So high point, North Carolina, very close to the center of the state, they. Have been known worldwide for making furniture for many years, and a lot of the towns around there were known for that. So I'm not sure when it started, but it was well over 60 years ago, they started having all of these different manufacturers come to.

High point for a market, they would showcase their goods and it still happens in the spring and fall every year. And because of that, so many manufacturers were there, they have studios that in, I started working for one of those right out of school. And these are. Hundreds of thousands of square feet of studio space.

It's like a little Hollywood. When you walk in, there's just room set that might look like a colonial house there. You go to the next one. It looks like a Spanish villa. You go to the next one. It looks like a log cabin and they've got carpenters Painters professional interior designers on staff to make these rooms.

Anything in ads are pretty much would come from a studio like that. You would not be able to tell that is not a real place. And so that was. fascinating to me. I love just being able to create this reality from scratch. Sometimes they would bring the walls in and we had a whole section of the building called wall street and it was filled with different walls.

Some were stucco walls, some were walls that have windows that look like church cathedral. They would have stained glass in them and they would just yeah, Pull it out. They would clamp them together. And by a little after lunchtime, you had a room that looked like something. And then it was time to set up the camera, set up the lights.

We even had huge pieces. It was like film, but they were huge. They were probably 56 feet wide and about 10 feet tall that we would put behind the windows. And it could be forest back there. It could be the beach. We could have the beach and 10 minutes later we could have forest. So, it was really cool to be able to just in the matter of a few minutes, change the look of something so dramatically, 

Brad Minus: That is super cool.

So you're the company that you worked for would rent the space and then hire you to go in and. Take actually with the furniture or, 

James Walters: well, actually I worked for them full time. And so this is a commercial studio they hire. So they had a lot of photographers on staff and I was one of those. And then what would happen is they would.

Sell basically like selling any photography, but a furniture company would come in and they would say, Hey, we need these, X number of new pieces photographed. We want the look to look and feel to be X, Y, Z. They would give direction. And then we would take it from there and just set everything up and make everything look good.

Brad Minus: Oh, okay. So you actually worked for that studio. I did. I worked for that 

James Walters: great business 

Brad Minus: model. 

James Walters: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: Own the studio and have a bunch of different sets already ready to go and ways to change them out and then say, Hey, you got a product, you got a model, you got something, just come on in and we've got photographers ready for you.

Walk out with your pictures. So the nineties, yeah. That's when we started, how was it? It was gotta be the nineties when we started with digital. It was 

James Walters: just 

Brad Minus: starting. 

James Walters: I started right out of school. This studio had invested heavily in digital and back then you had to because of a camera was around 30, 000 and By the way, you couldn't just hold the camera in your hand.

You had to tether it to at least 10, 15, 000 worth of computer to be able to run the camera. So, and also by the way, you couldn't hold the camera at all because it had to be very securely on a stand because those cameras literally took three pictures. It took a red, a green and a blue picture, and then the software put those together.

So nothing could be moving and it was a wild time, but. Yeah, that was 94 and we were shooting digital and it wasn't until around 90, no, not 90. It was around 2003 when we started getting the smaller cameras that you could handhold and that did not have to be tethered all the time to a computer. So it took a little while to evolve.

Brad Minus: I'm trying to remember because I remember my first digital camera and it was a sure shot or something like that. I don't know if it was a, it was one of the cheaper ones to start with. And it was so cool because it was like the first time that you can go and see it and go, no, don't like that one.

Delete. Whereas before is you're like, you've got your meter and you're like, at lights are just perfect. And you're looking through the lens before you're like. Click because film was expensive. 

James Walters: Yeah, and truly when I started with this photography studio, we were still shooting on the big four by five and eight by 10 cameras.

So there were some days when I wasn't doing anything digital at all, because some clients still didn't trust digital photography at that point. They still wanted their stuff the way they'd always done it. And for some of them, that was on big eight by 10 sheets of film. And let me tell you, that was fun because it died out pretty quick.

But while I was able to do it well, it died out quick for me, for some people, they'd been doing it their whole entire career. And it looked like you were Ansel Adams or something. You had to, throw the sheet over your head to black it out. And so you could see the focus and it was.

Super cool. And I'm bummed that people don't get to do that anymore. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. Large format. Yeah, that was, yeah, that was pretty cool. Cause I remember the first time that I got to handle a medium format camera and I was in high school and it was the same thing, right? It was transparencies that actually produced a positive, not a negative, a positive.

James Walters: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: And that was. I remember touching that Hasselblad the first time when I went, yeah, it's like when I was in the military, the first time I handled an M60, like the M16 was not that big of a deal, but the M60. Yeah, that would get you excited. When you're able to touch that, but it was the same thing with that when I was able to like, actually put my hands on a Hasselblad, like, format is cool 

James Walters: stuff.

Those things are built like a tank. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. Yeah. So, oh, that's amazing. So how long were you doing commercial photography? 

James Walters: I did that for 10 years before I realized I needed to switch it up. And the great thing I've always loved about photography. I've been in it for 32 years now is that there's so many little micro careers inside of.

Photography. So I realized in a lot of what we're going to talk about today is just awareness. And that's one thing that's transformed my life. But each time I can look back and I really made a big difference or change in my life, it's just been understanding and having awareness about something. And.

After 10 years of going to a studio and I would work with great clients. I would tell all these different clients stories. They were all different stories. I was going to the same place every day to tell different stories, essentially, and really help people sell their stuff. But I was also telling stories through photographs and I got bored of it.

After about 10 years. And when I was in school, it was in the early nineties and something that was really looked down upon. If you felt like you were going to be a serious photographer, I got air quotes up for anybody who's not watching us right now, but if you're going to be serious, you were either going to go into photojournalism, you were going to go into commercial, but what you weren't going to do is go be a wedding photographer because that's what you did.

If you weren't. If you were maybe struggling to have creativity or something like that, I don't know what would be the nicest way to say that. But in the nineties, wedding photography wasn't that interesting. It was just some people in really nice clothes standing beside each other with their hands folded over and smiling.

And then you call it a day. And so I knew I would never ever. Become a wedding photographer. And I know now with some wisdom, you never say never, because I realized that's the challenge I needed where for 10 years, I'd gone to the same place and I had total control over absolutely every facet. Of that photograph.

If I felt like the light was coming in a little too harsh, I would, I would tone it down. If I felt like there was a highlight on something, I would adjust it. And I realized that I needed to put myself in a situation where I had a whole lot less control, but at the same time still had to produce.

Great images. And lucky for me, right around 2004, two things were happening. Digital cameras were getting handheld to where they would produce good quality. And at the same time, didn't cost 12, 000 anymore. They cost about six to get a good one, but 12. So it was getting better. It was going in the right direction anyway.

And. The second thing that happened, and I think this is a byproduct of things going more digital, is clients were getting really excited about wedding photography that looked more like it was supposed to be in a magazine than people in really nice clothes looking bored and stiff. And just all lined up in a row.

So those two things got me interested and photographing weddings, which before I would have told you, no, I'll never do that. And there I was, I spent 15 years specializing in weddings because I got so addicted to the unpredictability of it. And at the same time having to deliver. It was just a complete pendulum swing from what I'd been used to.

Now, I was not going to the same place every day telling different stories. I was going to wildly different places all the time. And I was essentially, I was telling the same story. Because a wedding has a formula to it, right? It's got a pretty set format. So I was telling the same story for different people in different locations.

And my challenge was to tell it in different ways that matched the personality of that person. Not just make a cookie cutter. And also, maybe the groom shows up late. Maybe the bridesmaid slipped the bride some Xanax before. And she'd never taken it because but she was a little nervous. And so the bridesmaid was like, here, this helps me.

And, having to deal with those things and having to figure out, okay, the show must go on, how are we going to do this? And not that it was all on me, but that. That really did happen too. And with the bride and luckily she made it down the aisle, but for a little while there, it was touch and go.

She would just stare at the wall for about two hours before the wedding. And it all worked out, but we got stories, 

Brad Minus: man. I can't even imagine. Like I, I didn't do it very very long. I did it like the summers of my, of college. 

James Walters: Yeah. 

Brad Minus: And it was, I'd make enough with like four or five weddings and I was done.

But that was, and I tried to do the same thing, actually, because it was this, after a couple of them, you're like, all right, what can I do differently? Oh, yeah. So, but yeah never had that issue is pretty much everything. Everything always went pretty smoothly.

But what I wouldn't have given to have. Cool stories like that. Now, when I did Greek photography, that's a whole different story that I that I can tell you some pretty wild stories, but that's, but 15 years in something that you never thought that you would do. 

James Walters: And absolutely. And that's why I never say never anymore.

I try to tone that down because you just don't know how the, and it, I changed a little bit, the world changed a little bit to make that come together. So. I think if the world hadn't changed in the fact that the work was getting a little more what I would call editorial, and people were going for that, and then If I had to shoot film, because I did start out shooting film, I would maybe shoot like 200 pictures total because every time you hit that button, it was a dollar to get the proof to get the film, all that stuff.

And then with digital, you could. You could experiment. You could get a little crazy and you would get your safe shot and you're like, okay, I see my safe shot. Looks great. Let's do something that fills my cup creatively. And if you had to work it out a few times and see it on the back of the camera until you like what you saw.

Great. And then when the client saw it, they were like, Whoa, I've never seen anything like this. And that was really just the ability to experiment and color outside the lines without it costing, every single time you hit that button. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. I've, and I've seen a lot of that too, is where, closeups, like really solid closeups, macro photography of the bouquet and like getting down at the level of the cake and going across the and looking at it, like it almost looked like it was a runway.

Yeah, and you're you were parallel with the cake when it was, flat it's a flat at the top or looking up. Yeah, all these crazy angles that you could get and they liked him great if you didn't well, that's fine it didn't cost me anything to show them a proof and then when did now did you do?

So you were able to do like video proofs too, right? You're able to like you well I don't know what it was early in your career, but I'm alone later on You probably was able to put them online and say go take a look and see which ones you want 

James Walters: Early in the career, like the first thing they would see would be a video slideshow that was set to music.

So it was on a, I would send them a DVD and they would pop it in and essentially they would see all of their, and these were still pictures. They weren't video, but they were presented in a way that was a slideshow format and it was just entertaining. They would sit down for about an hour. And look at maybe 800, 850 of their pictures, they would see them all in the order they happen.

And then we would start talking about, okay, you've seen the pictures, you've enjoyed them. Now let's talk about what to do with them. And that was also about the time when. The technology was coming on to be able to post a gallery and it wasn't easy back then. And the whole point was you post it and people would buy prints still that was, it was very much a paper print.

Centric ecosystem, but yeah, those were coming on to where you could at least do that without having to have someone come over and look at physical proofs anymore. 

Brad Minus: Send them to the gallery. They use their little checkbox. The checkbox would come up. They'd say, okay, I want an eight by 10 of this. I want four, four by fives of this.

I want three, three by fives of this. I want some six, six by eights, and blah, blah, blah. And then you would do, well, and then. What was the, about the time? Cause I don't remember, but was there a time where things like shifted from, they still wanted their, like they wanted their wedding album to all they, they were cool with the DVD.

The DVD of their wedding. 

James Walters: Yeah, I would say that was, oh man I want to say that was probably around. Oh, seven. Okay. So it was about the time the millennials started getting married. I w I would market there because Prince. Weren't as big a deal and they were a big deal to the parents.

So you started to see that divide where the clients were asking, Oh, I really don't care about an album. I just want the digital is my parents will probably get an album and my parents might get some prints. So, yeah, that did necessitate a completely different business model. Then what had been going on in the past.

So, yeah, that in those years, of course, that was the economic crash times too. So, yeah, right around there was not only a generational shift in the people who are getting married at that point, but it was also. Just I guess maybe a whole mindset shift just economically. So it did change the industry.

Brad Minus: Wow. Just, I'm just curious, has never done it full time before. So how many do you think, how many weddings do you think you did in a year? 

James Walters: Oh, wow. So it was. Pretty consistent like in the heyday, it was pretty consistent around 35 like Oh, six was the max year ever at 60 and I didn't sleep. I did not sleep very much that year.

It was good year. Not mad about it, but that was the year where I think I did on Memorial day. For example, you did a Friday, you did a Saturday and you did a Sunday wedding because people were off work. On Monday and they could do a Sunday wedding. So it was that kind of stuff. But also back then there weren't as many photographers in the world.

So there were people who I would travel all over the place because I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina, but Charleston, South Carolina is not very far away as four hours from here if you drive. And that was a huge destination. People would bring me down there. All the time, because there weren't a ton of photographers.

Now there's no point because there, there are so many great photographers right around Charleston, unless they really love me. And they're like, I see something that you do that I can not get around here. That used to happen back 10, 12 years ago. And that doesn't happen as much. And I think that's cool because it's.

Elevated it in some ways. It's elevated the profession in some ways. It's not, but yeah, it all balances out. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. The phones getting really good cameras. Yeah. Really started to do some crazy stuff, but it brought out photographers of people that never thought they were photographers because the barrier to entry became very tiny.

When you and I started, I, cause I did, Yeah. When I was in high school, I built a dark room with my friends and every time we had to ask for more developer more more paper. Oh my God. God forbid the light went out in the enlarger because you had to bring the enlarger to the shop 

James Walters: because you couldn't 

Brad Minus: replace it yourself.

Oh, especially being a high school kid. 

James Walters: Right. 

Brad Minus: But, Oh my God. Yeah. And it was, so every time I turn around, Oh, I need more developer, and they're like, parents are like. You guys can't be doing this all the time because we'd spend hours and hours in the dark room just to see what we could do.

James Walters: Yeah, because it's so fun. It was magic. It was the next best thing to alchemy. You just create something out of almost nothing. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, it was, yeah, it was pretty crazy. But so, so that's 15 years. So that's, that only gets us to 2019, 

James Walters: what 

Brad Minus: happened at that 

James Walters: point? Well, actually there was a the thing that sort of shifted everything for me happened right after the 2008, 2009 period.

And so that, that was the time in my life where I was at the. Top of the game with weddings and just crushing it every single weekend. And then just a series of events started happening in my personal life. Professionally, everything could not have been better. It was smooth sailing and I was having a blast personally people around, you get to a certain age.

And as you yourself grow older, everyone around you does too. And the people who are significantly older than you, like your grandparents, they don't last forever. And so that was the period of my life where I, the first thing that happened, this was in Oh eight was I had a brother who overdosed. And so he died.

That kind of sent some shockwaves through the family. It was not. wildly unexpected, but at the same time you don't know how you're going to handle something when it actually happens. And so I, I was always the steady person low on the drama, emotion, that kind of thing. So I found myself.

Watching as a lot of members of my family unraveled because of that. It wasn't far behind that, like three months. My grandmother who I was really close to, she died because she was at that age where you do that. So again, not wildly unexpected, but another hit just three months and it wasn't long after that.

Let's see. It's just four months after that, that my daughter was born. And so that was supposed to be joyful, right? But the issue there is the, that was also the time that the economy was teeter tottering on the brink of destruction. And I was starting to feel it in the business. So you got this separate thing with people dying around me.

That's not happening to me, but it's happening around me, certainly affecting what's going on. Then you got the business element where I'm like, okay, we don't know what the future looks like. Both my wife and I worked for the photography company. We were both self employed. So then you got this new little bundle of joy coming along that, I don't know if anybody out there doesn't know this, babies are wildly expensive. And so, yeah, that produced a little bit of stress. And so our daughter was born, that was in July and the day after she was born, we were still in the hospital and all the good stuff going on there. And then we got the call that my wife's.

Grandfather had passed the day after, and so we weren't able to go there, be there. We were in the hospital, just recover, wife was recovering, and so we got home a couple days later, went straight to a funeral with a brand new baby, and it was just one thing after another like that. For the span of about three years, and so from 2008 to 2011, it was pretty much one thing after another.

Very similar to that. And more grandparents died. My mom, it was one of those things. And I found myself stressed out, bummed out and just, still having to perform or still feeling like I need to be performing at 110 percent at work because as I look back on it, I was using work to numb myself out from everything else that was going on and I thought, well, if I'm being productive and it is actually my responsibility to take care of my family and I do that through, providing through this work, I do that made me feel good about it.

And so I checked out of Every other part of life. I was still showing up at work a lot and way too much actually, which started to affect relationships, right? Because that's how that works. If you don't have balance the wheels are going to fall off at some point and whatever area you don't have the balance in.

So it was probably around 2012, 2013. We're getting into 2013. Now, when I realized that my marriage and everything, because of those Prior years, me checking out me not being the best version of me. Well, now I'd done irreparable damage to that relationship, which I thought, as a guy, I think in my podcast I've heard this over and over guys think, oh, well, we'll just, we can fix it.

Right. We'll, I'll turn my attention here and we'll focus on it and we'll get this fixed and it'll be all better. And some things you can't fix. And as men, I think we scratch our heads and we're like, what do you mean, I've got duct tape. We can fix anything. Right. Until we. presented with evidence to the contrary.

And that's what I was presented with and right around 2013. And so that threw me into this just complete identity crisis because we had been married. We got married young. We got married at 20 years old and we owned a business together for the last Like 15, not 15, 10 of those years. And so our identities were wrapped up in the work we did with each other and the relationship we had with each other for the better part of all of our lives, over half of our lives at that point.

And so I'm thinking, okay, well, who am I now? I'm not. Like I'm not this, I'm not this thing. I always said I was or thought I'd be. So it was a crisis of identity. And it was also me realizing that I was in just a depression, like a low level funk, high functioning depression. I wasn't happy about anything.

And I realized I needed to do something about it because this can't be life. This can't be all there is to life. So I started reading all these self help books or reading books about happiness. And. It was probably the fourth or fifth book about happiness that I read And i'm realizing okay, this isn't working and then I thought about okay What do all of these books have in common?

and they all and I could never figure it out, but these Big thick books, like 200 pages each telling you how you can be more happy and all these cycle, like psychological studies and things that people have done over the years. And what they all boil down to is you just have to decide to be. And I was like, well, that's.

Terrible because I'm having trouble with that and the other part that they all boil down to is you have to do things you have to decide that you're going to be happy, but you also have to decide to do things that are going to allow you to feel that way. And when I brought those two things together, the deciding.

And then the doing, that's when things really started to get magical again for me, because it was like reading another book's not going to do it. And it wasn't until I, like, I don't want to say discovered it, but that's what it was. I discovered, Oh, it's all on me. I've got to do this. Can't just read about it.

Can't just, I can read about how to fix a car, but unless I fix the car's still broken. Right. So I was the car. I had to fix and when I started working on myself, when I started really putting that investment of time, that investment, getting out of my comfort zone in the ways that I realized I just wasn't able to check out by working anymore.

That's when things started to turn around and that's when creativity started to go way up happiness when I lost the Relationship, you know that was in and there's a certain amount of you've just got to accept it And then you've got to move on and there's a certain amount of I guess comfort in that just knowing Okay, the future is unknown.

But if we think about it, it always is unknown it's never really known. And once I got comfortable with that fact, then I was able to get things going again. 

Brad Minus: Serenity, man. It's absolute serenity. And, the serenity prayer has the stereotypical, it's linked with recovery. It's linked with addiction.

Right? But if you actually listen to the words and you actually say the words, it's good for everybody. Right? God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. Right? So it looks like that's where you are starting to begin.

And then, of course, you realized, and this is like, I'm just totally me. Giving you mirroring back is the ability that you read all this stuff, but you didn't execute anything that was in the books. You didn't apply them when you finally realized that, Hey, if I apply some of this stuff, this could actually work.

So that's, it's, that's my question. What are the things that you, what are the, some of the first things that you started to apply that started the, started that, that journey? Back to joy, 

James Walters: That's the part that I love the most because they were all really simple things. And the first thing that I stumbled on in all of this, because it's, you're right about the reading the books.

I just on sub conscious level, I was thinking, okay, I'll read this book And I'll feel better like it's a book of spells or something, but it's not a book of spells. It's just information and information is useless if you don't do anything with it. So that was the first thing is do something. So I was really intentional about setting goals that we're going to fill.

My cup, not necessarily professional goals. I'd always had a lot of professional goals and let's you know, grind. I was really good at the grind and what I had to do was turn that off or turn it way down. So I turned it way down and I figured out, okay, now what are my. I didn't have any hobbies. People like, what do you do for fun?

Are you talking about? And I had to figure out, okay, what does James do for fun now? Because I need to do something. And that's when I started writing. And that's also when I started doing projects that were, I call them micro adventures and I love micro trips. I love micro adventures. I'll go to a new town and just walk around and explore it.

For a day, a weekend, and luckily I've got the ability, I've got a lot of cool places around that I've never discovered around here. So I started doing that. The other thing that I stumbled on to in the course of all the research that I did was the philosophy of stoicism and If you know anything about stoicism it predates Christianity.

It's like four, I think three or 4, 000 years old, but it's a Greek philosophy and. There are a lot of famous Greek and Roman philosophers who adopted it, and it is so it's not a religion at all. It's simply a philosophy. And one of the main components of it is you cannot really control anything. Except for your thoughts.

You can't control your feelings, but you can control how you think about your feelings. You can control whether or not you question your feelings. In other words, and even in more modern times, a good quote by Viktor Frankl, who wrote a book called what's the book called the man search for meaning. Okay.

Yep. Yeah, so his famous quote is, between stimulus and response, there's a little pause that you're in total control of what you do or how you think about an issue. So, in essence, I started realizing that in the world there, there's nothing that is good or bad. Everything is pretty neutral until we.

Judge it as good or bad or until we judge it as helpful to us or not, or until we judge it dangerous or useful. And so when I started to look at the world through that lens, I started to really care a whole lot less about things that didn't. Involve me, and I also started to realize that most things don't involve me once that was really eye opening and is really powerful because things that I would be stressed out about that.

I've thought I was responsible for had responsibility. They didn't care about me. Why should I? We didn't have anything to do with each other in so many instances. And when I really started thinking about, okay, what am I responsible for and how can I do that the best? Then I was focusing my energy on the right stuff.

And not only that, I was starting to see the payoff and the payoff, in my opinion, was good because the payoff, again, the payoffs neutral until you. Give it a judgment and the judgments always come through our perceptions of what's good and bad. So once I broke life down in those terms, things got pretty cool.

Brad Minus: I can only imagine. So I, I wish more people would take on some stoicism, even if it's just portions of it, because the amount of stress that goes around. With things that have nothing to do with anybody or things that will not change their lives in the least people get really stressed out about political climates.

All of a sudden things happen and, elections go different ways and all of a sudden you've got one side that's just absolutely crazy. Nutty. If you see some of these things that are there, the rants that go on in social media, it's just ridiculous that people feel that strongly about it.

And if you really go back, if these people really would go back and think about their lives. not gonna do a dang thing for them. All four years of what they think is gonna be the worst. Them personally, most of them 80 90%. It is not gonna mean a dang thing either way. 

James Walters: No, 

Brad Minus: And that's, and that's So that I think is a positive there, right?

You want to, I would think that you tell me if I'm off here, if you're if you want to take on a fight, that's certainly your choice. You want to take on a fight. Okay. But you allow yourself to be affected because that's your fight. You've got, you've got a dog in the fight versus, It's something that's going on around you, but most likely is not going to affect you in the least.

James Walters: Right. And that's a huge part in stoicism is about taking action stoicism. A large component of it is about justice. So if you see injustice, you do want to take action if it's appropriate, because the only again, the only thing we can control it. Is ourselves, our words and our actions. So we can't control the outcome.

And if there is an injustice, and if you do want to do something about it, definitely take action. But don't get bummed out when it doesn't go your way, your voting example, or the election example is a great component of that. If someone says, yes, I want this future for myself and my family. Well, the action is to go.

And if you've done your action and it doesn't go your way, okay, you, you did everything you could do and now just go about your life. Go do something that is going to add to your life and people around you. 

Brad Minus: I get it. And that's why I think people should be thinking, it's it's like really take a look around, really look at what is stressing you out and figure out how much of it does it actually affect you.

Yeah. Right. And when you really look about it, it's the only things that you take action on are what's gonna affect you. Right. So I want to step back real quick because we totally, I totally missed the story of and I just you could do a 30, 000 foot view is, when did you meet your your I'm going to say, is it first wife or is it wife period 

James Walters: wife?

Yeah. Wife. So we well, you said it was, you were 20. We were 20. When we got married, we met on the playground of sixth grade. We were both 12. Okay. And we were both gross to each other. Obviously, we were in sixth grade. So, ew, but two years later we were in junior high and Pete, the opposite sex becomes a little less gross around that age, around 15 we were 14, 15 at that point.

And so we dated for like, You didn't date in eighth grade. You went together. I don't even know what they call it anymore. But which means you basically tease each other on the playground for maybe two weeks and or what it wasn't a playground in eighth grade, but it was the schoolyard.

Right. And so, yeah, that was brief. And then maybe a year later, we. We're like, okay, let's have a summer romance and going into the ninth grade. And before long, we were pretty much dating throughout high school. And then we both went off to separate colleges, separate cities, and 18 years old, you're going to find yourself.

And so we broke up for a little while and that went okay for. Maybe eight, nine months till we realized, no, we really like each other. And by the time college was over, we were walking down the aisle, getting married. See, that's 

Brad Minus: such a sweet story. That's such a great story. So then now, so let's, so you brought her into the business with you once you got done with the commercial side, right?

James Walters: Actually, she no, she didn't work there. She worked in a completely separate industry. And it was when we had our first child and that was in oh three. And she said, if we're ever going to do something, cause we'd already always been talking about going into our own company, into our own business for photography and doing weddings, and she said, if we're ever going to do it, we should probably go ahead and do it while it's.

Scary now, because after the baby's born, it's going to be even scarier. And so she was really the one who pulled me into the business and yeah. So, she was trailblazing back then and she jumped in. She did all of the business stuff. I did most of the creative stuff. So I got the work. out there and got the work sold.

She managed everything and we were great team for a long time. 

Brad Minus: Yeah. That sounds that way. So when you said, so in all this stuff started to happen and you were getting you were getting hit with tragedy left and right. And this was whole thing that you said that you dove into work. Now she's part of your work.

Yeah. So she's still seeing you every day, but yet you're finding yourself drifting apart. Yeah, we really 

James Walters: became there was a point there where we were business partners more than a married couple and we would, I remember we would even industry things. We would divide and conquer those. So we wouldn't show up necessarily at industry events together.

Like she would go, she would take this group because again, we had kids at home at that point. So I would stay at home with the kids while she went to one industry event. She would stay at home with the kids while I would go to this different one. So we divided and conquered. And over several years of that, plus all the other stress, we just realized that we were no longer functioning as a group.

As a married couple, we were functioning. Okay. As parents, we were functioning. Okay. As business partners, but as a married couple the way things probably should have looked, we weren't doing it. We weren't putting the effort and the focus on that because we were fighting fires on so many other fronts 

Brad Minus: that and that's just.

I don't know what to say about that. I, it's just like, yeah. You became, you're basically business partners, roommates, and co part co parents. Yeah. And that's the way it was now. So you had mentioned that there was a certain point where things started to fall apart. Did it actually fall apart?

Did you end up getting a divorce or are you, we 

James Walters: did? Yes. And so there, there came a part where. Like I was saying, I thought, okay we'll fix it. We'll do the therapy. We'll do the things that people do when they're having this. And for me, I was so checked out for a lot of years that I didn't realize all the neglect and damage that had been done to that part of the relationship.

And there just came a point where she said, look, I. You're too late on this because her cup was so empty and you're looking back. I get it. I totally get it. But I was still in that mindset. Oh, things can be fixed. And she was like, yeah, no, I don't think you're hearing me. And so that's when I realized that, okay, they can't be fixed.

Let's just do. This in the best way possible. And so that's when I started going through my journey of trying to figure out, okay, who am I now? What am I about? Like, how am I going to keep going and how am I going to keep going without this really feeling like crap every single day? And so that was the, that the end of that relationship was.

Kind of the beginning of my journey that I'm on now. 

Brad Minus: And the kids were what, like 11 and 12 at that point? 

James Walters: They were one was five. So daughter was five at that point and which would make them a son 10. So he's he's 21 now. So, and he is it, you asked me about UNC. He is attending UNC now, so he's just down the road.

Nice. Yeah, that's 

Brad Minus: awesome. So. Yeah, that's so that's got to be tough. So you're going through this journey. You're co parenting. Did she end up with full custody or did you do 50 50? 

James Walters: We are so, I told someone yesterday who I've known for years because I'll see her at jobs that I do for photography jobs and she's in the event planning space now.

So we do work together sometimes and someone asked me, well, is that weird? And I was like, no, we've always been great. business partners more than we were a married couple. And that kind of goes back to the parenting stuff. We didn't really have any formal arrangement. The kids, one of them lives at college now, but the other one is back and forth whenever we don't have like a certain day, she's got to be anywhere.

I pick her up from school most of the, well, about half the time. And. Get to see her that way. So we don't have a formal arrangement. We just do it as needed because like she might be out traveling. I might travel and then we just work it like that. So there wasn't that animosity. There wasn't any. I don't know, stuff I've heard about with other people there.

We just didn't have that. We didn't have that drama and we've never been drama. People were pretty chill. So, thankful for that. Yeah, that's 

Brad Minus: great. That's a fantastic model. It's just the idea that, Hey, listen, we're just going to work it out and that's it. Hey, you know what? I got this thing coming up.

I'd like to take One of my kids. Is it okay? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's how it's been the whole time or, I'm going out of town. Can you take them? Yeah. Great. That's fantastic. That's probably the best thing ever, compared to a lot of people that I've talked to where it's been fights and oh my God, I can, I think some of the people that I've interviewed, I give you some like horror stories when it goes around custody of the kids.

It is awful. So yeah. I gotta give you kudos for that. 

James Walters: I think the fact that we both did, we were business owners. And so we understood like when you've got to work, that is important. And if you can get around it and. Be with the kids. Cool. But if you can't and you have to work, like that is what provides for the kids and your lifestyle and things like that.

So we were both in that world for long enough that we understand that need for flexibility from the other parent. And whenever I hear people who don't, it seems to be people who maybe have a job that's a little more rigid in its schedule and inflexible, and they need that. Comfort of knowing that they have a set schedule that they can repeat out into eternity.

I don't know if that's the deal, but I think that was one of the really big factors for us to just be able to say, Hey, this we'll deal with the holidays. We'll deal with vacations as they come up and it's all good. We both know what team we're on when it comes to making sure the kids get what they need.

So, 

Brad Minus: and it's the best thing for the kids. 

James Walters: Hopefully we'll see. Time will tell. 

Brad Minus: Well, you're, it sounds like you're just about out of the, you're just about empty nesters to both of you. So it's, you're getting close. But that's great. Great college. And so you gotta be proud of, you gotta be proud of your son.

Your daughters is probably not too far away. So that's great. Are you so give me a typical day now. Now that you've found your rebellious journey into joyfulness. Yeah. How, what is a typical day like now? What do you wake up? Do you have a morning routine that you do that to keep the happiness rolling or are you doing the same thing you do with your kids?

It's just willy nilly. 

James Walters: No I've got a totally kidding. No, yeah, I've got, okay. So it's, not every day I wake up the exact same time, but it's typically around five 30 ish. And I don't, I'm a photographer, I'm a visual person, so I don't have an auditory alarm clock, but I do have my my, I'm not going to say her name, but we all know who she is from Amazon, the little box and she turns on the lights in my bedroom.

And so there's no noise. There's just all of a sudden light. On in my bedroom, then I know it's time to go jump in the shower, get things going for the day, but I do have a pretty tight morning routine. I sit down, I make myself coffee and I pour the 1st cup while that 1st cup is cooling off. I will look at my to do list.

I, I keep an old school, just pad of paper for the couple of tasks that have to get done that day. I like to Tactile, just write it out longhand and even more so love to cross it off when I finish with it. So that's huge. A lot of 

Brad Minus: studies, a lot of studies have said that the dopamine rush that you get from going.

This absolute pen to paper down is so much bigger than you going to your phone and going click. Yes, it gives you a dopamine rush, but it's not that same as going 

James Walters: and I have absolutely tried the other way to making and it's so easy to make your list too long if it's on digital on your phone, but if it's on a.

piece of paper, you can say, Whoa, there, you can't possibly, you're either going to overwhelm yourself or you're going to like, what are you going to do with this huge list? So I try to keep it short, but then I go from that to, I have a journal right beside me. And the most powerful thing, if anyone gets anything out of this conversation, I want to tell them the thing I learned about journaling.

And I never. Thought I was going to be a journal or I was like, who, what's the point who needs to read my thoughts until I realized I need to read my thoughts and I don't need to read them. I don't need to read last week's thoughts. I need to read last year's thoughts. And it was during COVID I'd read this book.

It's called the artist way. By Julia Cameron. Sounds like you've heard of it. 

Brad Minus: Well, what was funny was I was about to ask you about that. And I literally, I wish I could show you the screen because I couldn't remember the exact title. And I'm like, I know it's something way. And I was like, and I literally looked it up cause I was going to ask you about it.

I've got it sitting here on the screen. 

James Walters: I 

Brad Minus: swear to God, it is right here. The artist way, a spiritual path to higher creativity by Julia Cameron, because I have it myself. And I was like, Oh, I'm going to ask him about this. And here's 

James Walters: the thing, I read that book in probably 2016 and I dropped off about halfway through because it does start to talk a lot about spirituality and I just wasn't there in my head.

In 2016, I was coming off of, I was reading all those books about happiness. I was like, I've got no time to think about the creator or any of the stuff she starts talking about. But the thing that really stuck with me is she spends the first part of the book talking about just writing one page a day.

And I was like, okay. That's achievable. I, even I could do that. And, with my, I found out at age 40, I have attention deficit disorder, the, because I went to therapy and the lady was like, do you think, have you ever considered you might have ADD? And I was like, no, cause that's fake. That's what all the kids have so they can misbehave.

And she's like, no, actually. You may want to do some research and she was nice about it. She was gentle, but that's a whole nother rabbit hole that I had to work out, which I have without medicine. So that's been cool. But with the morning pages is what Julie. Yep. The morning pages, you just write one page and you start at the time, just spit out whatever's on your brain.

Doesn't even matter. It can like some days I was like, Oh, the coffee is really cool. And the traffic outside sounds like the ocean. If I think about it the right way. And I would get to the bottom. And sometimes I say, I really don't have anything more to say. And then some days I would talk about things that would frustrate me.

Yeah. And some days I would talk about hopes and dreams if I was in that kind of a mood, that's all it was. And what I suggest to people is if you can't write a page, like my journal is eight and a half by 11, it's a standard size page. And if that seems like a lot to you, get a smaller journal, just get a smaller page and fill it, fill her up and put the date on the top.

And then so backtracking, it was 2016 when I read that book. It wasn't until 2020 when. I and the rest of the world had nothing else to do that. I really, and started incorporating journaling into my morning practice. Cause that's, I had a morning practice that whole time. I would, I do about 10 minutes of meditation.

I do the coffee that's important. And I look over the list of things I have to do that day. And I look at my calendar to see what commitments I have, like time based commitments. So I make sure that I'm prepared for those. And. When I incorporated journaling in 2020, because I had so much more time now, I just kept that practice up.

And here's what I want everyone to hear from this is it wasn't until a year and a half later when one day I was just I had extra time. It must have been a weekend or something. And I said. You know what? I'm going to, I'm going to flip back. Like I just flip back a just random amount of pages. It's like, I'm going to read what I was doing here back here in March.

Let's say it was November of the following year. And I read it and I was like, I'll be darned this. I'm talking about the same thing that I just wrote down on this morning's page 11 months ago. Why? Is that the case? And so I shuffled some more pages and I looked at it. I was like, Oh my gosh, that I was talking about I was talking about a goal that I wanted to hit, I was trying to get my black belt in karate, and I was talking about it 11 months ago, and I was still talking about that in, in that time frame that I just written that morning's journal entry.

I was like, dude, I got, I'm obviously just on a hamster wheel here. And so I had to have a pretty tough conversation with myself. Like, is this. What you're going to write next year. Do we just want to go ahead and fill this in for next year and say, Oh, I'm hoping to get my black belt. So it was not too many months that I buckled down, got that black belt, check that off my bucket list for life.

And I was like, okay, it was such a teachable moment to go back and see that I was living the same year over and over at least two years in a row. And that snapped me out of that habit so quick because now if I feel like I'm talking in my morning pages about the same thing a couple of times, I know I have to focus on it and just get it done or let it go.

That's an option. And so I've had to really teach myself, okay, letting something go as an option or just get it done, which is how I finished my second book about 2 months ago. 

Brad Minus: Nice. That's crazy. And that, that we're the same way. And by the way, at 40. I was diagnosed with ADD as well.

No, it was crazy. Well, what happened was it was, I would be sitting, working on something or do something and I could focus, but it'd be in very small spurts and I'd be like daydreaming and like, and I looked down and I'm like, Oh, I need a pen. And I go into the office and I would come out of the office.

For three hours, because I would find something else sitting there and like, Oh, wait, what's that? Oh, that's cool. The shiny thing. And like, Oh my God, it's three hours. I got to get this work done. And I listened, I'd go back to the fricking, to the desk or where I was. A lot of times it was on the kitchen counter and I'm sitting there and I'm like, Wait, I went, wait, I went to, Oh, I needed a pen.

I didn't bring back the pen. That's what it was. Yeah. And you're like, all right, go back in there. And you're like, don't get it. Don't look at the shiny stuff. Don't look at the shiny stuff. Don't look at the shiny stuff. Just get the pen and get out of there. Sometimes it would work.

Sometimes it wouldn't. But yeah, that's when I, that's when I was like, Hey, something's wrong here. This is happens to way too much. I'm not getting anything done. And 

James Walters: yeah, 

Brad Minus: so I, yeah, I get it. It sounds like 

James Walters: a. It sounds like we need to start a support group or something. It's right. You 

Brad Minus: know what? I bet you there's, I bet you there's something on Facebook if you want to look, but I don't know how good that would be, but but yeah, don't know.

That's just nuts, but that's great. So, I gotta give. As far as that example that you gave, you got to give yourself, you got to give yourself a little bit of slack because it was the pandemic. I don't know what dojo was going to be open during that time that you were going to be able to get your black belt.

So I 

James Walters: think the biggest thing was I was, it's typically a four year trajectory to go from white belt. And this was a promise I made my younger self to go back and in my forties and get my black belt. Because when I was eight years old, my uncle started. To take Taekwondo, he was in his twenties at that point.

And he was just, I was little kid and he was like, come along. And so we would go on the weekends and eventually I got up, I got like two belts away from black belt and then he joined the military. And so I didn't really have a ride anymore. And it was easy enough to not bug my parents and just let that fall away.

And so when I got into my forties, I was like, you know what? I'm going to, I'm going to keep a promise to that little kid. That was me. And I'm going to go get that black belt. And so I started and. Then usually takes about four years, 2020 was year six, and I was still screwing around. I wasn't going to all the classes and stuff that I should have been.

And it was shut down for the first few months, but then they figured out some things to do. So it wasn't it wasn't completely like out of line. But yeah, it was October of that year. Of 2020 that I was able to finally get that black belt. 

Brad Minus: Well, congratulations on that. Yeah. I, and yeah I was 17 and I got my red belt in Taekwondo and I and then I found this other subject that I really loved.

It was called girls. Yeah, it was girls. And I fell away from it and then I went and finished when I was in college. So. We have that in common as well. So that's super interesting. But yeah that's nuts. Wow. But see, so you got your black belt. You you wrote a book and that that the, that's the meditation of the mundane.

James Walters: It is yeah, this. This little guy just came in about a month and a half ago, got all the copies and yeah, that was a seven year thing. That was another one of those things that I was writing in that journal. Like, Hey, I wrote some stuff down on the meditations book. And from the time that I started the projects.

And until I got these finished books, I would do a little here, do a little there. There was no urgency. And of course, this isn't something I'm getting paid for. This is this was one of those hobbies that I was talking about, I need to do something for me. And I just realized, you know what, I really want this to happen and I want it to happen so I can feel good about it, but also, put something out in the world that.

People can enjoy, and it's never going to happen if I just keep sitting here journaling about how I hope it's going to happen. It's like reading those happiness books and hope I get happy. It's, I got to do the work. So I did the work. Yeah. 

Brad Minus: So, all right. So you have got that. Now you've got the, you've got that.

You've got another. Another book that you're that's coming out soon called Plotting Your Joyful Rebellion. And you can you will, we'll talk about that in a minute, but then you started to, you started 2000, let's move to 2023 and you decided to start podcasting. 

James Walters: How did that come 

Brad Minus: about?

James Walters: Well, I needed, I need, I needed a whole different level of hobby, but I love to, the thing about being a photographer is I get to dip in and out of people's lives and I get to take photos. And I've always been fascinated about that because, or by that, because people can be Super interesting, or some people can be super boring, but do things that are super interesting to me.

And so as a photographer, I get to go in, learn a little bit about their story, maybe spend a couple of hours with them, get the photographs. And then I'm done. I'm back to my life. Podcasting is a lot like that as well, where you get to have a conversation with someone, get to know their perspective, which I love.

I just love to understand how and why people think. The way they do, and especially people who have overcome something big in their life, that's something you and I both love to talk to people about and the way it came about with a joyful rebellion is the experience that I went through in my life was a wake up call in the sense that I was just floating along.

In life, things were working out fine, but things weren't always working out the way I wanted them to and until I realized that's just how life is wasn't making me happy, but there was also a certain element where I realized that I was in a movie like my whole life was a movie and I felt like someone else wrote the script.

To the movie. It wasn't me. And then I thought, every movie I've ever watched, someone wrote the script to that. And then there were actors that came in, they acted out that script. And I thought to myself, what if I'm the one that writes the script for the next chapter of my movie? Or book or whatever you want to call whatever this play we call life is, and when I started thinking and framing what was going to happen next for me, what were my next actions when I started framing them that way?

I thought, you know what? This kind of feels risky. This feels a little rebellious because in some ways I had to go against I A lot of things I've been taught as a kid, save your money, which that's all good advice, but a joyful rebellion. When I thought about that podcast, I thought, so many people I know have gone through an experience like I did.

So I'm not unique. And so many people that I knew were high achievers and when they got to where they thought success was going to be, whether that was a specific bank account number or a specific house in a, in the right zip code in town, or when their kids got into a certain school or what, whatever it was that they thought success was going to be, and they looked around and they felt a little empty and they had to ask themselves, okay, what Like I've checked all the boxes.

I've worked my butt off my entire life. I got the job. I've got the wife. I've got the picket fence. I've got the car. Like what? And why don't I feel amazing? And I had a lot of friends like that. And the joyful rebellion part is, okay, what do you do next? You've checked all the boxes that other people told you we're going to make you feel better.

Look appear and feel successful, but if you only look and appear successful, but you don't feel it, you've got to figure that out and that's what the podcast hopes to do is I talk to people every week who have either been through that experience and they work their way out of it or they help other people.

Work their way out of their own experiences. And so those conversations are always fascinating. 

Brad Minus: Yeah, exactly. And that's literally, we almost have the same podcast and just in a different way. I'm, like you said, you're looking for people that had this, have an issue and then they get out of it.

Mine is, same thing. They've had some adversity, trauma, injury, something, and then they had to work their way out of it in a certain way. Just like you did. Right? You went through it, you actually, you were, you lost a lot of people, had tragedy after tragedy. It brought you down into this funk.

You, you ended up, you worked your way into divorce and heartache and, and everything else. But then you found a direction, a journey that would bring you back to, a point where you were doing more. And you found your own happiness. So that is, and that's exactly what this is.

My other thing is that I always look at, I love for people to do things that are external to what they're doing in their life. So, and oh my God. Hey, audience members, if you want to just, if you want to skip ahead, because I'm going to tell the story again so. One of the, one of the stories that I continually talk about is, somebody, her her name we call her cat.

She was five, one and she was 280 pounds and she had tried all the regular stuff. And she just, at one point she turned on the television, she saw the world championships of the iron man. And she goes, wow, that's really cool. That's really cool looking. And she started doing some research and she was a great researcher and she's like, oh.

You know what? That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do an Ironman triathlon right there. Now instead, so instead of doing the normal where she would, all right, I'm going to go and get a dietitian. I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to work off this weight. Then I'm going to start this blah, blah, blah.

She went, nope. And she just started, learn to swim. Had a little bit of a biking background as far as mountain biking goes. Had a little bit of a running background, that was years ago. And then she just, she goes, well, that's what I'm going to do. So the goal isn't to lose weight, get fit, get tone, all this other things.

It's the goal is to get to that start line and finish the race. So she did all the other stuff on the way she dropped the weight. She learned about how to fuel her body the right way, all that on the way to getting to her ultimate goal. So the goal is always in the head, get to the start line, get to the finish line, get to the start line, get to the finish line.

That's what it's all about. So it's something that way out of her comfort zone, way out of something she never would have thought she'd ever done. Yeah. And yet, yet 18 months after that point, she stood on the beach at 120 pounds. In a size small wetsuit and she finished the, and she finished the race in 11 hours and 35 minutes, which is unheard of for a first year for a first time.

Usually first time is 13, 14, 15 hours. She did it in 1135. And she looked amazing. And it's, it was crazy. So those are the things, I've had people that have climbed to have just out of the clear blue sky said, I'm gonna go climb on it, on Everest, figure out a plan to get there yet. And all those little goals that they wanted to learn how to do like one of them.

Learned to journal because they wanted to make sure that not only what they were doing was they were journaling their weight their food, how they felt, but then it just became a life of its own. They start doing other things. I started writing more stuff, and just, and all of a sudden this became this journaling.

So started out doing, food, weight, temperature, blood pressure, whatever. And then all of a sudden just kept writing. And also now they got journaling now they're journaling. Somebody and then, the act of getting up in the morning to go work out developed this habit of.

Now fitness, right? Which they carried even after their race, now it's like, well, I've been doing it. I'm just going to keep doing it. Let me just do it for me. 

James Walters: That's the life. 

Brad Minus: But unless you're like me and I need that race, but I'm self aware enough to know that I need my next race. So I always have races a year booked out a year in advance.

So I'm so it's, that's what's getting me up. I have the next race, but then I got the next race to do the next race to do. And I learned that my first iron man. Yeah. Cause that was my big goal was to do, was to get an Ironman out of the way. And I thought it was going to be a bucket, turned out it would be one of five.

But when I did it the next week and I taught, I talked to all my first timers. I'm like, you're going to get the Ironman blues because yeah, because they had this big bucket list to go after. Right. And then. They finish it. And a lot of times they're like, I think that's the, that's it. I'm done.

I don't want to do anymore. And then, it, I'm, I was great. I loved it, blah, blah, blah. And then the next day they're sore. They're feeling good, blah, blah, blah. Then the next day their eyes wake up at the normal time that they've been waking up. And they're like, okay, Oh, well I don't have to work out.

I don't have to wake up and work out because I don't have anything left. I'm like, and then maybe they'll get up and just have a cup of coffee and just enjoy it. Or they'll be like, I don't have a purpose, right? That's so tough. That's the Ironman blues. So that's how I learned that. Never, ever, never ever not have another race on the books.

Even if even if you've planned out that I'm all right, I'm going to take a month off and I'm just going to run for, I'm going to just run for giggles. I'm going to bike for deals. I'm going to swim for giggles. I'm going to be in the gym just to F around. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine.

For, for a month, but then the next month comes in and like, all right, time to get back to work. So, that's my biggest thing is go after something you never thought that you would ever do. Like I tell people, look, turn on the television and if you see stuff. Like I got one one guy was like and I couldn't help him because I wasn't up to it at that point.

But he's like, you know what, I'm going to go and see if I can get on American Ninja Warrior. Never did anything in the gym. Never did any of that stuff. Whoa. He says I'm going to go find and I said, and what we did is we set we hunkered down and we researched it and we found a gym that yeah.

Got people ready for that. Had a gym that had obstacle courses that would teach you how to do the obstacles. And a lot of people went there for fitness and for fun. And then there was people that really wanted to get on the, so that, but those are things that make people, will turn your life around in ways you never thought possible.

I'll never forget the first time I jumped out of an airplane. Yeah. I'm like, there is nothing like it in the world. And the fact that there's no way that the human body should jump out of a plane, at 6, 000 feet. And fly and jump down or 3, 500 feet, And when you get to basically what they tell you is that a thousand is that a thousand feet?

It's like 500 feet you that's when you're pulling a ripcord and you got to know when to pull that ripcord Otherwise, you're not surviving But usually the first one is tandem. So it's somebody else pulling record, right? I'll never forget that it's after that day It was like any obstacle that came up, I'd be like, Oh man, I gotta do this again.

Or I can't get this. And then my mind would go back and I'm like, Hey, you jumped at a perfectly good airplane and survived. What can't you do? That's right. That's right. And that's what I tell my that's what I tell him as a coach. I become not only coach friend therapist, bounce, some of the people bounce things off of me, the, I become, I don't want to say doctor, I'm the guy you go to before the doctor to say, go to the doctor and I become that person and the number of times as like, I would be able to sit there and say, dude, you did an iron man.

Yeah. You crossed the finish line of one of the hardest competitions in the world. Why can't you do this piddly little thing? And most of the time, 99 percent of the time, it's like I get this reaction. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. I'm an iron man, and that's what I really love people doing. People like, like you write books, like you get to this thing.

You write a book. You wrote a book. A book. How many people write a book? And as many as there's out there, it's still very small percentage of the people that will actually sit down and write a book. Yeah. That's huge. So, and I think that people, they don't realize some of the accomplishments that they have is all they have to do is look back on and go, I did that.

There's no reason I can't do this. 

James Walters: Absolutely. And I think one, One thing that I've learned this year, I turned 50 this year, and one thing that was unexpected, but also magical at the same time is there's something about that. Crossing that threshold and you think to yourself it's not really similar to the airplane analogy because you actually did that.

You, you did that on purpose. And if you turn a certain age, maybe, or maybe didn't do that on purpose, who knows, but it's the feeling of nothing's killed me yet. So why should I be afraid to go out here and take this risk? And I felt that on such a deep level, I had a couple of things come up. Just this year, earlier this year that normally like five years ago would have had me spinning, like stressed out trying to figure out, okay, how am I going to figure this thing out?

How am I going to fix it? And I was just like, okay, cool. It was not great news. It was bad news. It was going to cost a ton of money. And someone looked at me and say, why are you not freaking out about this? I'm like, it'll be fine. Oh, I'll do what has to get done, but getting worked up over it is not going to move me in that direction.

And part of that's the stoicism, but also part of that's just, Hey I've been around for a minute and nothing's killed me yet. So it's probably going to work out. Okay. And if it doesn't, well, Lessons will be learned. So, 

Brad Minus: you know what? That is so, that is monstrous. That's huge. Hey, I've been around this long and nothing's killed me yet.

What makes me think this freaking obstacle is going to do anything worse? That is brilliant. It's powerful. Because I can look at my parents now, right? I remember, so, I remember I was doing the Chicago Marathon. I lived in Chicago for a very long time. My parents just moved here two years ago. So usually what would happen is I did the Chicago marathon like six times.

And this was like, I think it was the time before the last. And usually what would happen is I'd go in two days early. I'd spend a couple of days with my parents. And then I go up to Chicago because they live in the suburbs. I go to Chicago and I get my my, my hotel room, spend the night, run the race and then go home the next day.

And that was, that was it. Well, something happened. I didn't have as much time this time because of work and I'm like, Hey, why don't this time instead of. Me coming down home. Why don't you come up to the city and I'll take you guys out for dinner and really nice restaurant downtown and Growing up my dad always talked about as you're as a driver is being aggressively defensive Yeah, and he could whip around Chicago like you wouldn't believe like he knew ins and outs, he was the frickin Got around never had a problem was always it was always for using your word stoic Yeah.

Okay. Great. And then all of a sudden I got into the car with them. Well, first of all, they were late and they gave me a call like Oh, Brad, sorry. We just got into a little fender bender. We'll call you when we get out, when we get done with the ticket and all that stuff. And I was like, Oh, so now I get in the car with them.

Now my dad's like all the way on the right hand side. And he needs to get over into the next lane over. And he stops. That was one thing he always told me growing up. He's like, if you're driving, he says, you never stop. You always keep going and merge in. And he stopped. And I was like, Oh, and that was the first time I realized my parents were getting old.

Yeah. Cause they were, my dad was always like my, he's my hero, still is my hero. Right. Right. But at, at that point it was, he's still 10 feet tall and bulletproof. Sure. At that time. And then that he, that turned the corner to where pine, Oh my God, they're starting to get a little older, but I wish that's one way that most people age.

It's not thinking, Oh, I've been through 50, 60, 70 years of life. This is, it hasn't killed me yet. Right. I love that. But most people are the opposite. All right. Well, I've only got, my body's not as good as it used to be. And I'm getting sick easier and blah, blah, blah. And I don't have that many days left.

So I want to make sure that, that I live them and I'm safe. I'm going to go your route.

Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. So, listen, so just that is amazing. And I think that's powerful. And I think any of you out there that take anything away from this. I think that is the one piece of information that you should take and he talked about a bunch of different things James that he talked about Journaling he talked about morning routines.

He talked about coffee. Which is very important and so it's great now he his podcast is located and he has a his URL for that is a Joyful rebellion. com and like you said, he's got a few episodes in 23 and then he really got serious February 25th of 2024, which is where this podcast started and started to get really get getting serious too.

So you'll notice that. So if you want to go back. of them. And so he has that and never, he's got the motivations of the meditation of the mundane and that's out. Is that on is that on Amazon? 

James Walters: It's not on Amazon. I went to a private publisher just to be able to get the coffee table book, the size I wanted.

Amazon doesn't print that size. So it's available on my website. It could be. It's actually going to be linked in about a week from a joyful rebellion to my publishing website. 

Brad Minus: All right, great. So that's great. So that's going to happen for all of you. That's that will by time you by time. This goes live.

That'll happen because this probably won't go live until second week in February. So that'll be already taken care of. So go to the go to a joyful rebellion. You'll see that link. And then hopefully maybe he'll even have his new book plotting your joyful rebellion. And that will, he says, it will assist you on your mission to get more of your life.

So, so go ahead and check that out as well. That also be on a joyful rebellion. com. And that's actually it's already there now. It says it's going to be ready, but by time this goes live, hopefully it will be ready and and then take, keep taking a look at his his the podcast and, and he's also got a way for you to be right there, be a guest on his podcast.

So take a look at that as well. So that would be, that'd be amazing. So joyful rebellion, and then you are on a few, a couple of socials. It looks like you're on Facebook and Instagram. We do those. 

James Walters: I do. 

Brad Minus: So check, take a look at those. Those will be linked. The joyful rebellion will be linked.

The book will be linked. All that stuff will be linked in the show notes. So take a look at that. And James, it's been amazing. It's been wonderful. And I hope we get to do this again. 

James Walters: I know, Brad, thank you so much for having me. This has been one of the best conversations I've had in a very long time.

So thank you. 

Brad Minus: Same here. It's been Thank you. Awesome. It's been absolutely awesome. And the similarities are redonkulous. So, but I appreciate it. So, for myself and for James, I appreciate you guys all listening again. If you're looking on YouTube, please go ahead and hit the like subscribe and hit the bell.

So you always know when the new episode is coming up. If you're on Apple or Spotify, please consider leaving a review, even if it's a bad review, because that just means I get to learn something and we evolve the podcast. So for James and myself, thank you, and we'll see you in the next one.