Transcript
0:00:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you know that the average human spends 92,000 hours at work during their lifetime? That's more than we spend eating, cleaning, driving, watching TV or even surfing the internet? In fact, work is what we do most. It comes second only to sleeping. Welcome to 92,000 hours, the podcast that believes in the integration of life and work.

I'm your host, Annalisa Holcombe. Before we begin, I wanted to tell you a quick story about why this podcast is so personal to me. I began practicing law at age 26 and learned many valuable lessons, including that I was deeply unhappy at work. Although I was on a path that looked like traditional success, I realized that I needed to quit my job in order to align myself with my passion and purpose. Now I am dedicated to making sure all of our 92,000 hours at work are spent well instead of simply spent. How do we construct a working world that values and accommodates our humanity? How do we construct a life that is not separate from, but fueled by, the purpose we find in our work? In this podcast, we will explore those questions and more. In each episode, I will speak to someone that demonstrates meaning, passion and purpose in their work. Join me in discovering what happens when we bring our whole selves to our work, schools and communities.

Today, I am joined by Dr Mike Bills. Mike is the Chief Client Officer at Atlas RTX and he holds a PhD in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. He is a leading expert in using technology and data science to improve student learning outcomes. Today, we are discussing failure and growth. Mike is brave and vulnerable enough to share with us what he considers to be his failures and what he learned from them. So let's get started. Let's start with my first question, which is the one that is like the signature. If you remove any reference to work, school, sports, volunteerism, church activity, anything like that that you would normally put on your resume, what is your greatest accomplishment or what are you most proud about yourself as a human being?

0:02:36 - Mike Bills
I am proud that I have become and I have been this way for a long time self-reliant and adaptable, so that when shit happened, I could always be okay and take care of myself, and that development has enabled me to do whatever I want to do. Another thing that has helped me do is that I am grounded too, so when I was, you have never been able to tell what my net worth is by anything that I may have or even do been the same in good times and bad. So being grounded has helped me have freedom to do what I want to do.

0:03:28 - Annalisa Holcombe
So when you say that the way that you started, it seems like it comes from a place Right Like that's the catch part, probably, but like the answer comes from that you can have freedom, that you can, that you're grounded, that you have the ability to make choices must come from a place where you either didn't have freedom or didn't like what's that?

0:04:00 - Mike Bills
It does come from yeah, it comes from a place that. So those qualities were formed in response to an environment where, yeah, I didn't have those, to something, so it was formed. I mean I can distill it down, I mean we don't want to get too much into the Freudian world here, but so I was. My mother tried super hard to raise me as in the LDS faith. That's her faith and that's cool. At a pretty young age I decided that was that was cool for her, not so much for me, and she responded to that by coming up with something that she called the program. And so I was about 13, 14 years old when this, when I decided I didn't want to. So my mom thought that the best way to show me the love of Jesus Christ in the Mormon Church was this program and the.

If I went to church, I was on the program and if I didn't I was off, the consequences of which were I couldn't. I essentially was cut off from the family. I couldn't eat a meal with them, I couldn't get a ride anywhere, I couldn't like she wouldn't do my laundry. I couldn't do something as as as banal as just sit with the family and watch TV. So I was just like ostracized.

Yeah, so I was kind of like a, like a just a border in the house. So they eat dinner, my mom clean everything up and then I come in later and and I would so wow. So I assumed she thought that that would again help me see the love of Jesus Christ in the Mormon Church and I and I come in. I didn't I, so I just had to start to take care of all my stuff myself. Self-reliance was what you learned from that, that's right, so and probably some pain. Yeah yeah certainly.

But yeah, so I'll. You know I'll be. I'm super flippin' about it. Now I'll say, well, that's, there's so much about what I. What I do is as a result of that. I'm pretty sure my love of cycling came because I had to get myself around and I learned how to cook. So I still liked, I still like, to cook and, strangely not, I still. I do all my own laundry. It I don't even like Amy or the kids to do is like I'll just look, I'll just take care of my, my stuff I got.

0:06:29 - Annalisa Holcombe
But yeah, so that self-reliance came from from well, it started there, awesome, and it's it ended up serving you well, I think that's really interesting, because. I sometimes tell people that that and I say it flippantly like one of the benefits for me of growing up in an alcoholic household was that I'm very even healed. Like you know, it could be great or it could be terrible and I'm like cool, what I got? It? I can handle this. Yeah, ups and downs are not a problem for me. Yeah, I was learned. Yeah.

Yeah, all right. So so you and I agreed to talk about something today that I know I'm personally a little bit uncomfortable talking about because I don't have a ton of experience facilitating conversation around, but but I'm also really intrigued by it, and when I was putting it together, I was reading some information about failure, because, a, I'm starting my own business and so I'm interested in what that might feel like, look like. But of course, then I juxtaposed it with growth, because I think those, it seems like they go together or they might not, and so I'm interested in having a conversation with you about those things, because I think that you might be willing to have a conversation. I bet you have interesting things to say about it Well, I also have a lot of expertise.

0:07:48 - Mike Bills
So I have a lot of experience.

0:07:49 - Annalisa Holcombe
If that doesn't, We'll call it expertise, yeah, all right. So just I'm interested in just hearing from you about that, like how would you define both of those subjects generally, like how do you think about them and how do they show up in your life? Like what, what does it mean to you when I say we're going to talk about failure and growth?

0:08:13 - Mike Bills
Well, I'll just go into the experiences.

0:08:15 - Annalisa Holcombe
Okay.

0:08:16 - Mike Bills
That I would go there. So I had a very I had a high school experience that you, particularly as a parent my God would just be awful to have your kid go through this, and most people would certainly characterize it as a failure. So I ended up spending basically almost all of the 11th grade in an adolescent drug rehab, which turned out to be a wildly interesting and educational way to spend the 11th grade. I still don't know how I know how to do any math or how to read, but I learned a lot of cool stuff while I was in this treatment center and I wasn't an inpatient the whole time.

So first of all it was wildly disorienting and kind of scary to be 16 years old. And then one day and of course I was in there for some reasons the reasons weren't necessarily that I had some hardcore drug problem. I had Mormon mom. I was good when I decided I was going to get in a party and I did it well. So I drank a bunch, smoked tons of weed, did tons of acid, did a little bit of cocaine, I sampled from the buffet, but I was starting to have all the symptoms of substance abuse, like I was almost never going to school.

Well, I would go to school to arrange parties that we would have elsewhere during school In a lot of cases, and we would charge for them and we'd figure out ways to shuttle kids back and forth, like to go to class and such. But yeah, things were starting to, the problems were starting to mount and so my parents put me into this rehab and so I lost my freedom. So I was sitting there and realizing and. I was smart enough to not buy into the bullshit that the rehab people told and my parents that this was just an evaluation for a few days Like no, it's not.

No, they got me. I'm going to be here for a while. I might as well settle in Well at first. So it was really tough to go. Oh my God, my whole life. And when you're 16, of course these things are. They're massive and it's hard to understand that it's not that big of a deal that you're probably never going back to the high school.

That you're from what you just came and you're probably not going to see those friends anymore and you're going to have to start over. So for a little while that was pretty scary, yeah, but just not too long. Because then there then came a sense of relief Because all these problems that I had Because I also had some legal problems that were out there and I was going to have school problems too because I hadn't been going they were kind of solved. So there was a sense of relief. And then it's like I think this is going to end up being okay, and so that I just felt like this huge failure and I just thought everybody that's all they saw in me was like this big scarlet, this R for rehab or whatever, that's the only.

0:11:45 - Annalisa Holcombe
So that's the way people identify me.

0:11:47 - Mike Bills
It's like the defining feature, that's right.

And that was. That was tough. But then when I finally the next, when I'm done with that experience and I was able to go back to like regular high school, did you go to the same school? No, I just had a pretty mutual understanding that we probably weren't a good fit anymore. So I went to a different high school for my senior year of high school and it I knew tons of the people there Because I was a baseball player and a wrestler so I knew all the guys that did those sports but it so it was interesting to come into a new high school for my senior year when everybody knew I was drug rehab guy too. So that made it interesting.

So it was fun because I also had like all the all the people that were into that kind of stuff pretty soon.

0:12:44 - Annalisa Holcombe
I knew all them too.

0:12:45 - Mike Bills
So it a lot of people that if you go to a new high school, your senior year it's lonely. You don't have it. I had the best freaking time, but I also I didn't want, I felt like a loser because just again that.

So, even though, even though I wasn't going to be lonely- I needed to prove to myself that I could not be a loser, and so I had never, ever tried at school at all. I still I don't know how I know how to read or anything, because I didn't ever open the books. I had a pretty spotty attendance record, somehow. My grades were never all that bad, but I I don't know, how you didn't try, I didn't and I tried, and I tried. Damn, I specifically took the hardest classes that were offered and I did great and that was great.

0:13:43 - Annalisa Holcombe
See like you talk about this thing. That felt like a failure, and then you had to prove to yourself that you could be successful, and you were successful. So when I was reading some stuff in preparation for this conversation, I I read a quote that's attributed to Bill Gates. I don't know if it really is his, but it says success is a lousy teacher. This seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

0:14:04 - Mike Bills
That's great Right.

0:14:06 - Annalisa Holcombe
And I wonder how that like. So I would be interested in getting into that with you as well, as like within, like here's your failures, here's your successes.

0:14:16 - Mike Bills
You should totally put a pin on that, because that has extreme relevance in my career, where I thought, yeah, I could do no wrong and then when I did, it was a holy shit. It shocked you. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So it would have been great if my drug rehab failure had been the only life lesson that I ever needed, and that was enough for me to get my act together.

0:14:44 - Annalisa Holcombe
So it was enough to get you through your senior year.

0:14:46 - Mike Bills
Not well, yeah it was so I, but it wasn't enough. For so I had and I was kind of clueless and too I had this insouciance that somehow I just thought everything was going to work out fine for me. I didn't. So the fact that I didn't really try hard at school, that you know that I, I just knew somehow everything was going to be great. I didn't know what that was going to be like but you know it's, I'm good, I'm fine.

I'm not just fine, I'm better than fine and I can get through anything. That's right and part of having that 11th grade drug rehab experience, I saw so much misery and the and I had to go to I don't I probably went to that year about a hundred AANA meetings that they make you go to. So I was. I was around all of these older people that had really done stuff that had hit bottom and I thought.

You know, I thought I'd hit a bottom by being tossing in this rehab as a 16 year old kid and not being able to be with my buddies anymore. That was an interesting learning experience, just about life, and so, like the the, the petty crap of high school, that seems really meaningful to you when you're a student. That 11th grade drug rehab year man, it's stripped all that away. I just didn't. I was so not worried about any of that stuff anymore because I'd seen that there's a much bigger, complicated world with real problems.

But at the end of so, about three or four, maybe two weeks or so after high school, I learned that a girl that I was kind of involved with was pregnant with my child. Wow. So wow, yeah, so that was a...

That was another like super disorienting, like holy shit, and that was an interesting conversation with my dad. Wow, I told my stepmom first because she was somebody that I, that I could talk to about anything and she could keep. She was fine, she wasn't going to judge me, she was there for me. My dad not so much. My dad was a kind of mildly well functioning but wildly alcoholic guy.

So, yeah, I know the same thing of trying to navigate where the where on the spectrum he was at the moment, and when he got quiet, that's when it was really scary. And so he said to me, he said a few things in my life that have stuck with me and this was one that actually I'm surprised because but it ended up resonating with me.

It's like son, you've touched every base Drugs, crime I can't remember what third base was, but now you got a girl pregnant. Yeah, damn, combination up, wow and yeah. So that's about as like white trash, as set of as as I could imagine and then and then he walked off.

And you know, normally I would have pithy responses when my dad would say stuff like that because I remember one time, when I was going doing some of my things that got me tossed into rehab, I remember telling me that the only two things you're going to be successful at is being a criminal and being a jiggaloo. Well, that'll just be in my spare time, you know, and I thought, and I kind of took that as a compliment, but this time, when he said those things to me, I actually it actually hit me and it hurt a lot, like if, holy shit, you know he's right If somebody had described me to me and you know, I didn't know who that person was like, oh yeah it sounds like a loser.

Wow. So it was, yeah, not like it was just that magic moment and immediately after things changed. But things changed shortly thereafter and that's where I realized like, oh my god, I really got it. Make some changes here. And oh my god, I also got this situation that I don't know what to do. What to do, yeah, and I mean, and the child ended up being put up for adoption, and that was. That had nothing to do with anybody's, it didn't have to do with any values of any kind. It had to do with. I didn't even come aware about it till till abortion was too late and again, it's not my choice to make anyway, and the, the, the girl.

We weren't close, so us, the coming together was not yeah, that wasn't in the cards, and so that ended up being the the best choice and it, and that was a major and again, that's the kind of thing that people would characterize, perhaps, as a failure. I know my mother did.

Oh, really oh yeah, yeah it it was a really hard thing for her to, for her to accept and yeah, but it it affected me a great deal and I and I went to the hospital and I and I wow where to make sure, because if you know the father doesn't doesn't sign off on this sometimes they show back up so I made sure that there wasn't any any of that loose end Saw it, saw the child.

so I let this stuff really sink in and then I started to work real hard to get my shit together. So, and again, thank god for for solid community college being an open access institution that will let you in in spite of my lack of of preparedness and attendance, and. I took it and I took school and it was just the best place in the world for me and I loved being a college student instead of a high school student. It was just great.

0:21:45 - Annalisa Holcombe
If this conversation has caught your attention and you want to join in on conversations like this, check out our website at connectioncollaborativecom. Music Music. When I think about failure, I'm also thinking about success, and I think it's interesting because we often talk about business success and through my experience having big, long conversations with people that are a little more deep, I've learned a lot about people who are very professionally successful who then would tell me about their personal failures and that it's not, but we don't talk about that in the world, so we often don't hear how how often those things might be closely collaborated, right like the. Those things can go together in ways that we don't talk about all the time.

Yes and that result in pain and surprise.

0:23:11 - Mike Bills
Yeah, yeah so. So I ended up creating a list of things that I wanted to do of my life, and some of them were big, some of them are small. I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. I wanted to finish college. I wanted to get an advanced degree I didn't really care what that was. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to own own my own business. Oh, I wanted to run a marathon, do a triathlon.

I don't remember what else was on the what else was on the list, but that was. But that was helpful because, because, and also some of those things seemed impossible, especially because, working as much as I did some of them really like how am I?

really trying for that I get a guitar guy to come to my office, but everything else seemed kind of kind of out of reach. But but that was. I mean, geez, that was 22 years ago that I wrote that list and I'm pretty sure I just that I just recounted every single item on it because you thought about it so often in those 22 years yeah, yeah so that was uh, yeah, that was, uh, that was a failure.

Frankly, I didn't improve. I really started to improve. I really started to improve when I came to Westminster from my MBA. Really, yeah. What do you think?

that. Well, that did a couple things, so it I had to get really good with my time then, and Amy was super suspicious. She's like are you serious? You're going to do some other thing? And of course I got pissed. You should support me. What's wrong with you? I'm trying to better myself and Our family. That's right. Where's your support? But I promised her, I said I will only take time away from business the only time I take from this, and I even kind of budgeted that out. Well, when you're not going to work 80 hours a week, you have to get more efficient with your time. And so since I was taking that time where I would normally work, man, I realized I wasted so much damn time. So much of the time that I was at the office was just to be at the office, to be the guy that was there first, and there last.

They're on the weekends just to prove a point and then so I had to stop and realize that a lot of this time is just stupid. It doesn't matter, nobody cares about that. I'm in some contests with people that they don't even know that they're in. But I'm winning it and it's important to me.

So, yeah, I started to get better and realize just how to work better with my time and my life in a lot of ways seemed really successful because, yeah, I mean it's at any young age. I made a lot of money. I had a high profile position. I ended up on the cover of Utah Business Magazine when I was an MBA student. I have to do this. Nothing was easy for me, nothing is, and, of course, the whole that I was feeling nobody had an outside care. It was just it was all about me.

I had this huge hole inside of me that was based on being the kid that couldn't eat dinner with the family and the guy with the drug rehab. Scarlet letter and the guy that knocked up a girl in high school. Yeah, so I was filling those holes. So it was a really cool thing with Dick Fontaine, who-.

0:26:54 - Annalisa Holcombe
From Master Track yeah, At Westminster, right.

0:26:59 - Mike Bills
So he had he could relate to some of this stuff from his own life. So it, so he and he's the one that pointed out to me. He came up with this really cool metaphor to to help me with this, and it was the soldiers the Japanese soldiers that kept being found, like in the Philippines after World War II had been over for a few years, that they were still fighting the war, and so he called it Tojo. He's like let's just call this thing because I because it was easy to when I worked with him to realize that I'm trying to fill this unworthiness gap that I have and he and he characterized it as being like one of those soldiers that he's like you won. You won the war. So we have all of this stuff delivered and it has been here for us for almost two years and we have a better discipline for ourselves than for us, and this thing inside of you helped you.

Cause one of the things he asked me, and he asked me a good question. He said if you could have anything, what would it be? And I said and it was so easy for me to answer, it's like I just wish the voice in my head that was telling me that I'm not worthy, would shut up. Just give me the peace there. I hate it, and that's so.

0:28:14 - Annalisa Holcombe
That's what we did Wow, so like that hurts me.

0:28:17 - Mike Bills
So when he came up, when he talked about it, he's like you won. I mean, look at, you've got this. Your wife is so cool and you're this really successful triathlete and really successful executive and you're a really good student in this really good MBA program. You won. And the fact that this is what drove you. Yeah, well, while it's not, it doesn't necessarily it worked. So since you won, you can honor this, that this is what made it work, but you don't have to do that for that reason anymore.

0:29:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
It doesn't, it's not going to serve you now.

0:29:03 - Mike Bills
Yeah, so now of course, just the realization, and that conversation didn't just say okay, but the great thing about it is that when that starts to swell up, I'm at least aware of it. Wow, and then I've got a name for it. It's like you know, let's Tojo.

0:29:20 - Annalisa Holcombe
That's so good. That's so good yeah yeah, and then it's less personal, it's like oh, it's this thing, it's not me, it's this thing, that's right and but the cool part of that mentor, that mentorship with Fonte.

0:29:32 - Mike Bills
So even though it came from this MBA program again, it had very, very little to do with if I asked a question about a financial statement. It might help me out on it but it wasn't, and in fact it was through that mentorship that I ended up deciding to quit my job.

0:29:51 - Annalisa Holcombe
See, but that's, I mean, the best. The best attribute of that is that you came in thinking that you were going to work on things to help you be better in business, totally, and what you learned is how to be you.

0:30:04 - Mike Bills
So I mentioned how I decided to quit my job, and it was not long after I was on the cover of that magazine. I quit about three weeks after I finished my MBA. I had come to the, but I had come to a couple of lousy conclusions. So one of them had to do with fear, like why wasn't I going and doing these other things with my life? Part of it I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I put on that list I wanted to own my own business, but I'm not an inventor and I at that point I thought that's what entrepreneurship meant is inventing something like inventing this iPhone or that's. I'm not. I'm not that creative. I'm clever and smart, but I'm not creative and I have bad taste, and so I didn't know what to do and that was bothering me. And I remember so the chief financial officer where I worked.

He asked when Amy was pregnant with our first child. He asked me what I wanted to name, and we knew as a boy what I wanted to name it. And I said to him I said I've narrowed it down to every possible name except one. There's not gonna be a Mike Jr. So, and he's like, but why you should wanna pass that on? And which says to your son that you want him to be like you? And it was just like I don't want him to be like me, I don't want him to be perhaps anything like me. And part of it was because I felt so even though, yeah, I was on the cover of this that unworthiness stuff is still present.

And I kind of, to some extent, felt like a fraud. So because I wasn't doing anything. All that. I wasn't doing anything. What I thought was cool, impressive. I had lucked into this place being a gifted telemarketer that then I ended up being one of the senior leaders of that business. It just seemed like luck and it wasn't deliberate. I just fell into a river and then went where the river took me. So it just didn't seem like that Strategic or thoughtful.

0:32:27 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, yeah, so or purposeful even it wasn't purposeful at all. Yeah yeah.

0:32:33 - Mike Bills
So anyway, when I quit, and I still wasn't sure what I was gonna do, I just knew I needed to not be at that same business anymore. Oh my God, that was disorienting. Because then? So, because I was the successful business guy, I was on this magazine. That's what I was. So it was real easy for me to answer the cocktail party question what do you do?

0:33:00 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right, because that's what we ask, Because that's what you do, that's the first thing you ask.

0:33:04 - Mike Bills
No, what do you do? And like I don't nothing.

0:33:10 - Annalisa Holcombe
I don't have a job right now. Yeah, I was really spun out.

0:33:15 - Mike Bills
So that was a disorienting thing, but it didn't last long. And of course then after about six months of searching for a business to buy which again Dick Bontain actually helped me come up with some criteria then I ended up buying a business and then this whole new thing took off With the. We ended up doubling the revenue of that first business within a year and a half, and that put us in a position to then go and step up and buy a much bigger company that manufactured the stuff that we were distributing.

0:33:48 - Annalisa Holcombe
So, you bought a manufacturing company. I bought a, yes, where.

0:33:52 - Mike Bills
And guaranteed it with your house. That's right.

Yeah long story short on all this. I went from thinking that I was so insanely successful literally running two YPO qualified businesses because they both had the revenue levels. Like everybody else here in our YPO chapter you only got one business, I got two bitches I'm amazing. And then it didn't take long where I didn't have one, because to deal with the bank issues there we ended up having to sell the manufacturing company and fortunately and during that it got really scary because we tripped so many covenants- as soon as I realized that my borrowing bases were wrong, at least, I went and told them.

I didn't wait for somebody to figure it out at the bank. I went and told them, knowing that they could lose their shit, they could call the notes they could, and they tried to. They signed it for a while and then, ultimately, they lost patience and then they sued us for that $5.5 million.

0:35:06 - Annalisa Holcombe
Wow, so scary.

0:35:07 - Mike Bills
Yeah, it was unbelievably scary. And they did so because they'd known that well we had this windfall from this other company, so they just went through the. It made so much sense I was furious at the time made so much sense Like the quickest path for them to recovery was just go sue the guarantors because they got the money.

0:35:29 - Annalisa Holcombe
So let's take it right now, before it's gone, so we don't need to screw around Like let's just go do this quick.

0:35:33 - Mike Bills
We don't have to help them with some workout plan on the bill. We don't need to do any of that. Those guys have the money, so they took it. No, we managed to get this taken care of, so, but it was I mean, it was just unbelievable.

0:35:53 - Annalisa Holcombe
But you were this on top of the mountain, on top of the world guy and now you're struggling to go. How do I keep my house?

0:36:00 - Mike Bills
That's right Now that gold broke, and there goes your house thing that I joked about could really happen. Yeah, that was a really tough thing, but another really bad thing happened, the worst thing that's ever happened in my life. It happened 16 days before they filed that suit, which was the day after Christmas, by the way. Wow.

I got an email from my lawyer that yeah, merry, christmas, merry. Yeah, so that was December 26th of 2013. On December 10th of 2013, my younger brother committed suicide. Oh my god, yeah so the upside of, and we were very close and the upside of that, if there is one, is that when that lawsuit comes you're like that's bad, very bad, and I could lose all my stuff, but it's not that bad.

0:37:10 - Annalisa Holcombe
In the grand scheme of tragedy. Yeah, it's not that Losing your brother is the.

0:37:15 - Mike Bills
No, and of course, when Zion sued us, I mean this had been going on for a while, so it wasn't a real surprise. It's like, okay, they lost patience. I understand We've got to deal with it, but all the way along I had been worried about my god. There's a chance that we could go personally bankrupt here if we can't figure this out. That's a humbling thought. But and the thing I kept thinking about is my kids. I didn't want to disrupt my kids' lives by going personally bankrupt. So I kept thinking about how would I make sure that their lives are more or less undisturbed if I had to file for personal bankruptcy? But when my brother committed suicide and his kids were 16 and 14 at the time and he was found in his garage by a 16-year-old son, they lost their father and Luke had some.

he had all kinds of issues and there were financial things that were part of it. Those two kids could have cared less about whatever issues that could have been related to material things.

0:38:34 - Annalisa Holcombe
They just wanted their dad. Yeah, they lost their dad.

0:38:39 - Mike Bills
So, anyway, all that stuff swirled around at that time Because I didn't want to see people. But there's another interesting component that's tied up with suicide and that's stigma surrounding suicide. So it's a really difficult death to accept. It's also it's a difficult thing for other people to know about. It's like what's wrong with that family when this dude commits suicide. So there was a whole lot that was I was spending all my time either worrying about things that might have that at least had the chance of happening, and grieving. That was it.

It was. It was a. I mean, if I was awake and I wasn't skiing or riding my, it was during the ski season. So if I was awake and I wasn't skiing or working out, that's all I did. It was a shift right into it and just worry and grieve. So yeah, I mean I went through it. So riding that riding that wave of just where I could do nothing wrong. Then it felt like for a while that that's all I could do.

0:39:50 - Annalisa Holcombe
And all there was was wrong. My question is when something like like, when, when failure happens, how important are the support structures or the support people around you, like in your experience?

0:40:06 - Mike Bills
So in my experience there were a couple of things that made all of this where I could survive and then ultimately thrive coming out of it, the biggest support structure was so I had, I have, I have, I have, I have, I have. I have a really strong, healthy marriage and I have a great relationship with my kids and I have so many dear friends like real important, meaningful friendships, not just superficial, and those relationships were, they were so important where so I could, at least so I could, I could isolate where it wasn't that I me as a person, was a total failure, like I just had some. I had this area, this activity, business issues.

And I also it was also easy to it the...

0:41:03 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think that's really important, though, to like make sure that we separate that out. I mean like, just for people who are listening, that by having those structures you could, you could separate that. The failure was this activity. This thing failed, not you, right.

0:41:19 - Mike Bills
Yeah, and also, and again, as I had some time to reflect on this, I didn't. I don't want to be the CEO of a private equity owned business. That's a. There are people that love that and are awesome at it. I don't want to do that. You learned.

I just don't and I, so I got the. I got the opportunity to, to, to pretend to be one for a year and a half. I didn't do that ever again and fortunately I don't have to, because I know how to net, to do this smaller, self-funded thing, and I'm doing it again now and it's doing really well.

0:41:56 - Annalisa Holcombe
And this is like your sweet spot.

0:41:58 - Mike Bills
This is my sweet and again, it's yes it's because it's tied up with what I've learned about and care about in higher education, and so it's totally aligned with my core values, which is the first time I've done anything in my career that's really aligned with my values, so it's awesome.

0:42:31 - Annalisa Holcombe
Thank you, mike, for your time today and your willingness to discuss such a difficult topic. You can learn more about Mike by connecting with him on LinkedIn. Next week, I will be joined by Colin Bunker for our final episode of the first season of 92,000 Hours. Colin is the director of Solutions Architecture at Presidio, a nationwide enterprise IT integrator. Simply put, Collin is the go-to person for me and so many others on all things IT, database administration and cybersecurity. Most importantly, Collin is a loyal and dedicated employee leader, mentor and friend, and he was willing to talk with us about our final subject for season one. Love. We hope you'll join us, as always.

Thank you for listening to 92,000 Hours. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate your support. If you're interested in integrating the personal and professional through authentic conversation, just like you heard on our episode today, please check out our work at Connection Collaborative. You can find us at connectioncollaborative.com or send me an email at analisa@connectioncollaborative.com. Thank you and see you next week on 92,000 Hours. 92,000 Hours is made possible by Connection Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Brianna Steggell. Lexie Banks is our marketing director and I'm your host, Annalisa Holcomb. 0:00:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
Did you know that the average human spends 92,000 hours at work during their lifetime? That's more than we spend eating, cleaning, driving, watching TV or even surfing the internet? In fact, work is what we do most. It comes second only to sleeping. Welcome to 92,000 hours, the podcast that believes in the integration of life and work.

I'm your host, annalisa Holcomb. Before we begin, I wanted to tell you a quick story about why this podcast is so personal to me. I began practicing law at age 26 and learned many valuable lessons, including that I was deeply unhappy at work. Although I was on a path that looked like traditional success, I realized that I needed to quit my job in order to align myself with my passion and purpose. Now I am dedicated to making sure all of our 92,000 hours at work are spent well instead of simply spent. How do we construct a working world that values and accommodates our humanity? How do we construct a life that is not separate from, but fueled by, the purpose we find in our work? In this podcast, we will explore those questions and more. In each episode, I will speak to someone that demonstrates meaning, passion and purpose in their work. Join me in discovering what happens when we bring our whole selves to our work, schools and communities.

Today, I am joined by Dr Mike Bills. Mike is the Chief Client Officer at Atlas RTX and he holds a PhD in Leadership and Change from Antioch University. He is a leading expert in using technology and data science to improve student learning outcomes. Today, we are discussing failure and growth. Mike is brave and vulnerable enough to share with us what he considers to be his failures and what he learned from them. So let's get started. Let's start with my first question, which is the one that is like the signature. If you remove any reference to work, school, sports, volunteerism, church activity, anything like that that you would normally put on your resume, what is your greatest accomplishment or what are you most proud about yourself as a human being?

0:02:36 - Mike Bills
I am proud that I have become and I have been this way for a long time self-reliant and adaptable, so that when shit happened, I could always be okay and take care of myself, and that development has enabled me to do whatever I want to do. Another thing that has helped me do is that I am grounded too, so when I was, you have never been able to tell what my net worth is by anything that I may have or even do been the same in good times and bad. So being grounded has helped me have freedom to do what I want to do.

0:03:28 - Annalisa Holcombe
So when you say that the way that you started, it seems like it comes from a place Right Like that's the catch part, probably, but like the answer comes from that you can have freedom, that you can, that you're grounded, that you have the ability to make choices must come from a place where you either didn't have freedom or didn't like what's that?

0:04:00 - Mike Bills
It does come from yeah, it comes from a place that. So those qualities were formed in response to an environment where, yeah, I didn't have those, to something, so it was formed. I mean I can distill it down, I mean we don't want to get too much into the Freudian world here, but so I was. My mother tried super hard to raise me as in the LDS faith. That's her faith and that's cool. At a pretty young age I decided that was that was cool for her, not so much for me, and she responded to that by coming up with something that she called the program. And so I was about 13, 14 years old when this, when I decided I didn't want to. So my mom thought that the best way to show me the love of Jesus Christ in the Mormon Church was this program and the.

If I went to church, I was on the program and if I didn't I was off, the consequences of which were I couldn't. I essentially was cut off from the family. I couldn't eat a meal with them, I couldn't get a ride anywhere, I couldn't like she wouldn't do my laundry. I couldn't do something as as as banal as just sit with the family and watch TV. So I was just like ostracized.

Yeah, so I was kind of like a, like a just a border in the house. So they eat dinner, my mom clean everything up and then I come in later and and I would so wow. So I assumed she thought that that would again help me see the love of Jesus Christ in the Mormon Church and I and I come in. I didn't I, so I just had to start to take care of all my stuff myself. Self-reliance was what you learned from that, that's right, so and probably some pain. Yeah yeah certainly.

But yeah, so I'll. You know I'll be. I'm super flippin' about it. Now I'll say, well, that's, there's so much about what I. What I do is as a result of that. I'm pretty sure my love of cycling came because I had to get myself around and I learned how to cook. So I still liked, I still like, to cook and, strangely not, I still. I do all my own laundry. It I don't even like Amy or the kids to do is like I'll just look, I'll just take care of my, my stuff I got.

0:06:29 - Annalisa Holcombe
But yeah, so that self-reliance came from from well, it started there, awesome, and it's it ended up serving you well, I think that's really interesting, because. I sometimes tell people that that and I say it flippantly like one of the benefits for me of growing up in an alcoholic household was that I'm very even healed. Like you know, it could be great or it could be terrible and I'm like cool, what I got? It? I can handle this. Yeah, ups and downs are not a problem for me. Yeah, I was learned. Yeah.

Yeah, all right. So so you and I agreed to talk about something today that I know I'm personally a little bit uncomfortable talking about because I don't have a ton of experience facilitating conversation around, but but I'm also really intrigued by it, and when I was putting it together, I was reading some information about failure, because, a, I'm starting my own business and so I'm interested in what that might feel like, look like. But of course, then I juxtaposed it with growth, because I think those, it seems like they go together or they might not, and so I'm interested in having a conversation with you about those things, because I think that you might be willing to have a conversation. I bet you have interesting things to say about it Well, I also have a lot of expertise.

0:07:48 - Mike Bills
So I have a lot of experience.

0:07:49 - Annalisa Holcombe
If that doesn't, We'll call it expertise, yeah, all right. So just I'm interested in just hearing from you about that, like how would you define both of those subjects generally, like how do you think about them and how do they show up in your life? Like what, what does it mean to you when I say we're going to talk about failure and growth?

0:08:13 - Mike Bills
Well, I'll just go into the experiences.

0:08:15 - Annalisa Holcombe
Okay.

0:08:16 - Mike Bills
That I would go there. So I had a very I had a high school experience that you, particularly as a parent my God would just be awful to have your kid go through this, and most people would certainly characterize it as a failure. So I ended up spending basically almost all of the 11th grade in an adolescent drug rehab, which turned out to be a wildly interesting and educational way to spend the 11th grade. I still don't know how I know how to do any math or how to read, but I learned a lot of cool stuff while I was in this treatment center and I wasn't an inpatient the whole time.

So first of all it was wildly disorienting and kind of scary to be 16 years old. And then one day and of course I was in there for some reasons the reasons weren't necessarily that I had some hardcore drug problem. I had Mormon mom. I was good when I decided I was going to get in a party and I did it well. So I drank a bunch, smoked tons of weed, did tons of acid, did a little bit of cocaine, I sampled from the buffet, but I was starting to have all the symptoms of substance abuse, like I was almost never going to school.

Well, I would go to school to arrange parties that we would have elsewhere during school In a lot of cases, and we would charge for them and we'd figure out ways to shuttle kids back and forth, like to go to class and such. But yeah, things were starting to, the problems were starting to mount and so my parents put me into this rehab and so I lost my freedom. So I was sitting there and realizing and. I was smart enough to not buy into the bullshit that the rehab people told and my parents that this was just an evaluation for a few days Like no, it's not.

No, they got me. I'm going to be here for a while. I might as well settle in Well at first. So it was really tough to go. Oh my God, my whole life. And when you're 16, of course these things are. They're massive and it's hard to understand that it's not that big of a deal that you're probably never going back to the high school.

That you're from what you just came and you're probably not going to see those friends anymore and you're going to have to start over. So for a little while that was pretty scary, yeah, but just not too long. Because then there then came a sense of relief Because all these problems that I had Because I also had some legal problems that were out there and I was going to have school problems too because I hadn't been going they were kind of solved. So there was a sense of relief. And then it's like I think this is going to end up being okay, and so that I just felt like this huge failure and I just thought everybody that's all they saw in me was like this big scarlet, this R for rehab or whatever, that's the only.

0:11:45 - Annalisa Holcombe
So that's the way people identify me.

0:11:47 - Mike Bills
It's like the defining feature, that's right.

And that was. That was tough. But then when I finally the next, when I'm done with that experience and I was able to go back to like regular high school, did you go to the same school? No, I just had a pretty mutual understanding that we probably weren't a good fit anymore. So I went to a different high school for my senior year of high school and it I knew tons of the people there Because I was a baseball player and a wrestler so I knew all the guys that did those sports but it so it was interesting to come into a new high school for my senior year when everybody knew I was drug rehab guy too. So that made it interesting.

So it was fun because I also had like all the all the people that were into that kind of stuff pretty soon.

0:12:44 - Annalisa Holcombe
I knew all them too.

0:12:45 - Mike Bills
So it a lot of people that if you go to a new high school, your senior year it's lonely. You don't have it. I had the best freaking time, but I also I didn't want, I felt like a loser because just again that.

So, even though, even though I wasn't going to be lonely- I needed to prove to myself that I could not be a loser, and so I had never, ever tried at school at all. I still I don't know how I know how to read or anything, because I didn't ever open the books. I had a pretty spotty attendance record, somehow. My grades were never all that bad, but I I don't know, how you didn't try, I didn't and I tried, and I tried. Damn, I specifically took the hardest classes that were offered and I did great and that was great.

0:13:43 - Annalisa Holcombe
See like you talk about this thing. That felt like a failure, and then you had to prove to yourself that you could be successful, and you were successful. So when I was reading some stuff in preparation for this conversation, I I read a quote that's attributed to Bill Gates. I don't know if it really is his, but it says success is a lousy teacher. This seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose.

0:14:04 - Mike Bills
That's great Right.

0:14:06 - Annalisa Holcombe
And I wonder how that like. So I would be interested in getting into that with you as well, as like within, like here's your failures, here's your successes.

0:14:16 - Mike Bills
You should totally put a pin on that, because that has extreme relevance in my career, where I thought, yeah, I could do no wrong and then when I did, it was a holy shit. It shocked you. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So it would have been great if my drug rehab failure had been the only life lesson that I ever needed, and that was enough for me to get my act together.

0:14:44 - Annalisa Holcombe
So it was enough to get you through your senior year.

0:14:46 - Mike Bills
Not well, yeah it was so I, but it wasn't enough. For so I had and I was kind of clueless and too I had this insouciance that somehow I just thought everything was going to work out fine for me. I didn't. So the fact that I didn't really try hard at school, that you know that I, I just knew somehow everything was going to be great. I didn't know what that was going to be like but you know it's, I'm good, I'm fine.

I'm not just fine, I'm better than fine and I can get through anything. That's right and part of having that 11th grade drug rehab experience, I saw so much misery and the and I had to go to I don't I probably went to that year about a hundred AANA meetings that they make you go to. So I was. I was around all of these older people that had really done stuff that had hit bottom and I thought.

You know, I thought I'd hit a bottom by being tossing in this rehab as a 16 year old kid and not being able to be with my buddies anymore. That was an interesting learning experience, just about life, and so, like the the, the petty crap of high school, that seems really meaningful to you when you're a student. That 11th grade drug rehab year man, it's stripped all that away. I just didn't. I was so not worried about any of that stuff anymore because I'd seen that there's a much bigger, complicated world with real problems.

But at the end of so, about three or four, maybe two weeks or so after high school, I learned that a girl that I was kind of involved with was pregnant with my child. Wow. So wow, yeah, so that was a...

That was another like super disorienting, like holy shit, and that was an interesting conversation with my dad. Wow, I told my stepmom first because she was somebody that I, that I could talk to about anything and she could keep. She was fine, she wasn't going to judge me, she was there for me. My dad not so much. My dad was a kind of mildly well functioning but wildly alcoholic guy.

So, yeah, I know the same thing of trying to navigate where the where on the spectrum he was at the moment, and when he got quiet, that's when it was really scary. And so he said to me, he said a few things in my life that have stuck with me and this was one that actually I'm surprised because but it ended up resonating with me.

It's like son, you've touched every base Drugs, crime I can't remember what third base was, but now you got a girl pregnant. Yeah, damn, combination up, wow and yeah. So that's about as like white trash, as set of as as I could imagine and then and then he walked off.

And you know, normally I would have pithy responses when my dad would say stuff like that because I remember one time, when I was going doing some of my things that got me tossed into rehab, I remember telling me that the only two things you're going to be successful at is being a criminal and being a jiggaloo. Well, that'll just be in my spare time, you know, and I thought, and I kind of took that as a compliment, but this time, when he said those things to me, I actually it actually hit me and it hurt a lot, like if, holy shit, you know he's right If somebody had described me to me and you know, I didn't know who that person was like, oh yeah it sounds like a loser.

Wow. So it was, yeah, not like it was just that magic moment and immediately after things changed. But things changed shortly thereafter and that's where I realized like, oh my god, I really got it. Make some changes here. And oh my god, I also got this situation that I don't know what to do. What to do, yeah, and I mean, and the child ended up being put up for adoption, and that was. That had nothing to do with anybody's, it didn't have to do with any values of any kind. It had to do with. I didn't even come aware about it till till abortion was too late and again, it's not my choice to make anyway, and the, the, the girl.

We weren't close, so us, the coming together was not yeah, that wasn't in the cards, and so that ended up being the the best choice and it, and that was a major and again, that's the kind of thing that people would characterize, perhaps, as a failure. I know my mother did.

Oh, really oh yeah, yeah it it was a really hard thing for her to, for her to accept and yeah, but it it affected me a great deal and I and I went to the hospital and I and I wow where to make sure, because if you know the father doesn't doesn't sign off on this sometimes they show back up so I made sure that there wasn't any any of that loose end Saw it, saw the child.

so I let this stuff really sink in and then I started to work real hard to get my shit together. So, and again, thank god for for solid community college being an open access institution that will let you in in spite of my lack of of preparedness and attendance, and. I took it and I took school and it was just the best place in the world for me and I loved being a college student instead of a high school student. It was just great.

0:21:45 - Annalisa Holcombe
If this conversation has caught your attention and you want to join in on conversations like this, check out our website at connectioncollaborativecom. Music Music. When I think about failure, I'm also thinking about success, and I think it's interesting because we often talk about business success and through my experience having big, long conversations with people that are a little more deep, I've learned a lot about people who are very professionally successful who then would tell me about their personal failures and that it's not, but we don't talk about that in the world, so we often don't hear how how often those things might be closely collaborated, right like the. Those things can go together in ways that we don't talk about all the time.

Yes and that result in pain and surprise.

0:23:11 - Mike Bills
Yeah, yeah so. So I ended up creating a list of things that I wanted to do of my life, and some of them were big, some of them are small. I wanted to learn how to play the guitar. I wanted to finish college. I wanted to get an advanced degree I didn't really care what that was. I wanted to write a book. I wanted to own own my own business. Oh, I wanted to run a marathon, do a triathlon.

I don't remember what else was on the what else was on the list, but that was. But that was helpful because, because, and also some of those things seemed impossible, especially because, working as much as I did some of them really like how am I?

really trying for that I get a guitar guy to come to my office, but everything else seemed kind of kind of out of reach. But but that was. I mean, geez, that was 22 years ago that I wrote that list and I'm pretty sure I just that I just recounted every single item on it because you thought about it so often in those 22 years yeah, yeah so that was uh, yeah, that was, uh, that was a failure.

Frankly, I didn't improve. I really started to improve. I really started to improve when I came to Westminster from my MBA. Really, yeah. What do you think?

that. Well, that did a couple things, so it I had to get really good with my time then, and Amy was super suspicious. She's like are you serious? You're going to do some other thing? And of course I got pissed. You should support me. What's wrong with you? I'm trying to better myself and Our family. That's right. Where's your support? But I promised her, I said I will only take time away from business the only time I take from this, and I even kind of budgeted that out. Well, when you're not going to work 80 hours a week, you have to get more efficient with your time. And so since I was taking that time where I would normally work, man, I realized I wasted so much damn time. So much of the time that I was at the office was just to be at the office, to be the guy that was there first, and there last.

They're on the weekends just to prove a point and then so I had to stop and realize that a lot of this time is just stupid. It doesn't matter, nobody cares about that. I'm in some contests with people that they don't even know that they're in. But I'm winning it and it's important to me.

So, yeah, I started to get better and realize just how to work better with my time and my life in a lot of ways seemed really successful because, yeah, I mean it's at any young age. I made a lot of money. I had a high profile position. I ended up on the cover of Utah Business Magazine when I was an MBA student. I have to do this. Nothing was easy for me, nothing is, and, of course, the whole that I was feeling nobody had an outside care. It was just it was all about me.

I had this huge hole inside of me that was based on being the kid that couldn't eat dinner with the family and the guy with the drug rehab. Scarlet letter and the guy that knocked up a girl in high school. Yeah, so I was filling those holes. So it was a really cool thing with Dick Fontaine, who-.

0:26:54 - Annalisa Holcombe
From Master Track yeah, At Westminster, right.

0:26:59 - Mike Bills
So he had he could relate to some of this stuff from his own life. So it, so he and he's the one that pointed out to me. He came up with this really cool metaphor to to help me with this, and it was the soldiers the Japanese soldiers that kept being found, like in the Philippines after World War II had been over for a few years, that they were still fighting the war, and so he called it Tojo. He's like let's just call this thing because I because it was easy to when I worked with him to realize that I'm trying to fill this unworthiness gap that I have and he and he characterized it as being like one of those soldiers that he's like you won. You won the war. So we have all of this stuff delivered and it has been here for us for almost two years and we have a better discipline for ourselves than for us, and this thing inside of you helped you.

Cause one of the things he asked me, and he asked me a good question. He said if you could have anything, what would it be? And I said and it was so easy for me to answer, it's like I just wish the voice in my head that was telling me that I'm not worthy, would shut up. Just give me the peace there. I hate it, and that's so.

0:28:14 - Annalisa Holcombe
That's what we did Wow, so like that hurts me.

0:28:17 - Mike Bills
So when he came up, when he talked about it, he's like you won. I mean, look at, you've got this. Your wife is so cool and you're this really successful triathlete and really successful executive and you're a really good student in this really good MBA program. You won. And the fact that this is what drove you. Yeah, well, while it's not, it doesn't necessarily it worked. So since you won, you can honor this, that this is what made it work, but you don't have to do that for that reason anymore.

0:29:01 - Annalisa Holcombe
It doesn't, it's not going to serve you now.

0:29:03 - Mike Bills
Yeah, so now of course, just the realization, and that conversation didn't just say okay, but the great thing about it is that when that starts to swell up, I'm at least aware of it. Wow, and then I've got a name for it. It's like you know, let's Tojo.

0:29:20 - Annalisa Holcombe
That's so good. That's so good yeah yeah, and then it's less personal, it's like oh, it's this thing, it's not me, it's this thing, that's right and but the cool part of that mentor, that mentorship with Fonte.

0:29:32 - Mike Bills
So even though it came from this MBA program again, it had very, very little to do with if I asked a question about a financial statement. It might help me out on it but it wasn't, and in fact it was through that mentorship that I ended up deciding to quit my job.

0:29:51 - Annalisa Holcombe
See, but that's, I mean, the best. The best attribute of that is that you came in thinking that you were going to work on things to help you be better in business, totally, and what you learned is how to be you.

0:30:04 - Mike Bills
So I mentioned how I decided to quit my job, and it was not long after I was on the cover of that magazine. I quit about three weeks after I finished my MBA. I had come to the, but I had come to a couple of lousy conclusions. So one of them had to do with fear, like why wasn't I going and doing these other things with my life? Part of it I didn't know what I wanted to do.

I put on that list I wanted to own my own business, but I'm not an inventor and I at that point I thought that's what entrepreneurship meant is inventing something like inventing this iPhone or that's. I'm not. I'm not that creative. I'm clever and smart, but I'm not creative and I have bad taste, and so I didn't know what to do and that was bothering me. And I remember so the chief financial officer where I worked.

He asked when Amy was pregnant with our first child. He asked me what I wanted to name, and we knew as a boy what I wanted to name it. And I said to him I said I've narrowed it down to every possible name except one. There's not gonna be a Mike Jr. So, and he's like, but why you should wanna pass that on? And which says to your son that you want him to be like you? And it was just like I don't want him to be like me, I don't want him to be perhaps anything like me. And part of it was because I felt so even though, yeah, I was on the cover of this that unworthiness stuff is still present.

And I kind of, to some extent, felt like a fraud. So because I wasn't doing anything. All that. I wasn't doing anything. What I thought was cool, impressive. I had lucked into this place being a gifted telemarketer that then I ended up being one of the senior leaders of that business. It just seemed like luck and it wasn't deliberate. I just fell into a river and then went where the river took me. So it just didn't seem like that Strategic or thoughtful.

0:32:27 - Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, yeah, so or purposeful even it wasn't purposeful at all. Yeah yeah.

0:32:33 - Mike Bills
So anyway, when I quit, and I still wasn't sure what I was gonna do, I just knew I needed to not be at that same business anymore. Oh my God, that was disorienting. Because then? So, because I was the successful business guy, I was on this magazine. That's what I was. So it was real easy for me to answer the cocktail party question what do you do?

0:33:00 - Annalisa Holcombe
Right, because that's what we ask, Because that's what you do, that's the first thing you ask.

0:33:04 - Mike Bills
No, what do you do? And like I don't nothing.

0:33:10 - Annalisa Holcombe
I don't have a job right now. Yeah, I was really spun out.

0:33:15 - Mike Bills
So that was a disorienting thing, but it didn't last long. And of course then after about six months of searching for a business to buy which again Dick Bontain actually helped me come up with some criteria then I ended up buying a business and then this whole new thing took off With the. We ended up doubling the revenue of that first business within a year and a half, and that put us in a position to then go and step up and buy a much bigger company that manufactured the stuff that we were distributing.

0:33:48 - Annalisa Holcombe
So, you bought a manufacturing company. I bought a, yes, where.

0:33:52 - Mike Bills
And guaranteed it with your house. That's right.

Yeah long story short on all this. I went from thinking that I was so insanely successful literally running two YPO qualified businesses because they both had the revenue levels. Like everybody else here in our YPO chapter you only got one business, I got two bitches I'm amazing. And then it didn't take long where I didn't have one, because to deal with the bank issues there we ended up having to sell the manufacturing company and fortunately and during that it got really scary because we tripped so many covenants- as soon as I realized that my borrowing bases were wrong, at least, I went and told them.

I didn't wait for somebody to figure it out at the bank. I went and told them, knowing that they could lose their shit, they could call the notes they could, and they tried to. They signed it for a while and then, ultimately, they lost patience and then they sued us for that $5.5 million.

0:35:06 - Annalisa Holcombe
Wow, so scary.

0:35:07 - Mike Bills
Yeah, it was unbelievably scary. And they did so because they'd known that well we had this windfall from this other company, so they just went through the. It made so much sense I was furious at the time made so much sense Like the quickest path for them to recovery was just go sue the guarantors because they got the money.

0:35:29 - Annalisa Holcombe
So let's take it right now, before it's gone, so we don't need to screw around Like let's just go do this quick.

0:35:33 - Mike Bills
We don't have to help them with some workout plan on the bill. We don't need to do any of that. Those guys have the money, so they took it. No, we managed to get this taken care of, so, but it was I mean, it was just unbelievable.

0:35:53 - Annalisa Holcombe
But you were this on top of the mountain, on top of the world guy and now you're struggling to go. How do I keep my house?

0:36:00 - Mike Bills
That's right Now that gold broke, and there goes your house thing that I joked about could really happen. Yeah, that was a really tough thing, but another really bad thing happened, the worst thing that's ever happened in my life. It happened 16 days before they filed that suit, which was the day after Christmas, by the way. Wow.

I got an email from my lawyer that yeah, merry, christmas, merry. Yeah, so that was December 26th of 2013. On December 10th of 2013, my younger brother committed suicide. Oh my god, yeah so the upside of, and we were very close and the upside of that, if there is one, is that when that lawsuit comes you're like that's bad, very bad, and I could lose all my stuff, but it's not that bad.

0:37:10 - Annalisa Holcombe
In the grand scheme of tragedy. Yeah, it's not that Losing your brother is the.

0:37:15 - Mike Bills
No, and of course, when Zion sued us, I mean this had been going on for a while, so it wasn't a real surprise. It's like, okay, they lost patience. I understand We've got to deal with it, but all the way along I had been worried about my god. There's a chance that we could go personally bankrupt here if we can't figure this out. That's a humbling thought. But and the thing I kept thinking about is my kids. I didn't want to disrupt my kids' lives by going personally bankrupt. So I kept thinking about how would I make sure that their lives are more or less undisturbed if I had to file for personal bankruptcy? But when my brother committed suicide and his kids were 16 and 14 at the time and he was found in his garage by a 16-year-old son, they lost their father and Luke had some.

he had all kinds of issues and there were financial things that were part of it. Those two kids could have cared less about whatever issues that could have been related to material things.

0:38:34 - Annalisa Holcombe
They just wanted their dad. Yeah, they lost their dad.

0:38:39 - Mike Bills
So, anyway, all that stuff swirled around at that time Because I didn't want to see people. But there's another interesting component that's tied up with suicide and that's stigma surrounding suicide. So it's a really difficult death to accept. It's also it's a difficult thing for other people to know about. It's like what's wrong with that family when this dude commits suicide. So there was a whole lot that was I was spending all my time either worrying about things that might have that at least had the chance of happening, and grieving. That was it.

It was. It was a. I mean, if I was awake and I wasn't skiing or riding my, it was during the ski season. So if I was awake and I wasn't skiing or working out, that's all I did. It was a shift right into it and just worry and grieve. So yeah, I mean I went through it. So riding that riding that wave of just where I could do nothing wrong. Then it felt like for a while that that's all I could do.

0:39:50 - Annalisa Holcombe
And all there was was wrong. My question is when something like like, when, when failure happens, how important are the support structures or the support people around you, like in your experience?

0:40:06 - Mike Bills
So in my experience there were a couple of things that made all of this where I could survive and then ultimately thrive coming out of it, the biggest support structure was so I had, I have, I have, I have, I have, I have. I have a really strong, healthy marriage and I have a great relationship with my kids and I have so many dear friends like real important, meaningful friendships, not just superficial, and those relationships were, they were so important where so I could, at least so I could, I could isolate where it wasn't that I me as a person, was a total failure, like I just had some. I had this area, this activity, business issues.

And I also it was also easy to it the...

0:41:03 - Annalisa Holcombe
I think that's really important, though, to like make sure that we separate that out. I mean like, just for people who are listening, that by having those structures you could, you could separate that. The failure was this activity. This thing failed, not you, right.

0:41:19 - Mike Bills
Yeah, and also, and again, as I had some time to reflect on this, I didn't. I don't want to be the CEO of a private equity owned business. That's a. There are people that love that and are awesome at it. I don't want to do that. You learned.

I just don't and I, so I got the. I got the opportunity to, to, to pretend to be one for a year and a half. I didn't do that ever again and fortunately I don't have to, because I know how to net, to do this smaller, self-funded thing, and I'm doing it again now and it's doing really well.

0:41:56 - Annalisa Holcombe
And this is like your sweet spot.

0:41:58 - Mike Bills
This is my sweet and again, it's yes it's because it's tied up with what I've learned about and care about in higher education, and so it's totally aligned with my core values, which is the first time I've done anything in my career that's really aligned with my values, so it's awesome.

0:42:31 - Annalisa Holcombe
Thank you, mike, for your time today and your willingness to discuss such a difficult topic. You can learn more about Mike by connecting with him on LinkedIn. Next week, I will be joined by Colin Bunker for our final episode of the first season of 92,000 Hours. Colin is the director of Solutions Architecture at Presidio, a nationwide enterprise IT integrator. Simply put, Collin is the go-to person for me and so many others on all things IT, database administration and cybersecurity. Most importantly, Collin is a loyal and dedicated employee leader, mentor and friend, and he was willing to talk with us about our final subject for season one. Love. We hope you'll join us, as always.

Thank you for listening to 92,000 Hours. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate your support. If you're interested in integrating the personal and professional through authentic conversation, just like you heard on our episode today, please check out our work at Connection Collaborative. You can find us at connectioncollaborative.com or send me an email at analisa@connectioncollaborative.com. Thank you and see you next week on 92,000 Hours. 92,000 Hours is made possible by Connection Collaborative. This episode was produced and edited by Brianna Steggell. Lexie Banks is our marketing director and I'm your host, Annalisa Holcomb.