#156: W. Allen Morris: All In
W. Allen Morris wants to help you risk everything, for everything that matters!
In this conversation, we talk about what it means to put a value on the soft skills of life while wrestling with success.
Allen is a proven developer who cares about more than just making a profit, he cares about building the Kingdom.
Links:
EP. 156
Tony: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back to the reclamation podcast, where our goal is to help you reclaim good practices for faith and life. I'm Tony. And today is episode 156. Where I sit down with speaker, author and developer, Alan Morris, Allen has lived an incredible life and career and has been wildly successful.
And today we talk about his change of attitude has changed your perspective when it comes to building the kingdom of God versus his own kingdom. Can we talk a lot about self-examination and the work he does now to help other entrepreneurs. With seeing the world through a different lens. If you have ever felt overwhelmed, or if you've ever felt like you're in over your head, or you just need a new perspective, this [00:01:00] conversation is for you.
And if you do like the conversation, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button, wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a rating and review on iTunes or Spotify. Maybe even share this episode with a friend, it's the highest compliment you can give us. So now, without any further ado, here's my conversation with Allen Morris.
Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited today to be here with CEO leader and author Alan Morris, Alan. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to connect with us here on the reclamation pocket.
Allen: It's great to be with you today.
Tony: I wanted to start, I'd like to jump right into things and I was looking at your hobby list and it's ridiculous in the best way possible.
And it says that you're a pilot fourth degree, black belt, scuba diver hunter. And so I want to start with a really hard question. If you could only do one of your hobbies for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Allen: I think it would be flying. [00:02:00] Okay. I I've, I've loved flying since I was a college student and got my private pilot's license and the Georgia tech flying club.
And now now I fly jets at 45,000 feet. So it's been a beautiful experience. You know, there's something exhilarating about the freedom of flight.
Tony: Yeah. So I'm in Dayton, Ohio, the birthplace of aviation regardless of what anybody from North Carolina said, It all starts here. They just had good wind.
And so if you've never been to the national museum of the United States air force, you should definitely come check it out. If it is a, an aviators dream.
Allen: I would love to go there. I've always wanted to see the Wright brothers bicycle shop and where they formulated their idea for their first flying machine.
Tony: It's a beautiful space. Yeah, it really is a one of the things that's super interesting is, is with this new book all in, as it comes out, you're really [00:03:00] sharing your heart in a, in a way that Most people don't do. And so I'm curious what was the writing process like for you and what did it teach you kind of about yourself along the way?
Allen: Well I think the writing process turned out to be a lot, like the journey that I had been on with the group. In my YPO young presidents organization, a forum for 26 years. And we began this journey together 26, over 26 years ago, a group of eight of us. And we have found ourselves in a constant process of taking one layer, deeper, look at the truth about ourselves and our relationships and why we do what.
Which is not the thing you typically hear CEOs talk about. It's more than just, you know pushing earnings for the quarter. It's more than just gaining market share. It's more than [00:04:00] creating the best product in the marketplace. It's also about your personal life, because in many ways the journey of your personal life is reflected in your business and your career.
And what we found in writing the book, what I found in writing book was it was really just recounting the truth about the things I discovered about myself and the truth. These other men discovered about themselves that they wanted to share.
Tony: I love that. I think one of the things that's interesting is as I hear you talk, I'm like, I'm an absolute agreement that your personal life really reflects your business.
But I would be remiss if I didn't also say like, business also matters too. Right? You guys are all CEOs. And so you have people that you have to report to, and I'm sure that our people who are listening, they all have bosses. How do we live in the tension? We need to perform and also the tension of we need to have a good life.
Allen: Well, that's, [00:05:00] that's, that's beautiful. That's a beautiful question. And I, I think it's a question I have to keep asking myself every day, because every day we face new challenges in life and we have. Based that tension of achieving balance between caring for the needs of our family, caring for the needs of our spouse taking care of ourselves personally.
In other words can I give myself permission to be kind to myself in the midst of the intensity of running a business in a competitive business environment with all the catastrophes and crises that come up. And business in the business world, in the academy like we're facing now the world economy is going through stress and change.
And because of that, a lot of people don't realize the stress that they're under. And so they are medicating themselves. There was an article in Bloomberg just this week.[00:06:00] A spike and alcoholism for people that have been coming through COVID and all the stress of COVID. And now we're, you know, we're watching Russia in beta Ukraine and how that's affecting oil prices, how that's affecting inflation, how it's caused to drop in the stock market in the United States.
And all kinds of other international tensions. Well, we can live in that space and then Medicaid ourselves by popping another pill or having another drink, or we can say, what am I what's going on with me? Am I feeding myself too much on the telephone? And my feeding myself too much on CNN and Fox news and, and and Bloomberg and BBC MSNBC, all these things.
Well, we have to be informed, but I think we have to be careful about how far we go with that and to be aware of the effect it has on us.
Tony: My listeners know how much I love [00:07:00] the idea of living one day at a time. And that's super important for as a coping mechanism in my life. We also talk about disciplines a lot here, and we say that if you aren't dedicated to your disciplines, you'll be destroyed by your distractions.
I'm curious, what are some of the things that you do on a daily basis to keep yourself in that right. Mental space? So you can lead not just your companies, but also yourself and your family.
Allen: Well, that's, that's a really good question. What are the disciplines that, that I use on a daily basis is very similar to most of the men that, that that are in our retreats and forums and that are on this, this journey of going all in, into their own lives.
And one of them, I think the first one is to constantly ask ourselves the question. Number one, what am I feeling right now? I grew up. Without any particular value on my feelings. I [00:08:00] grew up, my father was a captain in the Navy and and so the CEO running his own business. And because of that I grew up with a with a focus on what am I going to achieve?
When am I going to achieve it and how am I going to succeed? And so there's a little room in there to be aware of your feelings. It's about achievements and over the course of my life. And as I became a CEO and president of my company and Took on more and more responsibilities and more community duties, responsibilities and in my church and in my community, as well as in my businesses I had discovered I had become more of a human doing.
Than a human being, frankly, disconnected from what I was feeling. So the first discipline, the disciplines that, that that are important to me or for me to stop and ask myself, what am I feeling and why am I feeling that? And it just becomes to [00:09:00] start being more self-aware as the.
Tony: If somebody has no experience with that. I mean, there, there's probably somebody listening right now. Who's like, I want to be more self-aware to Allen and w what's the, like, what's the practical first step. Like, what's the one thing that they can do right now. If they pulled their car over or stopped running or, you know, stop mowing their grass while they're listening, if they could just stop for a second to become more self-aware what's the first what's really the first practical thing.
Allen: Practical thing. I just admit I was a hoax. My coach was about to give up on me. We were sitting circle of men at a retreat and he would ask, what are you feeling right now? Mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. And I was like a deer in headlights. I could tell you what I thought I could tell you what I believed.
I could tell you what my convictions were and by the way, feelings of, for women and children [00:10:00] I not important and they have changeable. So the only thing that matters is what you're committed to, what your convictions and beliefs are and what your gun. And and I made 180 degree turn on that. And the reason is he said, okay, look, Allen, I want you to write down on a three-by-five card here.
Six feelings, mad, glad, sad Tinder, excited or scared. Hmm. Gary this card around in your pocket and pull it out of your pocket a hundred times a day and look at it and ask yourself, what am I feeling right now? And frankly it was a revelation to me. Okay. So maybe I only pulled it out 10 times a day, but I'd look at that thing and I'd have to think what, which one of those six feelings do I feel?
And more often than not, I find that. Feeling [00:11:00] in the midst of having a great public image of go go, cheerleader comes total self-confidence feeling anxious, worried frustrated, concerned, all those words go in the fear category. I was, I would never admit to myself that I was afraid or that I was fearful.
I mean, I did a life, a life of things that proved how afraid I was, but the truth of the matter was down deep inside. I carried a lot of fear, anxiety about the business, about what's happening with this employee and this employee or this customer, or what's happening in the city or what's happening in the nation, or my concern about politics or my concern about military issues or internationally.
It was concerned about a lot of concern about trying to understand my wife can try to understand my kids. And all those [00:12:00] things are fears that we can end up carrying and not even be aware that we're carrying those fears. So just by writing down a simple list of feelings, pulling it out and look and ask yourself, what am I feeling right now was, has been a great start.
And I still do that. I don't have to carry the card, but I still do it.
Tony: Oh, well, what I love about that is it creates a baseline of language that you can really begin to. Like, cause I think most people get a little overwhelmed with the feeling talk and, and it's the words that scare us, that we're supposed to be something that we're not.
And yet what I like about this approach is that you could just take, Hey, just take six basic words, you know, like three of them all rhyme and. And then, and then just carry it with you. And when you're unsure of what's going on inside of you, it kind of that self examination, which is clearly a big part of, you know, wisdom taking the time for self examination, that it just, it kind of comes out.
How, how far along [00:13:00] were you in your career when you decided to get a coach and really start diving into some of this stuff?
Allen: Well let's see it was about 22 years ago and So I was about let's see, I was about 48 years old and I hadn't been president of my company for let's see 20 years and a CEO for 20 years.
And so this was not a new thing. I felt very competent to run my business and I was involved in leadership in the community, on the orange bowl committee and the board of directors of the chamber of commerce and the United way and all these other then the community, as well as on the board of my church you know, doing good things and, and building a business and, and expanding it around Florida and Georgia.
But I got to a certain point where I realized I had hit a wall.
Tony: Yeah. In your book, you write at at the age of 47, [00:14:00] my little kingdom was crumbling. I was wondering if you could tell us about that moment about kind of what was happening in your heart then at this point in time, you already, like you said, had, had run your, your real estate development kind of.
Enterprise for 20 years, I mean, from all the carrots you were wildly successful. And I love the language. My little kingdom was crumbling. Can you tell us about that?
Allen: Yeah, we had the largest commercial real estate brokerage company in the state of Florida and probably the largest developer of office buildings in the state of law.
So it was a pretty serious business. And now we've expanded far beyond office buildings, but that's another story. But at that time I was having trouble with particularly one of my kids. I love my kids dearly. And one of my kids was acting out and got suspended from school. And I told her that if she got in trouble one more [00:15:00] time, that was going to be the last straw.
And she's going to have to go away to boarding school because the stress on my wife is more than she could handle. And so I put her in a boarding school up in Long island, New York. And and after one semester she got expelled from that school. And then I put her in a, a, a, a, kind of a really tough emotional lockdown school up in Northern Vermont.
And at the same time, and my wife was going through a lot of difficulties that I couldn't understand. She would lock herself and cry when I was not home. And I'd hear about it. Kind of sideways, I'd find out about it. And I had conflict going on between two of the senior officers in my company and and I was kind of walking on eggshells around them.
You know, why would I be walking on eggshells around two other guys when I owned the company? And I'm the president. But [00:16:00] that was the truth. I mean, that's the, that's the embarrassing truth. And so I have different things going on and driving, you know, two weeks after dropping off my daughter. And and in school in Vermont, I started having some really bad headaches.
I mean, a really severe headaches. I wake up at six o'clock in the morning with a, with a severe headache and take my et cetera. And four hours later, I take another two, et cetera, and four hours later, another two weeks. And on and on through the day and then take my et cetera and go to bed, wake up at two in the morning, take my Excedrin and then wake up at six in the morning with a splitting headache.
So I knew that you know, something was seriously wrong. So I went to the head of neurosurgery at my hospital and he interviewed me and he said, well, Alan, I'll tell you right now with those symptoms, you've got a brain tumor. Let's do the MRI and let's see where your tumor is. And then we'll know what our options.
And I thought, okay, well I can deal with [00:17:00] anything and you know, and God wants me to go. And you know, if this is the way I go there, It's out of my control, but let's see what the options are. So it took him three weeks to go through the process of the MRI gets scheduled and then come back and do a cat scan because the MRI wasn't inclusive.
And then he came back in and he told me after the cat scan, he said, look, Alan, I've examined the films myself and your tumor is not there. And I said, well, Why are you calling it my tumor? He said, well, I can give you pancake. I'm giving you a beta blockers. I can give you muscle relaxer, but and that'll get the pain under control.
I said, you're, you're kidding. Is that the best you got? I mean, you don't know what's causing. Yeah, you're sure that it's not a physical problem. And you're going to give me this to mask. The bank said that's that's, that's all. That's [00:18:00] all I know to do. Well, I'm going to get serious. I got to get to the bottom of this because what this is telling me, there's no physical, cause I must be causing this myself.
And so I I decided to take it seriously. Cause I was really looking down the barrel of a gun here, thinking that I only had months to live. And, and what would happen to my company, what would happen to my family? If, you know, if I dropped dead of a brain tumor so I thought, how about if I step out of the company and give this my full time attention, I ended up hiring a former executive back in and run the company for me for three months while I took a sabbatical for three months.
And and I was hired a counselor. And a an executive coach to help me work through and discover what was going on when you know, that was causing these headaches. And and that was, that was how it all began. [00:19:00] And the three months started at three amazing years. My sabbatical. Wow. I ended up managing the company and more as a chairman, rather than a CEO For the most part, I stayed out of the office and and dove deeply into my journey.
And it was a journey of break, a great, exciting discovery and sometimes painful discovery, but that was.
Tony: I'm wondering if you could tell me about the moment when you decided to extend that sabbatical from three months to three years or, you know, D you know, like, I think there are a lot of people in our journey and their journey right now who are listening to this, and they feel like the winds of change may be blowing.
And they, they started out on a path, but now God is moving them in a new direction. How did you know. How did you know that this was the right move? How did you hear God? So clearly in that what was that moment like when you [00:20:00] went to your, I mean, you, you have people you're accountable to you're the CEO, but there's, there's people there there's a lot of people, depending on you.
You know, when you go to tell them, Hey, I think I'm just going to keep not coming into work. Yeah.
Allen: I gave the fellow, I hired the authority as the managing director of the company to to run things and and I would show up once a week. And so people would see that I was still alive and healthy and smiling and but and I had to go in to make critical decisions that needed to be but but taking myself out of the routine, notifying all the community organizations and my church that I had to step out for a time that I wasn't going to be available to serve on this board or this.
And and so it gave me a kind of freedom that I had never given myself permission to have. And I [00:21:00] didn't realize that freedom was more, just a political idea. It's a powerful spiritual concept in Galatians five one, and the new tests. The apostle Paul writes for it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
You know, we think so much about our, I find myself thinking so much about my duty to God or doing good or doing the light thing or being accountable to God. Ultimately this, sometimes I forget that I'd want our. And it is for freedom is a goal in and of itself in God's economy for it is for freedom that Christ has set us free and that he doesn't want us to continue to enslave ourselves by our rules.
That are not his rules and our our guilt and shame that we carry [00:22:00] around that he wants to forgive us from and give us freedom from. So was probably one of the first revelations in my taste of freedom. During that time made me hunger for more I have to know how to just enjoy life again, instead of just bidding a hard drive.
A task master of myself mostly, but also everyone around me.
Tony: Hey, everybody just pausing this conversation with Alan to remind you that we're a part of the spirit and truth podcast network. Our goal is through intentional conversation to help move you closer to Jesus. So check us out spirit and truth.life to learn all things about spirit and truth.
And if you're so moved, we would be honored. If you would consider supporting our ministry by becoming a monthly giver, our ministry is completely funded by donors like you and all of your gifts enable us to continue to do the things that we love to do to share the [00:23:00] kingdom of God. Again, for more information.
Check us out spirit and truth.life. Now let's finish up my conversation with Alan. So you work with leaders all over the globe and you do retreats and you help them find this freedom. But I would imagine there's a fair amount of people that you're coaching or that your team is coaching and they can't afford to take three years off work.
Allen: Oh, absolutely. This is a, that's a very, very rare thing.
Tony: Yeah. How do we, how do we start the journey to freedom in the spaces that are given to us today?
Allen: Well, I'll tell you the, the, the ways that have been most helpful to me that are doable, that are simple and that are that for me were a revelation is that is what my counselor said to me.
After about three months, he said, Allen would you do anything I asked you to do. And I said, well, [00:24:00] I don't know about that, but but I tell you what I'll think about it overnight. And and I'll come back and I did. And I said, you know, I figured VSP to do something really ridiculous, so I could just fire him.
He said, okay, here's what I want to do. I want you to go to AA meetings. I want you to go to 60 meetings in 60 days. And I said, you gotta be kidding me. Let me say it I'm deadly serious. I said, but I'm not an alcoholic. Why would I go to AA meetings? And he said, because God is there. And I said, oh, this is great.
Here I am an elder in my church. I've written a direct other Christian ministry in addition to running my business. I run a charitable foundation that supports Christian ministries and the book on Christian apologetics. And I got to go to an AA meeting because God is there. I said wow. And then I thought, well, what do I do if somebody recognizes [00:25:00] me at an AA meeting?
I mean, you know, I'm, I'm a kind of a well-known guy in my little community Islam, like being a big fish in a little pond and you know, am I going to go in there with the dregs of society? And, and they're going to think I'm an alcoholic and all that and all these. That's really the truth about what I was afraid of.
I was afraid of my my image reputation. And I ended up going with a group of the guys in my, my my forum group who decided they'd go with me to support me. And it was an astonishing experience. We heard people share. Nobody had a persona. Nobody was trying to fix anybody else. Nobody was telling you how great they were.
They were telling you the truth about the pain in their lives, about how they had screwed up their lives. And it was in a circle of what I would call a circle of grace, where nobody was judging anybody. But [00:26:00] people were being brutally vulnerable, authentic and honest about the pain that they had caused themselves and the pain that they had caused those around them.
And I was just flabbergasted. I had never seen anything like that in certainly any business group I was in, or certainly in any church group that I was at that level of. And and then I discovered Alanon, which is family and friends is alcoholics and they are in the same kind of 12 step recovery process from themselves being enablers of the addict that they love.
And I said, wow, I really relate to. That group even even more. So I ended up going to AA and Alanon meetings and you know, you can make $300 an hour for a really good psychologist, or you can pay a dollar an hour and go to an AA meeting and get about the same result. [00:27:00] I kind of liked the con the economics of thing, a dollar to go to an AA meeting or an Alanon meeting, and just sitting there quietly and listen to.
And journaling my thoughts and writing down, what is that I'm feeling right now? What am I becoming aware of about myself? As I listened to these other dear honest, authentic people tell their stories and that began opening a whole door of self-awareness in my life. And I ended up going, not just for four 60 days, but for many years,
Tony: Yeah.
One of the things that I love that people say at the end of 12 step meetings is keep coming back. It works.
Allen: If you work at yeah. In the back, it works.
Tony: If you work here and it's it's well, it's, it's the mindset that you're talking about when you, when you're kind of talking about going all in, right? Like it's just like, Hey, show up, do the little things every day and decide where your [00:28:00] priorities are.
And, and that kind of leads me to my next question. How, in the midst of this transformational journey, did you shift your priorities? I mean, cause obviously, you know, you created some margin, which I think is important. We all need margin. You found some people to help you and then you, you committed yourself to a lifestyle that was different from what was so all of that had to change the way you see the world.
What did those new priorities look like for you? And then. H, how did you express it to your wife June? I'm curious because my wife would think I was crazy.
Allen: Well first I'll just say that, that they, the the, the process was a process of stages. It's not flipping a light switch. Some people like describe it as peeling, an onion. You know, you peel the onion and you see this beautiful onion, nicely peeled, and you realize, Hey, And then discover what was this, another [00:29:00] layer.
And so you start cutting off that other layer and you get that layer off of the onion age. Discover it looks great, but wait, there's another layer and there's layer upon layer upon layer of. Going into the truth about yourself and seeing more and more truths about yourself. Oftentimes hurtful and self defeating behaviors that we carry on in our lives, whether it's in a, maybe it's a drinking or in a, maybe a narcotics anonymous.
Drugs or, or prescriptions, or whether it's essay with sex addicts anonymous you know, we all have different ways of medicating ourselves. And so that's, that's one of the places to, I think to start is realize that there's a journey of layers of discovery. And, and the layers are. And with each leg you, you [00:30:00] realize that you're not exactly the person you thought you were and you can have more compassion and empathy for the weaknesses and wobbles.
Others around you when you realize, Hey, wait a minute. I just minor, just a little different. So we worked so hard on maintaining our persona. That what happens is when we become less about our persona, less about our public image less about defending ourselves and more about being open and curious about what we, what more we need to see about ourselves.
I think it makes us easier to live with. And my children tell me it's made me more approachable than I was before or a better relationships with them. As well as the people that I work with. And and the men in my group who are very quick to observe. When I'm believing my own PR[00:31:00]
Tony: Yeah, yeah, no, I've got some friends like that, too. Little humility partners is what I call them. I'm from a Wesleyan tradition. So we have a band meeting and there's a pastor that I get together with every week and we confess sins to each other and it's an old Wesleyan practice and it's, there's nothing more humbling than going into and telling another human.
All of your mistakes or the areas where you're struggling the most. And so it sounds a lot like the journey that you've been on.
Allen: Yes. That's a great discipline, right? It's it really helps you get and stay centered. And one of the things that we do in our, in our monthly forum meetings with our men is we have a thing called a clearing where when we start the meeting, we reaffirm absolute confidentiality.
And then and we check in with what we're feeling. And that's one of the ways that we become aware of not just what the other men are feeling, but we've been [00:32:00] aware, what is it we're feeling ourselves by, by checking in with what we're feeling. And then we do, what's called a clear where we look each man in the eye.
And say I don't, I feel clean and clear with you. And we go around the circle and let me say, you know there's something that that may last week, you know, but maybe it's, you know, I called you and you didn't return my phone call or I sent you a text message. It was really important. I never had any, and I feel.
I, you know, I'm ticked off about that. I don't like that. And I felt like you were too busy for me or whatever it is you felt to show up for that, even though it seems like a little nitpicky, maybe even seem like a childish little grievance, because what happens is we carry these little childish grievances and that picky irritations around inside of them.
And because of that, it, it subconsciously affects our relationship with that [00:33:00] other person. And what, what I find when I do a clearing with somebody over something that may seem very minor, I discover, wow, I have more feelings inside about this than I thought I did. And and so, and the other man honors me by listening to the facts and the feelings and the judgments.
And what do I want. Around that without giving any explanation without giving any justification or defensiveness, just honoring me by listening fully and that. That's a great gift to give to one another. So that's one of the things along the journey when you ask, well, you know, how do you go through this?
Well, that's, these are different elements of it being in a circle of grace, being in a forum with others, going to someplace like AA or Elena and, and speaking truth in a vulnerable way, in a safe container with other men.
Tony: [00:34:00] So you've got lots of years of experience in community. It's clearly a major part of your story.
You know, even in just the short time that we've been talking today, you've probably mentioned your community almost more than anything else between your your YPO group or the retreats or the 12 step meetings. I imagine there's somebody listening right now. Who is not in an intentional community.
And I was wondering if you could take your years of wisdom and tell them why they should get into a intentional community that helps them grow as a human.
Allen: Well, I think probably horrible Hendrix. The counselor said it best when he said that we are made to be in relationship. And we are injured in relationship and we are healed in relationship.
Wow. And that's where we will find the healing that we need to be the whole [00:35:00] people, the wholehearted people that God made us to be. And then I think that, that that is the gift that we have and that we can give to ourselves to be in. In relationship, really not casual relationship, but intimate relationship with others.
That's where the healing takes place. Yeah, that's
Tony: beautiful. So I, I know my audience, I know that they are a praying people and as this. Begins to kind of find its way out into the wilderness. There, I would love for them to know how to pray for you and how to pray for this book as it goes into the world.
Allen: Well, thank you. My hope is very simple and that is that God would use this book to bless and heal the lives of many, many, many man. A hundred percent of the proceeds from the sale of this [00:36:00] book, go straight back into the all end foundation charitable founders. And nobody makes any profits off of this book.
I'll go down to help create men's groups and to help sponsor people in ministry or otherwise who cannot afford to come to a retreat where we can scholarship people into retreats and into for. And we were, we were, I was in working really hard to build a retreat center and I'm a real estate developer.
I'm a builder. I was at every possible roadblock with building this, this retreat center in south Florida. And my wife said to me, one day, why are you, why are you working so hard to build this retreat center to help hundreds of them? When you could write a book that may help millions of men? And all I could say was of course all the wisdom comes from my wife and her insights watching me unsuccessfully, trying to get this retreat center built.
And [00:37:00] so I had had some of you may know one of my mentors was a man by the name of Dr. Bill brown. Who founded a non-profit Christian ministry called at the time campus crusade for Christ. And now it's called Cru. And I worked as his assistant at one time. And and he was like a mentor, like an uncle to me for many.
And when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he asked me to come stem time. And in Orlando, when I spent the weekend with him and I shared with him my new journey why I had taken a sabbatical from everything I was doing. And he said, Alan, you've got to write a book about this. This would help so many men.
Well, that was November of 2000 and wow. I spent the last 20 years. Thinking about it. I said, bill, I couldn't even write the preface to it. I'm trying to figure it out myself while I've spent 20 [00:38:00] years now figuring it out. And so during, when COVID came, I said, well, I guess this is the gift of the time to write the book.
And so I just tried to be as authentic and as honest and, and as helpful and direct as I could so that it could be a very practical help to me. Who may feel stuck or may feel like they don't have the joy in their lives that they, that they want or they don't have the freedom in their lives that they.
And cause I felt stuck and I felt like I had lost my joy and I felt like I had lost my vision and my mission for, for both my business and my life. And and so the, this is what I wanted to share in the book. And I would just be so grateful for people's prayers that that this book would find its way into the hands of as many people as possible that it could encourage and help them in their.
That's beautiful.
Tony: Yeah, that's good [00:39:00] through good. Okay. I have one more question for you. But before I ask it, I always know that my listeners are going to want to connect with you on the interwebs. Where is the best place to learn all about Alan Morris and what he's doing in the war?
Allen: Well, the, the website for the, for the book and what we're calling all the in leaders ministry is all in book.com, a L L I N B O O k.com.
It's as simple as that and brook.com and that'll lead you to the information about the book. My bio. And and then as we have future resources, we're going to have online courses. That'll be available in two weeks. We're going to be filming a web, a webinar series so that people can go online and get a lot of free resources when they buy the book, they can also get free resources online.[00:40:00]
That the book launches them into with a, with a website on the, on the end of the book so that the book will be out. It'll be distributed by Simon and Schuster on May 3rd. So it's about less than two months away from now. And so if you order the book now, which you can do it all in book.com you'll have access to all those resources.
Tony: That's awesome. Love it. Now you, you, yourself, aren't really super active on any particular social media.
Allen: Personally, all the information about about the book will be on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram. And and so I had my web pages there. And if you care about the Alan Morris company, to know who we are, who I am from a business standard, That's on there on the internet as well.
Alan morris.com.
Tony: Love it. Love it. Love it. Okay. Last question. I always love to ask people. It's an advice question, except I get to name [00:41:00] the I'm going to ask you to give yourself a piece of advice, except I get to name the day and the time. And so what I would love to do is to take you back to the end of your very first day.
As the CEO of this company. So you just finished, you just finished a long, hard day at work. It probably never actually ended. You probably just drifted off into sleep, knowing your personality a little bit after spending some time with you. If you could sit across from that young man that needed to be with them and look them in the eyes.
What's the one thing that you want to tell them.
Allen: Yeah. And whatever you do with your business or whatever you do with your service in the community or your service for Christ do it with kindness towards yourself. You don't have to kill yourself to please God, I think I found myself. [00:42:00] Probably not knowing when the wind quit. Cause I always felt like I must do the next thing and then must do today.
Tony: Amen. Amen. That's that's a really good word to end on, Alan. Thank you so much for your generosity today, for your time for your vulnerability. So much fun, getting to hear your story. And I can't wait to see what God does with this book.
Allen: Well, thank you, Tony. It's a pleasure to be with you on the reclamation podcast today.
Tony: What a great dialogue. I love his heart and his perspective. I love the way he shares his wisdom. So touched by his ability to just be honest and share kind of how life was like an onion, right. And it's got its stages and perspective. You know, that just means a lot. I think it's important for all of us to pause and listen to those who have been places where we've never been.
So I'm thankful for Allen. And if you're thankful for Allen, hit him up on socials, check out his book [00:43:00] all in and make sure that you let them know that you heard them here on the reclamation package. As always it's an absolute honor and a privilege to be on this journey with you. I love our community. If you haven't yet go on to spirit and truth on the Facebook page and join.
Every day, Facebook group, living the faith. It's a great way to stay connected with what God is doing in our community. And we always ask good questions about what God is doing in your life. So it's a great way to give some feedback. Thank you guys so much for being here and remember, if you want to follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.
