THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES

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Faisal Hoque  00:00

He would tell me that look, when you’re buffing the floor, you have to be one with the floor and I couldn’t figure out what the hell is he talking about? What does it mean to be one with the floor, he will be whistling and taught me how to bust the floor. And he would create this shiny sheen on the floor on this this tile and marble floor and I was just amazed at how cheery and kind of optimistic about life he was despite of his station in life.

Achim Nowak  00:33

Hey, this is Achim Nowak, executive coach and host of the my fourth act podcast. If life is a five act play, how will you spend your fourth act? I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected fourth acts, listen, and to be inspired. And please rate us and subscribe on whatever platform you are listening on. Let’s get started.  I am very happy to welcome Faisal Hoque to the my fourth act podcast. Faisal was born in Bangladesh and came to the US at the age of 17. He is an accomplished serial entrepreneur, an audit thought leader, technology innovator and an advisor to CEOs board of directors and the US federal government is number one Wall Street Journal bestseller lift, fostering the leader in you amid revolutionary global change was just released. Pfizer’s marvelous book everything connects initially published by McGraw Hill and 2014 will be released by Fast Company publishing later this year rereleased so Faisal is having a moment this year. Welcome, Faisal.

Faisal Hoque  01:55

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Okay. Oh, it

Achim Nowak  01:57

is my pleasure. And I, what I want to get into is the fact that in the spirit of your most earlier book, everything connects, you have so much going on in different aspects of your life and how you manage all of that is of interest to me and hopefully, to our listeners, but, but for folks who don’t know you, here’s a question I love to ask every guest. When you were a young boy, you’re a teenager growing up in Bangladesh, did you have an idea of who you wanted to be when you grew up?

Faisal Hoque  02:31

Not really. But I would say sort of, because, I mean, when you grow up in Southeast Asia, and you come from the culture, I come from India, you’re pressured by your parents and your family members, and, you know, whatever, that you have to become an engineer or a doctor or, or lawyer one of those things. So I guess I was cultivated in my head that I’ll be an engineer. When I left back home, that’s what I ended up studying. But you know, my father is a civil engineer, was a civil engineer. He’s retired, obviously, by now. He wanted me to also study Civil Engineering or become an architect something to that nature. And he never wanted me to leave back home. He wanted me to go to his engineering school, back home, which I didn’t that I left home and I started to wanted to study computer related something computer related to started with computer engineering, then moved to computer science, but never graduated, which is a story way in itself. Yes, I wanted to be be an engineer of some kind. And that was what was hammered into my head, even though I saw it. And you know, as life goes, you have a lot of side roads, you ended up where you ended up,

Achim Nowak  03:48

where you made this wonderful little throwaway comment, but I never graduated. And that caught my attention. Because obviously, part of following a traditional narrative is, of course was supposed to graduate. How did that come about the knock graduation?

Faisal Hoque  04:03

When I came to us, it was a very hard struggle because I came here against my parents wishes I didn’t have a lot of money. I saved up some money. Before I come in here because I was a kind of a budding entrepreneur, even by the age of 1415. I was selling stereo equipment and saved up some money and that’s kind of how I got here. And I just didn’t realize how expensive the between the tuition and living expenses all that would be. School was hard. I was working full time. And I was taking computer science, which by itself is pretty tough. And I was working in graveyard shift as a janitor, but I ended up in University of Minnesota, from University of Illinois in Carbondale. And there I started to develop some software product and started exploring some stuff with a local consulting company. I started this and I saw this emergence of PC and this whole notion of network computers and whatnot. And I was kind of ahead of my time, I developed this demo. And I wanted to come and work for Wall Street, Wall Street firm, some sort of a Wall Street firm, because I want to get into financial market. So my this demo ended up offering me five job offers in 90s, you know, when there was actually a recession, I didn’t have a resume, but I had this demo. So I got five, six job offers, most of them from Wall Street firms like a traditional trading, trading firms or financial firms. But I also had a job offer from Pitney Bowes in Connecticut, that’s where I still live, you know, ended up working for their r&d group, and they offered me a job before I could even graduate. And they said, Well, you can finish your studies at a later time. I never got back to it. And since then, it’s been a whirlwind journey. I dropped out of college, right after my junior year, starting your senior year.

Achim Nowak  06:13

Oh, that’s beautiful about that story. There’s something else you snuck in just before that I remember you and I have met before. So I have, but I forgot about this part of your life. And in the spirit of everything connects. You mentioned that you work as a janitor for a while. What did you learn about yourself and other people, when you were working as a janitor, as a young man who arrived here from Bangladesh?

Faisal Hoque  06:42

You know, it was very humbling, because I don’t come from a rich family. But I come from an educated, somewhat middle class family and back where I come from, and in that culture, at least, during that time, being a janitor is very frowned upon. I mean, like, Who the hell works as a janitor or cleans other people’s toilet, right? It was very humbling. And my work was, I had two shifts in one was a graveyard shift, which was really cleaning the arena basketball arena and baseball arena and it just disgusting. You can imagine after a game, it’s really disgusting. And then the other, the cushy part of it was cleaning office space and cleaning up the toilets of the office, which was a little better. So it was very humbling, but culturally, you know what happened? I this was in Southern Illinois, Carbondale. So I got exposed to this. The African American community and my shift supervisor was this all black man in his 60s, you know, and he was the most cheery guy I’ve ever met in my life, he would come he would walk around like midnight, and I would, we would all kind of be there. And he’ll be coming and whistling. And I couldn’t figure out what what is so great about working as a shift supervisor at a graveyard shift in a university campus. And he taught me a couple of lessons. One thing he taught me and I guess this was the beginning of my affinity towards a mindfulness, which I didn’t realize at that time, I was too young. And he would tell me that look, when you’re buffing the floor, you have to be one with the floor and I couldn’t figure out what the hell is he talking about? What does it mean to be one with the floor, he will be whistling and taught me how to buffed the floor. And he would create this shiny sheen on the floor. This tile and marble floor and I was just amazed at how cheery and kind of optimistic about life he was despite of his station in life. That was fantastic learning point and a very needed learning point because it taught me a couple of lessons. It’s like the it little spark of mine What mindful Ness really means number one and number two is that regardless of your station in life, it has no relevance in terms of your happiness, you can be anywhere and achieve happiness and bliss joy for that particular moment in time. Right. So so that was quite a not to mention in humbling experience coming from where I come from and diving into the kind of situation

Achim Nowak  09:29

where my Southwind besides really enjoying the story is that we can find teachers who can teach us everywhere if we’re willing, for sure. Right. And you were willing to be taught so that’s what I love about this story. The other thing since we met you know maybe 910 years ago, I What resonates with me about you is that you are you talked about being the computer guy, the software guy, the engineer Are and you have a deep, spiritual part of you. And you’re talking about mindfulness and and you’re a colonist, in many places, you’re going for Business Insider from an East Fast Company, who published your most recent book and your next book. And your language connects something that seems to not obviously be connected for many people, would you would you just draw some of those connections and how you in your own life bridge your interest in something that’s a very technical process with, with the being one with the floor. So

Faisal Hoque  10:39

sure, I think as we get older, we discover different facets of our interest and life and whatnot, you know, when I was back home anyway, you know, that’s kind of what triggered me to write. everything connects, which I’ll explain in a minute, I would read these really very deep literature, Bengali literature, which is my language, Bengali is a very rich culture. And it has got a very old heritage of, of old school thinking and draws wisdom from many different parts, religious and otherwise, Sufi ism, and Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, other other kinds of things. So there was derivative of Sanskrit. So I used to constantly read this literature. And it kind of stayed tucked away. And I lost it when I got here for several years, because I was just in the mode of survival. And I wasn’t mature enough to kind of think through all that stuff. So as years gone by what has happened, when I got my first job, I was actually quite good at it. And success kind of almost came naturally. And I was managed to start a business which I ended up merging with GE and then got started my next venture, which got funded by Netscape at that time and funded by Gartner Group, and I was quite successful at it. And then I raised a lot of money from quote, unquote, venture capitalist, and, and by the time I raised money from venture capitalist, I was only 26 years old by that, by that when you hear the Silicon Valley stories now left and right, but during that time, it was just beginning of that kind of that crazy rise, as you can imagine. And I became quite arrogant, you know, and because it was written up everywhere, and I had that young stage, I was in boardrooms of MasterCard, and AmEx and IBM’s. And another the best of the best fortune 500 companies. And then I got fired from my own company, the VCs took over, my company threw me out, we were not getting along, which is a story by itself. This was very humbling. So I vowed that I would never be an entrepreneur, again, just hanging up my shingle. And that is it. So while I was doing that, I started to feel my real transformation. You, you talk about fourth act, you know, I mean, this was probably the act, end of Act One, four, I started to think about what to do next. And I wrote my first book, which was somewhat technical and business nature, arguing that, that business models that we’re seeing with technology, it’s really not sustainable, because it’s a lot of hype. And this was 1999. So right after that bubble happened, the internet bubble happened, it was published by Cambridge University Press, and I got a lot of notoriety or, I mean, it was a different kind of notoriety because it was an intellectual and academic notoriety. And I started my next company, and that went on for a while. And then we had that financial crisis in 2008 2000. And, you know, between 2008 and 2011, I started to see profound change in me, I also got exposed to a wide variety of travel by that time, I pretty much traveled every part of the world and I had a friend he passed away a couple of years ago when he was quite a bit older than me, he was chairman and CEO of Toshiba, USA is a Japanese very wise and all all meaning, you know, in terms of knowledge and wisdom, and also by a several years older than me, and he took me to Japan, a couple of days very rustic and ruler, very spiritual monastery, several monastery. And that completely changed my I felt a profound transformation. I started to look back and by that time, by the way, I came I’ve already published like five books, and they were all technical and management related and was highly followed in the academic community and it was being taught, but it didn’t have a soul. You know, those are not soulful things that I wrote. It was more How do you grow a business? How do you change organization, that sort of thing. And I was sitting in Dubai airport, and I started thinking about all this, I fell hollow, to all that I was feeling very hollow. And I was in Dubai airport sitting there, I had a layover for like 911 hours. And I wrote out the outline for everything connects, and what I wrote sitting at the airport, I was really, and I was dabbling with this, you know, this kind of like a writing of writing from your soul. It’s not for any reason, really not for anybody’s for yourself. It’s about your journey, you know, how you create resiliency? How do you live in the moment? How do you connect the dots, that sort of a thing. And he sent this outline to a couple of publishing houses that I knew by that time? Very well. I send this to McGraw Hill, and couple other places. By the time I came back from that trip, by that time, I just started to write for Fast Company and about No, this is we’re now talking almost like eight years ago, yeah, took me in a totally different path, I started to close my previous chapter, and started this chapter and publish everything connects and connected the dots between my technical side and my life side. As a result, the learnings I have had, from my failures, and from observing other people, and from my, what really makes me happy and what doesn’t make me happy and whatnot.

Achim Nowak  16:37

Fifth, I love that book. And one thing that strikes me listening to you, and we’ll get to your book lift in a moment, I think you your own journey seems to be uncannily connected to the messages the world needs to hear at a certain time, right? We’re just, I think everything’s gonna have that. So what are some of the things that as you said, at the Dubai airport, and you wrote the book, that were connected in a way that you had not seen before?

Faisal Hoque  17:07

That that’s a fact that in really comes from who, you know, you asked me did I know who I want it to be? And what I realized is that, who you want to be when you are, let’s say, 19, like son is now and who you want to be in your 30s and who you want to be in your 40s. And now, I’m in my 50s. So who you want to be in your 50s are different people, these are different chap, your core may be the same, but your interest and all that changes. The reason I wrote everything connects, which was almost now seven, eight years ago, the first edition of it was the fact that in order to connect with outside, you have to first connect inside. And when you connect with your inside, that’s allows you to connect with outside and allows you to create the value and the impact you want to make. It was a profound awakening for me. And I realized that when I were chasing the dream of like the typical Silicon Valley type entrepreneur, in Silicon Valley in the context of notion, not geographical location. That’s not who I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be another tech, the typical tech entrepreneur who, even though that’s what I want it to be, but that’s not what was making me feel fulfilled. Right. So that was the basis of everything connects in the sense that you have to first connect with yourself, well, how do you connect with yourself? Well, you have to become mindful. It’s mindful about what you do, how you think about it, how you guide yourself, which allows you to be more creative. And as a result, you become more innovative. And that’s how you connect with the outside world. And, and with this varied interest of exposure to all kinds of cultures and expertise, and I’ve been very fortunate. There’s a one line that you’ve made. Remember, we said that you have to become a omnivorous, consciously omnivorous. What I mean by that is not what you eat is what you consume, in terms of knowledge and understanding your ability to be open, consciously being open and compassionate. That’s allows you to define yourself right? That’s how you explore and find yourself.

Achim Nowak  19:21

A word from your sponsor. That’s me. I invite you to go to the website associated with this podcast www.my Fourth act.com You will find other equally inspiring conversation with great humans. And you will also learn more about the my fourth act mastermind groups where cool people figure out how to chart their own fourth acts. Please check it out. And now back to the conversation. As I’m listening to you one thing that also strikes me is your ability to know when it’s time to move on and do something different. In this, if I relate this to our listeners, many of them are successful. Many of them may think, Oh, I might want to start a little business or something like Faisal makes it sound so easy. He’s just one business after another, and he knows when to move on. It’s not so easy for me, like how, how do you know when it’s time to let go of one thing and move on to another?

Faisal Hoque  20:25

I think sometimes the change happened because you want to change, right? Most of the time actually, change happened, because you’re just forced to change outside situation or market condition or whatever your family situation that forces you to change. Going back to everything connects, you know, that financial crisis, that twin between oil and all 11, the residue of that in 12, and 13 happened, my customers were very big clients, you know, they were corporations. And I was also not being very fulfilled with chasing these things that were chasing, it was a kind of a combination of that triggered me to come to the next phase of my life, where I started the company that I run now called Shadow, which is really, I wanted to do impactful work, because my expertise is technology. And I wanted to do the impactful work with technology, then i Furthermore, said that I wanted to actually I’ve worked all my life in private sector and for money, I want to do something that actually allows me to help work. This country that I got so much from my spouse comes from here, my son’s comes from here are my favorite family, friends are here, professionally, all the fulfillment I got, the accomplishment I got is from here, so I want to do something. And what better way to do that is and then try to help our government. So for last five years, I’ve been really entrenched with our federal government, especially in the area of defense and otherwise. And I find this work very fulfilling, it’s frustrating, but it’s also fulfilling because frustrating in the sense that, you know, there’s political, sea change, and all kinds of stuff. But my work is not political nature is trying to make the country stronger. So I find that work very fulfilling, it wasn’t just thinking that oh, I want to change. It was a situation, because where the market was, but it also was what I wanted to gain from a personal point of view. And furthermore, you know, at that time, my mother started getting sick and older, and she was living with us, I wanted to spend more time with my mother and taking care of her. It allowed me to look at life in a very different way. And I completely changed the I mean, I reinventing business model is my expertise. I kind of reinvented my own business model, what I wanted to focus in a way where I could still take my products on idea and provide, do my own fulfillment that has a greater impact. And that’s what that chapter and now I’m in a different chapter, we’ll talk about it, you know, in the context of left and whatnot,

Achim Nowak  23:14

what you mentioned your mom and I have, my mom is older than yours, but also I stepped into the role of being responsible for my mother. But if we can take this last year on your life almost as a as an example of all the different things we can juggle at the same time, and if I’ll give you a little preview, and then we’ll just go deeper, you know, you have you have a new book out immediately became a Wall Street Journal bestseller that you are not aiming for that you didn’t want to write the book necessarily. Your son is dealing with some health challenges. Your mother requires a lot of your attention and you have all of that going on at the same time. Can we just break it apart first and then maybe see how you do that dance? Sure. Tell us about what it’s like to be a father to a son who has was diagnosed with something that’s rare for somebody that young it suddenly changed what you all have to deal with?

Faisal Hoque  24:14

Yes, my son is he’s 19 years old now. And he is a freshman. Right middle of the pandemic, he graduated from high school and went to Hofstra. I thought okay, well, I can now slow down. My mother just moved to a nursing home because we had to do that by nature of our health condition. And I said, Okay, I have a very rewarding work and a company that focus on helping our country so I’m just gonna take it easy. And then this is like, almost a year and a half ago now. I mean, Fast Company and my publicist. But then I said maybe it’s time to do another book as a night I don’t feel like doing book I haven’t written anything. In a couple of years, I’ve slowed down writing articles. And what am I going to write about the world is in a kind of complete shambles. I mean, I get like, my mind goes in 1000 chatter. And if you remember, when we have pandemic, nobody knows what’s going to happen. The major climate change technology is just one in the totally weird directions in many ways. Some are good, some are bad. I said, I don’t really have, I don’t know what I can write about. But I started thinking about it. And I was kind of outlining this notion that, look, there are these four drivers that I see, you know, we just pandemic and climate change and industrial, you know, the fourth industrial revolution. And then also, you can imagine, you know, you’re also we suffered major, crazy, divisive political climate, through misinformation, which we are still dealing with, right in many ways. And most of all, that my, my son got diagnosed with cancer. So even though I said, I’m gonna do this, I said, No, I can’t do this, and I gotta take care of it. This is like, beginning of last year, but I was saying that we’re gonna slow it down. I said, Okay, we need to do some housework, dislike, you got rid of your apartment, we got to do some renovations. I’m going to redo our bedroom. It just me and my wife, Chris are going to redo some stuff. So I actually was middle of planning of all that. So we had to hunker down and figure out what’s wrong with him. We got him on a track of recovery. This was now April, timeframe, April, May timeframe last year, exactly around this time. And I said, Okay, well, we can do one or two things, we can just kind of get consumed with grief and uncertainty and whatnot with WhatsApp what is happening with them. I have this story. I have Randy Bosch, his book called The Last Lecture, it’s been an inspiration for me forever. And I went back to that, because it’s it’s literally sits next to me. And I said, What would Randy do? Is it like, I’m paraphrasing it, it’s like when all hell break loose, you actually hunker down and try to tackle the beast in the context of the all broken loose. So I did exactly that. I said, Okay, I’m gonna, I’m not gonna start renovating my home, because that will be a defeat, I’m not going to start writing the book, I’m going to write the book, I’m not going to give up working with my client, the government client, because they depend on me and middle a bunch of different very important things. I’m going to carry on all this. And I’m going to center myself with all the things I’ve talked about. And all the things I have learned. And I’m going to tackle one thing at a time and I’m putting together a plan, I don’t care about the outcome, I’ve dove into it said, Okay, I’m gonna do everything I can to find the best gear I can find for my son with my wife. And we did that with Marshall best resource from every part of the world. I mean, medical, spiritual, food, whatever. And by the way, that story by itself, I was always in tune with very much different kind of culture element and food sources. And I’m an avid cook, I taken that skill to the next level where I, I now cook for him regularly. And that has a big impact on his recovery. I don’t actually feel that I’m overwhelmed. Because I can compartmentalize these things in different ways. And so we finished writing, and I said, okay, if I’m going to write the book, I’m going to need help, because I want to get a lot of research. And you know, in the book, I’ve talked about healthcare, because I learned a lot about health care between my mother and my son’s condition. And midst of all this, I set up a different organization called the next chapter. And I’ve dedicated the next chapters proceed to two things. One is, obviously cancer research. Because what I’ve encountered with my son, and other one is because of my love of my food, there is a phenomenal chef called Jose Andres. And he has organization, of course, I’ve been donating to his organization for a while. And I’ve kind of dedicated next chapters, threefold goal, which is I’m going to create intellectual property that can be utilized by anybody and everybody to take them to the next to their next chapter. So it’s learning from all the things that I’ve learned and learning from others. And we’ve started to package that. So lift has a course and everything connects, which again, I kind of forgot about that I wrote everything connected, but this whole journey with Lyft kind of triggered all that so we got Lyft you know, we’ve got everything connected, and there’s a series of courses that will be coming out of that. And we are going to be doing another one next year that’s going to call reinvent. It’s around rethinking the business models for social impact and Next chapter got born out of all this crisis, you know, all this got born out of this crisis. And I obviously would, I would continue to do my work with should look out for commercial purposes and we’re primarily focusing with our dollar US government. So what I learned Achim is that crisis actually is the best catalyst for reinvention, personal and otherwise, alright, so had I not had those crisis, I wouldn’t be writing, I wouldn’t have thought of left, I wouldn’t have written I mean, I thought of writing live, but it just, it just taken a totally different path. And I wouldn’t have launched next after I wouldn’t be launch, relaunching everything connects, and suddenly not say, Okay, well, this proceed is not for profit is for doing something that means deeply to me,

Achim Nowak  30:49

one of the messages I’m getting from us you’re talking is when crisis shows up, have the courage to walk into it, right, because what you did, and my own life hasn’t shared the story, I had forgotten it, but some connecting my own dot here when, when my mother at the age of 92 had a stroke. That year, I flew to Germany 10 times from here. I was in Germany a lot. But that experience, I remember sitting in a hotel room and realizing, you know, everything that I want to do, I can do from anywhere in the world, because I was so often on home. And that’s when I sold my business. I realize that business, I don’t need any more. But that wouldn’t have happened if my mom didn’t have a stroke. And, and I had to take care of my mother. Right.

Faisal Hoque  31:37

But yeah, I mean, and if you remember, I mean, my story is very similar to yours, because it is middle of when my mother got sick. And I wanted to spend more time. That’s when I exited out of my last business. And started should Oka and as I don’t want it to contribute to your government, right. So it is I mean, no crisis. There’s two types of crisis, personal crisis, which individualistic and then the outside crisis, right. So you talked about, perhaps the reason lift is gaining and gaining so much momentum is because I’ve kind of encountered both at the same time in the sense that, you know, and obviously lost some friends and family members during COVID. So that combination is a perfect storm, right? Out of the storm comes something maybe good. It’s kind of that kind of mentality. And

Achim Nowak  32:29

what I’m thinking you wrote everything connects was published in 2014. This is almost the the everything connects for the times we’re in right now. Right? It’s the times are different. But let’s say the spiritual principles or the governing principles are not different. The circumstances have just changed, right? That’s right. The other thing I do want to ask this because I’m sure if listeners are listening to you, they’re going I don’t know where Faisal gets his energy from, like, I couldn’t do half of what Faisal is doing. And he makes it all sound so easy. He says he can compartmentalize, but I couldn’t do all that stuff. So what kind of guidance would you have for folks who are going well, that sounds great. But I just want to start one little business. And that feels daunting to me,

Faisal Hoque  33:17

the way I look at it now versus let’s say, five years ago, or even 1015 years ago, the more skillful you get, the more you can actually also encounter unknown, because you know, you have the confidence that you have some skills, right. So that’s number one. Number two is that we kind of talked about mindfulness. But it’s really a very important practice, because it teaches you patience, it teaches you to let go of things that you cannot control and makes you focus on doing whatever that you’re supposed to do. So you know, we talked about mindful, practicing mindfulness is not just sitting there and meditating. I mean, it could be anything. It could be writing, you could be listening to music or jogging. For me, it’s cooking. Like when I cook, I don’t think about anything. I mean, and I’ve gotten quite good at it that allows you to say, Okay, well, if I’m going to write, I’m going to write, if I’m going to deal with our governmental crisis, then I’m going to deal with that, you know, and if I’m going to deal with what needs to be done for my mother or my son, you focus on that it comes from having that kind of discipline. Discipline is very important. You can do what I do if you don’t have the discipline. And it’s not just working like seven by 24 I don’t work seven by 24 it’s most people who listen to me things that I work seven by 24 Actually, I used to work lot, lot harder a lot longer when I was younger, I don’t know and, and because there’s some things that are that you have when you get older, if you’re lucky one is that you’re wiser, so you know what not to do. Right? You have skill So you can do things faster, you have connections, so you can call and marshal up help where you need the help. And and number three is that you can really say, Okay, well, is the process of elimination? It’s saying no, right? So I mean, it’s like, Do I really have to do this today, you can say, No, I don’t have to do to this today. So it sets your priority, and allows you to prioritize what needs to be done. So anybody who wants to start a business or change their life or find their next calling, you kind of have to look at yourself. And it’s almost like a next version of you not not discarding of your old version, because you can’t, and what that means you take the best and the worst from your past, and apply it to present meaning whatever mistakes you made, you hopefully wouldn’t make the same mistakes, number one, and whatever skills that you have gained, maybe you can apply it to your next chapter, or next act as you say, you know, so that’s really how you do it, or at least try to do it. And don’t worry about the outcome of worrying about outcome.

Achim Nowak  36:11

I so appreciate that you ended with Don’t worry about the outcome. Thank you for that. And your your wisdom, just this just that was full of just wonderful things you just shared. So as we wrap up, if our listeners want to learn more about what you do, where should they go look for your books or your work, where where would you like to direct them?

Faisal Hoque  36:39

I don’t know. I mean, just do a Google search, I guess, pick and choose whatever that talks to you. But I mean, obviously, they can go to my personal site, which is Faisal hug.com. I write for Fast Company, there’s been two of these articles that they can take it from there. By the way, if you remember, post, everything connects one of the when we did write a book or survive to thrive, which I made it for free, anybody can download that, from the web, what are first things to you can, you can probably tap into it. And whatever I’ve done, maybe it will add some value to somebody. And if it does, then it’s that the greatest satisfaction, but I really don’t have any ask or want or advertising. For all for any of this stuff. I’ve really made all this very organic, because I learned that you really can’t control anything, I will repeat something that I actually the live course is coming out and there was a clothing line. So I’ll say that here. As you know, life isn’t fair. And life is not as easy. But it can be interesting. It can be interesting for many different point of view. And if you’re lucky, you can find momentary joy and happiness from those interesting journeys. That’s all you can hope for. Nobody’s life is perfect. Everybody has some sort of crisis. Everybody has ups and down. And that’s we should be granted. We should be grateful for that. And have compassion for the fact that we’re all kind of in the same board regardless of the station of our lives.

Achim Nowak  38:12

Thank you for being an interesting guest. And thank you for that here, this wonderful sense of detachment from what things shouldn’t be and just just letting it be where it is. And of course, then co creating from that, which is amazing. It was a pleasure. Thank you Faisal.

Faisal Hoque  38:31

Always, always happy to talk to you. Okay, thank you so much.

Achim Nowak  38:35

Bye, bye. Like what you heard, please go to my fourth act.com And subscribe to receive my updates on upcoming episodes. Please also subscribe to us on the platform of your choice. Rate us give us a review and let us all create some magical fourth acts together. Ciao