📍EEA: Overcoming Adversity with Howard Brown

RJ Redden [00:00:00]:

It's that time again, my friend. The same bot time, same bot channel. We are here at the epic engagement adventure. Let me tell you a little story about the man that I am going to be interviewing this hour. This man has been through the ups and the downs and the all arounds. I can't even remember where we met, Howard, but I was fascinated immediately with your story, with your grand adventure through this life, and I am so proud to introduce you to my audience. Tell us everything, who you are, where you're from, what's going on.

Howard Brown [00:00:44]:

Well, thank you, RJ, for having me on your show, and I'm so pleased to be here. And you have your goggles, and I am shining brightly with you today. We are shining. We all have our thing, so we are shining together. You got to have shades. So thank you for having me. Oh my goodness. I'm so thrilled to be here. I'll share a little bit of a quick bio on myself, but the first thing, I always recognize that I am a son, a husband, a dad, a friend, a confidant. Okay? And that is the most important thing at the end of the day. So I appreciate those qualities. Now, professionally, I've done some time. I'm a Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur. I've got some great stories about Silicon Valley in the early two thousand s. I am also a community servant. I like to help other people, and I do a lot of work in the interfaith community and in the cancer worlds, which we'll get into. And I'm all about basically waking up every day and seeing what needs to get done to help myself and help others move forward.

RJ Redden [00:01:58]:

Yeah, that's what it's all about, my friend. Tell me about shining brightly.

Howard Brown [00:02:05]:

Well, shining brightly is the movement, right? Shining brightly is what you need to do when things get tough. Okay? Things get sticky, muddy and dark even. And shining brightly is the way that you actually have to seek out some form of light in order to be able to get yourself out of bed, get yourself to the next level, to be able to use your inner strength that resilience with a dose of hope and gratitude to actually take you to the next level. And it doesn't have to be out of dark times. It can actually be vaulting you in good times as well. But you need that light, and we all have it within ourselves, and that light individually is great, but that light joined together with others is powerful.

RJ Redden [00:03:02]:

It is powerful. They say, I heard this when I was a kid, but if you take a candle to a mirror, then you've got twice as much light. And I do believe that we are so much better together walking through this life. So tell us a bit of your story, Howard. How did you get to be the Shining Brightly guy?

Howard Brown [00:03:31]:

Yeah, mr. Shining Brightly has always been there, but he just came way out to the public domain this past summer, last summer, into the fall, with my book Shining Brightly my memoir, and it's basically how to lead a resilient life with hope. I've been through a lot of good stuff, and you took Mary GAround up and down and all the way around. And so the story starts back that I am a twin, and really important fact, my mom had twins at 19. All right? And having a twin is like having a best friend, but that comes into play really important. I grew up outside the suburbs of Boston, and I love sports, and I went to the number one school for entrepreneurship, absent college. And I learned a little bit there, knowing that entrepreneurship of all kinds actually makes the world go round. And so I got great training now. I start my career at a big computer company called NCR, and I work for these four senior sales guys, and I learn from them, and I learn their different styles. I'm observing them, but they're teaching me, and I'm making them productive, and they're making me money. And I get promoted at a very young age to go to corporate headquarters in Dayton, Ohio. I'm driving out to Dayton, Ohio, and I notice a little spot on my left cheekbone. So I get out, get gas, use the payphone. This is 1989. There are payphones, all right? I had to put the change in there and call my mom and say, hey, Trip's going okay. But I noticed something because I keep looking at the rearview mirror, and I see it doesn't hurt, whatever it is. So roll the clock forward. My mom comes out to help me get set up in my apartment in Dayton, Ohio. Like, buy sheets and dishes, stuff you might need, and it's grown a little bit. And I wore glasses at the time. And she's like, you're going to get that checked out. I said, no, it doesn't bother me. It'll go away. But I found myself making excuses. I got hit on the basketball court. I bumped into something at the gym, as it would be. I was flying back to Boston, doing a speech to the American Bankers Association. I was a keynote luncheon speaker, and I went to see my parents. I came in early. My dad played a trick on me. Instead of going to play tennis and breakfast, he took me to a community hospital emergency room. They checked it out because he was concerned he was getting bigger, even. And he ended up the doc told me, yeah, it's a cyst. Take some antibiotic. You'll be fine. So I started taking it. I went and did my speech. I faked it until I made it. It all went well. I came home to have dinner with my parents. My dad took me back to the community hospital, and this time, they actually took not one, but two biopsies. This might have been August of 89. Then a huge waiting game. Well, after dinner, they took me to the airport. I flew down to Tampa. I actually stayed with friends. And they looked at me, and they go, what's that thing on the side of your face? It's growing bigger, and it's knocking your glasses off there. Well, I did business. I said, I don't know. And my parents are worried sick. And I finally, a couple of weeks later, got a call back to Boston, and I went to that community hospital, and I had seven doctors waiting for me, so I knew something was up. I didn't know exactly what. And then they said, you have an appointment at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston at 02:00. Don't be late. We weren't late. We showed up at this cancer hospital, and I had never heard the word cancer before. I was 23 and a half years old. And we get there, and I look in the waiting room, and there's a lot of older and old people there. And then I look down the hall, and there's all kids pediatrics. The Jimmy Fund is a big charity there for kids with blood cancer. And I get called in, I do some tests, and I get called into this Dr. Canalis office. He's invented chemotherapy, I'm told, for blood cancers. And there's this young Harvard fellow standing behind him. My mom and dad are behind me, and he says, Howard, you have stage four T cell non hodgkin's lymphoma blood cancer of your entire lymphatic system. We're going to pound it out with chemotherapy. And I didn't hear another word. I looked up to Eric Rubin. I was like, what? What's he saying? And Dr. Rubin just gave me the take a breath. And I looked back at my mom's in tears, my dad's a statue, and they proceed to tell us what's going on. And there was no doctor google then, okay, we went home. My dad got a book at the library. He ran out and got a book on cancer. We didn't know anything. We're living with landlines. There's no cell phones. There's no Internet, very little computer use. In 1989, my sister came over. We pretty much cried all night because we had no idea what we were about to face. And I went in for more tests. And then a day or two later, I was to start chemotherapy. And they were going to hit me hard, because otherwise I was young and healthy, and they were going to hit me hard. So I get to the hospital, I do more tests. They take blood. And Dr. Rubin comes and finds me and says, your liver function is too high. You can't do chemotherapy today. I was like, oh, my God. I didn't sleep at all. I'm nervous. I have no idea what to expect, and all the side effects and all that. He says, Well, I scheduled a field trip for you. He goes, you're going to the cryogenic center down the street. And I go cryo. What is that? And he said, It's the sperm bank. He goes, Fertility is important. And go down there, and it might make you feel better to dump dump, right? And my parents took me there, and I left a sample, and that becomes important in a little later down the line of the story. I started chemotherapy the next day. It's no fun. I felt like crap. There's nauseous, vomiting, shivers, you're on steroids. There's anxiety. It was not fun at all. And you got to show up for the next treatments every other week. And I lost my hair immediately. I went to my fifth year high school reunion, and most of the guys, like, dead men walk in, poor bastard. I mean, things were bleak, and I was failing therapies and we got a piece of good news. And that piece of good news happened to be my sister, my twin, CJ brown gingris. That was an exact match. That's like hitting the lotto. So when you swab for be the match or Gift of Life Bone Marrow registry, then you are a one in 25,000 chance of being a match. Now, even with a twin sister who was she's not identical fraternal, she was that chance, and thank God she was a match. And so I started to talk about what then was called a bone marrow transplant or a stem cell transplant. And so May 17 came I got admitted to the hospital at Dana Farber, and they gave me Rockham, sockom, chemo, full body radiation, because that was the protocol. They found out years later that was way too much, but they were trying to save my life. And I entered isolation because I was a boy in the bubble, no immune system. And a week later, on May 24, I just had the anniversary of 33 years that my twin sister's bone marrow came in a little purple bag, and they infused that in me, and they said, it could kill you right away. It could kill you quickly over time, or hopefully, her immune system becomes your immune system, and it overtakes the cancer and the malignancies in your body. Well, it did. 34 days in isolation. I got freed, and I started to do a clinical trial to strengthen my DNA, called my Natural T cells and Killer cells. And six months later, I walked out basically after some kind of the stepping stones therapy group for people that had gone through all this intensity that I did with my mom, who is my caregiver and my dad, and I basically got my life back. I was 135 pounds involved. I went to live with my buddy in Tampa who was divorced, and two of my high school friends came to babysat. We went to the Super Bowl, and then I got to go to Hawaii, and NCR asked me to come back to work and I said, I want warm weather. And so I got to put Humpty Dumpty back together again in Los Angeles on the beaches of Marina del Rey. I built my mental toughness back up. I built my physical fitness back up and my strength back up. My career was about to get started again and get back on track, and I added in some community service. I had done that in the past, but this was really more intentional. And guess karma starts happening. I'm feeling good. I'm playing basketball, I'm meeting friends, and I meet my wife Lisa, the Jewish community, at a young leadership group. And we got married. And she encouraged me to do other things as service. And I became a big brother mentor to this young boy who was ten, Ian, and he's now married with a baby, and we're family, and he's my little brother and he's an uncle to my daughter. So good things are happening. I got my life back. And Humpty Dumpty version 10 was good, except that Humpty Dumpty version 10 was also still a workaholic. So I fell off the wagon to be working too much. But it was what I had to do. It was my path and moved up to the Silicon Valley. And if you think things were kind of out of control in La, silicon Valley was so fast. Two plus two equal 200. I got to take a couple of companies public, but my wife sat me down and said, listen, if you want to have a family, we're not getting any younger here. You better be home for dinner. And so things had gone a little bit south. Silicon Valley, the.com and Web 10 and Web 20 were starting to kind of change, and we're still listening to Sony Walkman. But the digital world was coming upon us in the 2005 and six with the ipod and Apple and Facebook around that time, so I ended up calling for that sperm. So miracle number one, my twin sister saves me from a bone marrow transplant. Miracle number two, frozen sperm becomes our healthy baby. Frozen kidsicle. Emily in 2000 and 111 years later. Isn't that the coolest? Wow. Frozen kidsicle.

RJ Redden [00:13:55]:

I will never forget that phrase.

Howard Brown [00:13:57]:

Yeah, well, she was. She was. And we were so blessed, lucky and grateful, and I just want us to take a break there and let you chime in, because that's a lot to throw on everybody. That's the opener. And the story has got another miracle, so we'll get to that in a second. But a lot, right? It just shows you how fragile life really is.

RJ Redden [00:14:21]:

It is. And we don't tend to realize that sometimes until there's a threat. Part of why I asked you to come chat on the podcast with me is because it's a story of incredible resilience. That's just not something that we're taught in school how to be resilient other than as you and I were talking before, the podcast, rub a little dirt on it and go, you'll be fine. There needs to be deeper stuff around that I'm primed for the rest of the story.

Howard Brown [00:15:07]:

All right, so we have this beautiful miracle girl, Emily, and we're parents. Who would have thought of that? The fact that Dr. Eric Rubin had either the wisdom, the little flash from God, or just the doctor training to talk about fertility, and it still needs to be talked about because I didn't know if I was going to live or die. And I lived and was able to have a child. Now there's adoption and there's surrogacy. There's lots of other things, and it's expensive back then in 2001, but it was so worth it, and it was amazing. And so my twin sister calls me and she says, I'm moving to Michigan. Well, my wife's from Michigan, and I wanted my daughter to grow up with family. We were alone out in the Bay Area, and although it was great, and Wine Country and Monterey and the Bay Area are really cool, no place like family. And so we moved to Michigan in 2005, and I had started two other software platforms, both for Religion and Interfaith. The largest social networks in the world are Faith and Religion, and so I was serving those markets. Things were going along quite well. And at age 50, which was the screening age at the time, I went in for a colonoscopy. Well, this is June of 2016, just seven years ago from around today, and I was healthy. I exercised a lot. I didn't think anything was wrong, but I woke up to some bad news. Lisa was holding my hand. I looked up at the doc. Everything okay? No. I found something in your sequum, which is a small and large intestine connected an eight and a half centimeter tumor. Well, that eight and a half centimeter tumor takes about ten years to grow. So they took a pathology, and it was stage three colorectal cancer. It was colon cancer specifically. Within ten days, I had a colon resection, 13 and a half inches of colon and margin and lymph nodes out. I had a chemo port put in, and I actually delayed it a little bit. About a month later, I started Rockham sockham chemotherapy. Lightning had struck again, but this time it's the digital age. It's different. I'm a dad, I'm a husband. And I was able to be more like a Marine on a mission because I had already lived in the war zone of of cancer the first time. So that resiliency, although I allowed myself some space to be angry, to be disappointed, to have anxiety, I allowed myself that. Not for long, because I knew there was a job to do. I had to go figure out and had to be able to play this hand out again. I went through twelve rounds of chemo. Didn't work. More surgery, ten more inches of colon, a failed clinical trial, and then at the US. Soccer championships with my daughter goalie, I learned I was stage four metastatic colorectal cancer. It spread to my liver and my stomach lining in my bowel. Now it can get really dark because they're giving you three to six months to live if your doctor google that. But I found online help and support, and I had what I call cancer whisperers, aka mentors, that were five steps, seven steps, ten steps ahead of me, pulling me along. And actually, that was key to be able to get through and understand what my options were. I got to talk people with the lived experience. And this time around, I had the digital world sending me prayers, sending me jokes, sending me good vibes all around the world with my big network. And I actually had a great network of local people that were bringing us meals, helping us, started to go fund me to handle medical bills. I called in the cavalry. And when you're down and in your time in need, I had to learn something. I had to learn how to accept help. I wasn't this guy that a single entrepreneur that was just going to power through it and do it myself. I needed help, and I actually had to learn how to accept help, and I did. And so miracle number three was this massive surgery called cyto reduction, hyperinterpreneurial chemotherapy, CRS hypec. They cut you from chest to pelvic bone. They take out all the cancer they can see with microscopic glasses, and they pour hot chemotherapy in you to kill the micro cancer that can't be seen. They seal you back up. They spin you around like a rotisserie chicken, and you wake up in the ICU to press the morphine drip button. That's what you do. And I went through that, and others had been through that before, and multiple surgeries. And then you have to wait to see if they got it all, if the cancer is going to come back. We have something called scanxiety that right before a scan. You're worried, is the cancer going to be a progression? Is it going to be stable, or is it going to be a regression, or they're not going to find anything there? Well, it took a year and a half, but on September 20 of 1919, I learned that I was no evidence of disease at this time. And this September, it will be four years, and you start after five years. They can call it remission or a remission. They never say the c word cure, but you have to put cancer a little bit in the rear. You never lose that appreciation. You never lose the intentionality of others going through the fight, and others that lost their fight. The disease burden was too great, and god called them to heaven. I never lose that perspective ever. And I've become a cancer whisperer or mentor to those that are five steps, ten steps behind me to pass on and do the good work. And so I will tell you that I learned a lot, okay? One is that all I wanted to do was see my daughter graduate high school. She was a freshman. I got to do that. What a blessing, right? And she just graduated college in December, is off as a reporter in Montana and launched herself. And I'm putting it out there. I'm going to see her, walk her down the aisle at the right time, hopefully become a grandpa at the right time. And so you can now put those out there into the universe. And I actually learned that it's really not what you actually get in life. It's what you give. And so the Shining Brightly movement is about taking care of yourself, lifting yourself up. Okay? So I have to practice that self love, that self care. I need to sleep, sleeping ceiling. I need to hydrate. I need to eat right. I need to exercise. I need to find my happy place, which is on the basketball court, amongst others, and go there often. That's your stress free zone, and I encourage others to do so. But then you lift up others. And now I'm at a point where I'm lifting up others. And they're not just cancer patients. They're entrepreneurs. They're coaches, their family members, their friends. And that's what we do to make a good life. And we join hands together, and that's that light, that beaming light of all of us together to become this force, multiplier for good and positive change. There's enough negativity we need to make this world a better place. And drilled into me as a youngster great grandma, bubby Buddhist from the old country in Lithuania said, live a life of kindness, live a life of giving, okay? And live a life of healing and repairing yourself, others, and the world. That's a good life. I don't get it right all the time. We're human. But I do try to do that. And so I am back. All right, humpty Dumpty 20, the published author of my memoir. Yeah, there's the Superman pose and the keynote speaker of how to tell people how to get back up again, because we all get knocked down in life, family business and health and podcaster and survivorship coach to be able to get people back going again. And it can be for any reason, we all get knocked down. So it can be divorce. It can be addiction. It can be that you're not talking to your children. It can be depression. There's so many things that knock us down in this world, and COVID highlighted all of that. The number one thing coming out of COVID was really two things. One was loneliness. Loneliness is the number one thing coming out of COVID The second thing that came out of COVID was we didn't go to the doctor. We didn't get checked. So I can tell you the best way not to get cancer. Don't get it. Go get screened, right? Go get your mammogram, go get your prostate checked, go get your cardio check, go get your colonoscopy or your home test, go to the dentist. I mean, go make those appointments because I don't want anyone to have to go through the hell that I've been through of chemotherapy, side effects, radiation. It's just really not fun. And mentally and physically, it affects you. It affects your family members, and it affects your community. So don't get sick, but it's not realistic, but take care of yourself. And that's the quick time out on the two things that we can help people rise above for, though. Quite a story.

RJ Redden [00:24:15]:

It is. And I think that we were talking earlier, that whole self care thing is it's not just a passing fad. Self care, self love, these things have a lot to do with resilience. Can you talk about that for me?

Howard Brown [00:24:36]:

Yes. So resilience is like a muscle, right? It's also like your heart, okay? If you actually work out, your heart is pumping blood better. If you work out, you can get stronger. You can build up your durability. You can build up your ability to walk longer and build up your stamina. So resilience is that muscle, and you actually have to pay attention to it. But it's fairly complex because it's part of your mental ability, mental toughness. It's part of your physical fitness, and it's part of your attitude and gratitude and how you actually treat yourself and treat others. So it's all of that wrapped into one. But resilience is powerful. And then you combine that with the fuel that makes it go far called hope. Those four letter words. If you combine resilience with hope, you can do anything. You can dream big and accomplish small stuff and big stuff along the way. That's resilience.

RJ Redden [00:25:40]:

We spend so much time worrying about bad things happening, major things happening, health, relationships, finances. But what it really is is resilience is the greatest strength that there is. Because resilience says, it doesn't matter what happens to me. I can get through anything. I think that's amazing. Will you share with us? How do you engage your audience?

Howard Brown [00:26:12]:

I do. So right now, I tell people to pick up their phone and take a selfie. So go ahead and do that. Right. We take up the phone and we take in a selfie. Right? And I do that because I ask people, what do they see in the mirror? Okay? Most people shower every day. If not, you shave or you put on makeup or you look at yourself in the mirror. What do you see in the mirror? And I have to tell you, the answers that I get aren't very positive. Most people do not like what they see in the mirror, and they don't like themselves. They don't love themselves.

RJ Redden [00:26:49]:

Doing it.

Howard Brown [00:26:49]:

Doing it. Right.

RJ Redden [00:26:50]:

Now for you.

Howard Brown [00:26:50]:

There you go. Take it and send yourself that selfie after and say, I love me. I like me. You got to find ways to like yourself, even in the darkest of times, because it all starts there, right? So I have a friend that says, where are you on this scale of faith? Faith is belief in yourself, okay? And belief in others. Family, that's relationships, right? Fitness, that's your health. And finance, that's the business aspect. So where are you on those four F's? Okay? And you got to measure yourself when you look in the mirror. And if you don't like where you're at, what steps are you taking to change to move it forward? And again, you have to kind of be the architect of that blueprint to move it forward. But as all the coaches know, there's plenty of help out there. There's plenty of coaches. So what's a survivorship coach anyways, right? I'm not a doctor, right? I'm not a psychotherapist. I'm not a dentist. I am a lived, experienced guy that got up again and again and again, okay? Whether it was on the basketball court where we were losing twelve to two or whether it was really dire in a hospital bed. But I've gotten back up in business, too. Not everything has gone my way. I've gotten knocked down. I've also self caused that by becoming a workaholic. So where are you in those areas? And again, Rome wasn't built in a day, okay? If you want to lose weight, right? If you're going to lose 50 pounds, that doesn't happen in one day. That takes time to do that. If you're building your business, what are your short, mid, and long term goals? And who can you get to help you? There's coaches and mentors out there. Go seek mentorship. Go be a mentor. When you be a mentor, you actually might figure out some of those issues that you have because you're actually focused on someone else. So that's really the start of what it is. It's a start about looking in the mirror, seeing who you are, and being honest with yourself and then taking the steps forward. And sometimes it's two steps backwards, or it's a step sideways, or it's a full bull rush right through. Again, you got to determine that for yourself. But that's what I do when I actually engage my clients and the companies that I work with me as a consultant. And again, it takes practice. I don't know anyone. You step up to plate and you hit that home run. The one hit wonder, it doesn't happen very often. I've hit the lottery, right? My bone marrow for my sister, my daughter, okay, hot chemo in my tummy. I've hit the lottery three times. I've also hit the lottery in business by taking companies public and being able to be very charitable and to help others. So it takes many forms, for sure.

RJ Redden [00:29:44]:

Yeah, it does. And I. Love the stuff about take a selfie and start thinking about some different things and what a wonderful way to engage your audience, too, because it's different. It disrupts the pattern of what we usually hear, and it's so thoughtful and original. I just love it. I am so glad that you came to talk to us today.

Howard Brown [00:30:14]:

I saw some vulnerability.

RJ Redden [00:30:19]:

Yeah, I'm so glad you came. I think you're getting a little choppy. Howard, is your connection okay? There you go.

Howard Brown [00:30:29]:

Yeah, we're back. Yes.

RJ Redden [00:30:32]:

Well, I just wanted to thank you for coming and sharing what you know with our folks. Those of you who are watching. You know, I've been flashing The Shiningbrightly.com along the bottom there. Go there, go there. If you or someone you love is facing some adversity, there are people out there who care. There are people out there who have been through it, and there are people out there willing to show you through it, too. There are some guides on your website. Do you want to chat about that, Howard, real quick?

Howard Brown [00:31:13]:

I do. So if you come to my website and you scroll down, you can download these PDFs on Survivorship, which will help you with life, business and family. Mentorship is leadership and interfaith relations, understanding and knowing the other, which is kind of cool. So I'm going to put my goggles back on and give you a last word here, because it's so bright. It's been so bright here, RJ, that I just want people to shine brightly a little bit each day. Not a lot of bit, a little bit each day for yourself, first for then for others and your communities. And together we'll make the world a better place.

RJ Redden [00:31:53]:

Let's keep on keeping on, my friend. The world needs us. And I'm so grateful to know you. And thank you again for coming on and hanging out with my audience a little bit.

Howard Brown [00:32:07]:

I appreciate the invitation. So glad to be here. Thank you.

RJ Redden [00:32:11]:

All right, everybody. Well, next week, you know, same bot time, same bot channel. We will be here. The epic engagement. Adventure. Do not miss another chapter. We have the best people in the world, curated by myself, of course, coming on and talking to you about what who they are, what they do, their incredible stories, like Howard's here today, and what they do to engage their audience. We will see you in a bot.