A New Direction

As many of you may already know, I went through hell in late 2022 fighting for my life with Leukemia. The doctors gave me less than 2 months to live. The treatment was horrific. I experienced some of the worst pain in my entire life. I can't describe how awful it was. I've also felt an exhaustion and mental cloudiness that made me question if I could ever be who I was again.

I survived. And I am in complete remission for now. And while I definitely look and sometimes act more like my old self, there are…scars. Trauma has taken a serious toll on me. There are moments where I feel just fine - confident, strong, engaging. And then there are moments where I lose touch with reality. These come in the form of flashbacks and panic attacks. And these moments are debilitating.

I'm working on clearing the trauma from my body, and healing those scars. It's just going to take more time than my company can give someone at my level, and I genuinely appreciate the time and support they've given me over the past several months.

During the worst moment of my treatment, I decided that I wanted to dedicate my life to a higher purpose and teach a new generation of high-impact executives how to lead with authenticity, empathy, and audacity. You can read more about my transformational "chemo bag moment" here .

Cancer is an illness I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It's deeply insidious.

There are the physical ailments that come from the cancer itself.

In my case, leukemia destroyed my immune system, and for months I was suffering from a whole host of illnesses that I couldn't explain or understand. By the time I was diagnosed, I was only weeks away from death, and in an incredible amount of pain and misery from the complications that leukemia was causing.

Then there are the side effects from the chemotherapy. As if the disease wasn't enough to make you miserable, the treatment can sometimes be worse.

Chemotherapy drugs for leukemia are anthracyclines, which are a derivative of mustard gas. The chemo targets fast-dividing cells, which include the cancer cells themselves, but also hair follicle cells (which is why you lose your hair), stomach & intestinal lining cells (which is why you are nauseous and can't eat), and your blood cells (which is why you lose your immunity, ability to clot if you bleed, and why you are tired all the time).

Then there are even more side effects.

I can't remember how many times I passed out from walking up a flight of stairs, taking a hot shower, or standing up too fast. The chemo made me unable to think clearly. I couldn't remember words or names of people I was talking to. I couldn't hold a conversation about business for more than half an hour, and I needed a 2-hour nap afterwards.

If you are lucky, your treatment will last about six months. If you aren't lucky, it could last years, or not work. For me I was VERY lucky in that the treatment worked.?

But then, after all of that, there are the lingering emotional and mental scars. These are the things that the hematologists and nurse practitioners don't really discuss when they are solving the acute problems associated with you being near death.

For me, it started with intense flashbacks to several moments during my treatment in the hospital when I was in extreme pain. The pain was the worst I had ever felt in my life. The flashbacks were every bit as intense as those moments, and they were debilitating. I couldn't tell if I was standing in my family room or in the hospital bed undergoing a surgery.

Those flashbacks led to panic attacks, which are equally terrifying experiences.

I took as much time as I could take off after returning to work, but in the end I need more time to heal these trauma wounds, and the company needs leadership in my role. So I've stepped back to let the next generation take the reigns from here. I'm proud of the work that I did, and I'm proud of the team I worked with so closely through COVID, several M&A experiences, and so much more.

I'm already starting to feel a lot better, and I expect that I'll fully recover from all of this in due course. And to be honest, I'm sincerely loving my work as a coach!

I have a ton of passion and energy for what I'm building. I'm starting by building a program to train mid-career professionals on how to become executives, but it doesn't end there.

I want to build a movement around bringing our work culture back into balance. We've let shareholders drive decisions for 5 decades and it's led to the complete erosion of trust between leadership, employees and customers. We need to rebuild that trust, starting by defining the purpose of a business far beyond "maximizing shareholder value" - to include maximizing value for shareholders, employees, customers, the environment, etc.

We need authentic, empathetic, and audacious leaders right now, and I want to help bring that kind of leadership forward in the world.

If you're interested in learning more about what I do, you can follow me here on LinkedIn, or you can also follow me on Instagram , YouTube , and even TikTok . I also have a website .

Cancer has changed the trajectory of my life in some awful ways, but in some positive ways too. I'm leaning into the experience and growing, changing, evolving as I do. It's a hard thing to share this so openly, but I am hoping I will attract authentic, empathetic, and audacious people to follow my story. I expect that people who lack those traits will not resonate with my story or with me being so open and candid, and that's okay.

Thank you for reading this far. Feel free to share your own stories and thoughts about cancer, trauma, PTSD, and life changes. I would love to read them.

-tom