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Introduction 0:00
Welcome to the #PirateBroadcast, where we interview #interestingpeople doing #interestingthings. Where you can expand your connections, your community, #kindnessiscool and #smilesarefree. Let’s get this party started.

Russ Johns 0:13
It's a beautiful day for the #piratebroadcast. I want to remind everybody that if you're not on LinkedIn, and you're not watching the streaming live, you might want to watch on YouTube, or Facebook or Periscope. You have the option. You have the opportunity to do that. I'd also love it if you were to like, subscribe and follow the podcast as well, you know, what's out there, and support the pirates, the pirate community and all the conversations that we're having here. I love the fact that we're starting today off with a friend of mine, Nick, and he's up further north in a colder region of the world. I just want to say hi and catch up and check in and we'll see what you're doing, Nick. How you doing, man?

Nick Gemmell 1:10
Good, you? That's awesome because there's snow outside here today. So that's something else.

Russ Johns 1:22
Is that the first snow of the year?

Nick Gemmell 1:24
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's quite the change. Two weeks ago, plus 25 up here. Now we have snow. Plus 25 Celsius, I guess for you.

Russ Johns 1:35
So yeah, we're down south here. We met through OGGN, oil and gas and Warren Spiwack and OGGN pitch podcast. We were doing some work on that, and I just wanted to do extend the invitation to have you become a pirate, because I thought that there's a lot of your message is important for others to hear. Not everybody is in the tech field, not everybody is a PhD scholar, and some of us have worked in the field. I've been in construction and industry and picked up a welding torch and done a little bit of work here and there. I know that that's the focus of your business. The focus of what you want to talk about, though, and some of the things you've been doing is talking to some of the people out in the field that really don't have a voice and a message. Some of the things that we're talking about today are going to be around, you know, we can work our butts off, but it may not be the best use of our time, every time. So kind of walk us through the story and in some of the things that you've experienced in your life, and some of the changes that have been taking place the last couple of years. Bring us up to speed.

Nick Gemmell 3:05
Yeah, and to quickly just run through it. In 1998, I started welding, got married 2003, I had my first child in 2005, second 2008. And in that mix, I started my own welding company in 2004. Then fast forward 2012 started pipeline inspection. And that's just what I found my love in doing was just making sure everything was safe. Everybody was safe. We did a lot of pipeline maintenance and some new construction. But yeah, I just love the fact of the pipeline maintenance. That's forward another couple years construction manager at a major distribution company, the youngest construction manager at the time in that organization. Scary, scary stuff, but just rolling with the punches. Then, shortly after that or three years after that in 2018, my wife left me, just didn't want to do counseling, didn't want to do anything, just wanted to be separated, divorced, and just done. So, yeah, in a nutshell, man, like that's a whirlwind of like, 20 years of grinding it out and going from the highs...this is the third recession that I'll be in, personally 41 years old. Third recession through the oil and gas that I've been in, and had zero tools to be able to navigate that and it was just get up in the morning, get on the phone, grind. Like, you know, this whole internet thing is as long as it's been around, using it as a platform. LinkedIn isn't what it was five years ago so to try to network the way that you can now on it, it wasn't there, like, in my opinion. It wasn't used for what it should have been. But now I see that changing and a lot of connections like this are being made, otherwise how the hell could we have...would we have connected if it wasn't for Mark and the OGGN, right? It's just amazing. Now we get to have these conversations. So in a nutshell, that's how my career went. I love oil and gas. I absolutely love it. It's the adventure part, right? I mean, I'm in a different town, every, you know, might not be the best hotel, it might not be the best bed. Right? But what I found was there's a saying out there, you can't be a pipeliner unless you're on your third wife.

Russ Johns 5:53
Well, not every relationship can survive the absence of being gone. That's one of the things that took a toll on my relationship. I wasn't in oil and gas industry; however, I was commuting, I was traveling. I was gone six months out of the year and it's really difficult. Trying to keep two almost separate lives available and working. When you show up, when you're home and you do all the work that needs to be done while you're home, you're there for a brief period of time and then you're back working. You're back in what you have to do, what you think is the right thing to do. When you're in it and it says like, okay, well, maybe I wasn't paying attention to some of the things I needed to pay attention to. Or how important was it really to do what is necessary in order to accomplish a family life versus really accelerating at work? It sounds like that's exactly what you were doing. You loved your job. You loved the industry. You loved what you were doing. And it shows up because you excelled at it, and you've been in it and you still in it over three downturns. That takes a toll on family too.

Nick Gemmell 7:21
Yeah, and it does it so it's numerous different industries for sure that people are gone. So we're gonna choose, no matter what it is, you're gonna choose whatever lights you on fire, and sometimes we just fall into it. I fell into the trades because I needed more beer money. Seriously, like I was playing. I was playing slow pitch right on this slow pitch team after my baseball career was over. So I was in this competitive football team and I was just complaining the one day about how, man I just need more beer money. Like this sucks. One guy on the team says, hey, man, they're hiring up at the shop that I work at. Do you want to just come? Sure, let's do it. I was not mechanical. I never knew anything. Give me a grinder. Are you kidding me? I didn't even know what it was. So I just stepped into it. But from day one, just the camaraderie, the brotherhood like everybody came together to show you. Well, that was old school and a lot of it's changed now. With that, but back in the day, like that's what it was. It was just here you go. They helped me through that process and that's what drew me to it. Then you get to make sparks. I get to make loud noises. I get to make fire. I was a welder right? I get to be fire? This is amazing. Every day? Sign me up! Sign me up, man. So that's the excitement about it. So you're going to choose these these avenues and you're going to choose these professions, but what does that do on the back end? How does that affect your kids? How does that affect your wife when she's...I thought I was doing the right thing when I was giving her the platform to raise the kids. Not giving her, that's what we chose to do. Okay, I will go grind. We'll make pretty good money. You can stay home. If that resonates with anyone, like this is what happens, you think you're doing the right thing and you are having your kids raised by your wife or yourself, if you're the stay at home dad, right? Like, that's huge, right? You get to actually mold your kids. But the downside of that is that there's a lot of resentment on both sides. There's a lot that you don't talk about. The resentment of of everyone that life at home is expanding. The kids are going into new activities. The wife has new friends all the time. The kids are in sports, they meet new people, but all you do when you're home is you just show up, you just slide into that soccer game, you slide into that baseball game, whatever it is, you just silently sit there and nobody knows who you are. They might know your name, they know your face, but they don't know who you are. You're just fitting in, so then you just show up and the whole time that you're there for those few days, you're thinking about what's going to happen once you leave, and once you go back to work and what needs to go in. So if you're on the supervision part, do I have my permit in place? Do I have all of these things...

Russ Johns 10:42
Even though you're there, you're not really there.

Nick Gemmell 10:45
Oh, man, and it's so hard, being present. And this is what we teach and I had no idea, man. As a side note, when I went to Thailand for rehab, not for drugs or alcohol, just low mood, we'll call it low mood. So when I was at my lowest point, right after my wife left, and finally started dealing with what that actually was, and what was actually happening, I just went away. I needed something to do. So now learning meditation? Dude, I'm a tradesmen, I've played sports all my life, some hardcore stuff has gone on, like, sports, powerlifting, all that stuff. Now you want to talk about meditation, mindfulness and your feelings? What?

Russ Johns 11:46
Hail to the power of no!

Nick Gemmell 11:48
Yeah. Boundaries? What? So that was a definite game changer. They force you to do it as part of the program, I should put it as meditation for 20 minutes every morning. Every morning, you got to meditate at this place in Thailand. It was a locked facility, but we got to go out once a week and go to the beach. It was kind of cool. So you're in this lock facility and I'm there with crackheads, meth addicts, and they're able to meditate for 20 minutes. How? Why can't I? I don't have these issues. That's not me, right? So I just bought into it. I just sat there and now it's a daily practice and it's just a game changer, man. Like, seriously a world changer.

Russ Johns 12:49
Amazing. Hey, I want to talk a little bit about the future and what it holds for you and others that know you. First off I want to highlight a couple of the people that are in the room today. Wendy, good morning Admiral and the new pirate Nick. So welcome here. This is very welcoming. Hey, Nick and Russ. Michael Baker. So when you support the pirate posse, we support you. The absolutely positively craziest thing is your story is pretty much the same as mine as well. So ironic says, Terry Day. Fantastic. I love that and you guys need to connect. Nick is getting on the platform and being available and helping others. I resonate with Nick because he has a story that I can relate to and you know, if you pull the thread long enough, you're always going to find a relationship you're going to find an idea that connects us, connects us all. Cathi Spooner is here. Hey, Cathi is going to be a pirate here shortly. So Cathi, good morning. How are you doing? Then Gabriel's here, good morning fellow pirates. Fantastic. I wonder if this will show up, wendy, I want to find out. So I want to read this off for the podcast...a dear friend was determined to be a surgeon so he worked hard in med school and when he applied for the surgical team, he was told that 90% of surgeons get divorced. He immediately stepped out with no regrets and said, "but I love my wife." Knowing what we might face, gives us a better perpective to see if this works. Not knowing in advance is a hard situation for a partner who isn't 100% committed to that life. Happens to all of us who are totally committed. You're a wonderful asset. I think, Nick, it's really about having...this is what I discovered, I don't know if anybody else can relate to this. My situation is I thought I was moving in the direction of the idyllic life. I had acres, I had horses, I had llamas, I had all this property. My boys' mother was staying at home, raising the kids and I was working a lot of hours very day, commuting five hours a day, essentially. I was on a quick path to suicide and a bad ending. Fortunately, looking back now, is the company was sold, and I was ejected from the corporate ladder. So it all fell apart. I was much like you, instead of going to Thailand, I just loaded my camping gear up in the car, and only camped for a year. I had 15 years of company and 18 years of marriage, and it all went down the drain in about a week. So that change, that transition, gave me the tools necessary to be who I am today, much like you did, you took a sharp left turn and said, okay, I'm going to learn how to meditate, I'm going to learn how to do some of this work. So the reality is that we all have these changes in our lives, we all have this opportunity to be different, to do different things, and treat others in a different way. So your gift right now that you're you're bringing, you're presenting to the world is helping other people in your situation. Think about how they can be different. So talk a little bit about that, Nick.

Nick Gemmell 16:59
Yeah, I love what Wendy said there. The only thing I will challenge is that surgeon, he wanted to be a surgeon so bad, right? So I would challenge that surgeon to really think, did he actually make the right decision? He does have a good relationship with his wife but is that his calling? If his calling truly was being a surgeon, would he actually be happier? Regardless of the outcome with that wife. So this is what I challenge people in the oil and gas is we pick this path, we pick this career, and profession. So how are you going to, and it doesn't it transfers to anything, but how are you going to make a full life when you're actually pulling off what you want to pull off? So if you want to climb the corporate ladder and do all of that, if that lights you on fire? Great, but things are gonna have to get sacrificed along the way to be able to do that.

Russ Johns 18:05
Yeah, but there's a cost on both sides of the equation. Either you have to say, okay, I'm more committed to my family and my my wife than I am my career. And that goes both directions. The best magic is when it happens in both directions.

Nick Gemmell 18:26
Yeah and this is what I want to tie into is, this is what we play. This is the game that we play now. This is the system that I have in place that I'm launching today. You can have it all. You can frickin have it all by just doing simple daily deposits. Doing simple daily deposits and just not showing up. Like, the biggest thing with a lot of us that work away is you just grind away, you put some money away in the bank, and then you just show up when it's time on your days off and you just expect your wife to run upstairs and drop her panties. Not to get graphic, but that's what you're expecting. That's because you just went and grinded out for three months in the bush, right? Well, what you didn't do the whole time was actually put in deposits. Did you ask her questions? Did you see how she was actually doing? Did you actually tell her you appreciate her looking after the kids for three months? Right? So this is what we do. When I say you can have it all, we deal in four areas: we deal in our fitness, we deal in our fuel, so our being, we deal in our family and our relationships, and we deal in our business and our finances. So the four "fs," fitness, fuel, family and finance. So now every day I do daily deposits in those areas, and I play it as a game. I give myself points for showing up doing two things for my body. I sweat every day, whether that's 25 push ups or a CrossFit workout, whatever it is aligned with me for that day, I drink a green smoothie, make it simple. In fuel, I meditate and I do a cognitive game called the Patriot missile game every day. Along with that, I do something that fills my cup. So me coaching men how to do this, that fills my cup, so I get a point for that. When you simplify this as a game, it makes it a lot easier. Who doesn't like to play games, whether you're a gamer guy or not? When you know that you're gonna win at the end of the week? Or if you're winning, or you're losing, isn't that a good metric? Then on our relationship, make it simple. Send a frickin message of love, honor and appreciation to your wife and your kids every day. It sounds simple, but on top of that, tell them why. Doing this to a 12 year old is probably not going to resonate. You want to play with that a little bit. But to your wife, when was the last time you told her why you appreciate her? Or why you love her? Just throwing out a quick hey, babe, I love you and then running off and grinding it out for 12 hours, that doesn't quite cut it. What would happen in your relationship if you actually said why? Why I love you. To your parents, why you don't tell your parents why you actually love them. Yeah, I don't care what kind of relationship you're in with your parents, if you actually told them that you think that might not change over three months, six months, 12 months down the road? If you did that every day. Then in your finances, if you learn something about money, who the heck knows about money? I don't, I'm horrible with money. Horrible, because I've made so much money and lost it. Doing this work, we get paid quite well or used to get paid quite well. Then we just throw it all the way. So now if you learn something about money and teach something every day in our money, how would that change your life? If you did those four things? How would that change?

Russ Johns 22:17
How would that change?

Nick Gemmell 22:19
I'm living proof. I've been doing this for a year and a half now living this way and playing this game, and keeping track and keeping these metrics.

Russ Johns 22:28
Do you see a big difference?

Nick Gemmell 22:33
At the end of the week, when I check in with myself at the end of the week, like tally up my points what I got for the week, it's just like, okay, this worked this didn't this work? This did. Okay, let's tweak this. What you're doing is you're actually trying to make your ideal week, like at the end of the day, and that keeps shifting as when you're honest with yourself, right? Did this actually work?

Russ Johns 22:55
When you're honest with yourself, what happens is different things show up. You know what to measure because when you're just going blind, you're just in the groove. Just grinding out, just heads down, not necessarily paying attention to the rest of the world. You miss so many things, you miss so many opportunities and it's just mind boggling when you start to pay attention to everything that you're talking about. So, I want to give a shout out to Kenyatta. Kenyatta is here. Hey, Nick and Russ. Good morning to you all on the #piratebroadcast! #meditation. Yes. Spiwak in the house, every day, every day. Hey, Bjorn, friend from Seattle. He's a plumber. He's one that rolls up his sleeves has a great family and love you man. Take care. Mike Baker. Good morning. Thanks for being here. Thanks for being in the pirate community. Cathi. Mindfulness benefits are amazing. It's so amazing to think that it's... and then Gabriel says, Good morning everyone, fellow pirates. Does Nick wanna come on "made from scratch" broadcast.Nick, you open?

Nick Gemmell 24:14
I'm in, I'm always in. Yeah.

Russ Johns 24:17
Cathi Spooner says Whoo. Very excited about tomorrow. Thank you so much. Morning, Cassandra, thank you so much for being here. Gabriel says, we love to bring on fellow pirates. Yeah. Well, Gabriel and I go back and forth. He does his in the afternoon, I do my show in the morning. So Sukhdev says, hey, good morning, Russ and Nick. Meditation and breathwork have been a daily part of my life for three years and has helped me immensely after my mvc's (motor vehicle collisions). He had two collisions in the period of six months. It really impacted his life and now he's he's doing some things, we're going to be working together on a podcast in the near future. Cathi Spooner, very true. Love the mindset. Kon says, late to the party but wanted to say good morning. Ahoy, pirates! Kon's another great individual that's helping a lot of people out there. So the emotional bank account? Yes, the emotional bank account. Khan says, gamification of life, for the better! Top of Mind and acting with a purpose. I think that's important to consider because...Nick is a highly evolved caveman. What a privilege to listen to him speak. I love that. Wendy's a character, I love her. It takes emotional maturity for a man to be vulnerable. Absolutely, absolutely, positively. That's why I think you and I resonate is because we've seen the challenging parts of our lives and some of the things that have caused us to reclaim some of our power and ability to see and change our perspective. So what's this program that you've got going on, Nick, before we wrap up? I want to share it with with the community and let people know that there is an opportunity for people to get involved and engaged in a different way.

Nick Gemmell 26:30
Yeah, so quickly, I'll just drop it in the comments after the link for the signup page. But it's essentially just we're going to have a weekly pipe dream power hour every Sunday. Every Sunday, it'll be a zoom meeting. People come in and then we just start running through the program. It's a group program, everyone comes in, and we just teach them the benefits. So every week for an hour, okay, what are the facts of your life? We just roll through, this is uncomfortable, we just roll through. Then the next week, we talk about what can you do for your body and the next week we have some cool coaches that are powerlifting. He's number one in the world right now and hundred percent raw and he's a personal trainer. So we just bring these experts in these areas. As the facilitator, I just fire people up, so in their body, and then the next week, it's going to be a dating and relationship coach. That's what she specializes in. Then we're going to have a finance guy the next week, and we're going to rotate that for two months for 27 bucks. 27 bucks, you show up and then every day you drop into the group, you start playing your day as a gamification. So we teach you how to keep your points, and then you just put it in the chat that we have on Facebook. You just put that in so the accountability part is huge. So then you have a group of other like minded individuals who want to start thriving in this life and not relying on anybody else to save them.

Russ Johns 28:13
That's a huge point, Nick and I and I want to encourage everybody, when you start taking responsibility for your own outcome is when you recover your power, your true power, is because when you have someone else to blame, or something else, or something happened to me or was me kind of thing, you give it all away. You don't maintain that authority and ability to make your own decisions. So when you recover that and you bring it back into your life and you're able to kind of grow into that individual, and you're taking responsibility for your actions, it changes everything.

Nick Gemmell 28:59
It's just living life with intention. Can you imagine, again, like keeping track of your gamification of your life, but living every day, and every choice is aligned with your values. In the program, we teach you how to figure out your values. We teach you how to figure out a mission statement. Who has a mission statement for their own life. I didn't even know this stuff. Like are you kidding me? I just laughed all this stuff off for years, Russ, but once I was in the pit, and then once I seen the people on the other side that were actually living this way, and the relationships were starting to skyrocket. The funny thing is, and I talked about this on the pitch podcast was...everyone starts with money. If I have more money, everything's gonna be okay. But what we play in this game, we start with your body, right? We start with your fitness, and then your fuel like your being and then your family and your relationships and guess what comes last? Money. So If you're aligned in these three areas, money starts coming. That's just the reality. We always default to money because it's a lot easier just to go and grind and make another phone call or send another email, when you should be present with your kids. So if you're living with intent and set five minutes aside to send those emails and respond to those messages, instead of taking time away from your kids, isn't that the life that we want? Right?

Russ Johns 30:26
I think a lot of people are discovering that that's what success is really about is having, friends and family that really matter and reaching out and having a community that supports you. I keep expressing that to the pirate community as like, I, I've chased the chase, I've been in the race, I've followed down broken, I've been locked up and homeless, everything in between. And I can tell you that what the difference is, is when you actually are paying attention to what's really important in defining your own success on your own terms.

Nick Gemmell 31:05
Yeah and going along with that, just looking at yourself and knowing more about your story each time we talk, right? Now with you wanting a more connected, family connected, and your connections with LinkedIn, and all of these cool people, success is coming. Here's us, everywhere. I see us everywhere, right? Success comes after, but it was only after dealing with the other things and that's what we teach people. So when I say you can truly have it all, like the results speak for themselves and Russ, you know, a different path. But I found that this path with the gamification, man, it's an accelerator.

Russ Johns 31:54
Well, I know you're gonna help a lot of people, Nick, so thank you so much for showing up. Thank you for being a pirate. I appreciate you and all the things you're doing and the efforts that you're putting into it. So wishing you all the best in your adventures. And thank you so much again for your time. And pirates, If you aren't connected to Nick, go on LinkedIn, he's on LinkedIn, go track him down. The show notes will be in the podcast and the post at RussJohns.com, so you can collect all that information. Nick, make sure that I get your link to your program, so I can share that out as well. Make sure that we have an opportunity to support you being a new pirate and all. Everyone, as you know, this is so important. Our lives are so important and the people around us, we need to support each other and make sure that we're doing what we can with what we have where we are. As you know, #kindnessiscool, #smilesarefree and you #enjoytheday. Till next time. See ya.

Exit 33:11
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