Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host Roberta.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review.

My guest today, who I'm very honored, has joined us on the show.

He is the author of the bestselling book, The Gift of Pain, a memoir about his life and the journey and the lessons that he has learned that he continues to share with us in business and in person.

He is a speaker and has been an entrepreneur for 32 years.

Please help me welcome Tony R.

Kitchens to the show.

Hi, Tony.

Hello Roberta.

Thank you for having me and look forward to speaking with your audience today.

Thank you for being here, for taking your time to be with us.

Now tell us a little bit about yourself.

Absolutely.

Probably most importantly, I'm a dad and a husband.

Those are my two favorite and most important roles in life.

Besides that, I recently wrote a book entitled The Gift of Pain, as you mentioned.

And that particular book came about at a very difficult time in my life when other people would probably want to throw in the towel.

But I decided that I needed to take what I was dealing with and make it productive and use that energy and that fuel to do something more than I had ever done, which was to be totally transparent and open with my life in hopes that other people will learn lessons along the way.

The thing about pain and using it as a fuel, which if all of us did, will reach amazing heights.

But the thing is, sometimes that's what actually gets us so debilitated, like I cannot get out of bed.

The pain is too much.

How do you change the narrative to make it the fuel that helps you achieve the great things that you have?

I believe one of the things is just understanding what your goals are in life and clearly defining what your goals are in life.

So in my particular case, I've always set goals that were very high and difficult to obtain because I know that down the road, it was gonna make me a better person if I did attain those goals.

So when life throws things at you and they throw curve balls at you and challenges at you, I always look at those things as a test.

And in that moment, no matter how I feel, two things that come to mind is one that this too shall pass.

At a certain point, this feeling, this situation, the circumstance that I'm in today is gonna be over.

And what am I gonna look like on the other side of that?

Am I still gonna be bought up in a corner, sitting around complaining, wishing that it didn't happen, asking why it happened to me?

So I choose not to go down that road.

In the process, after I realized that this too shall pass, the next thing I say is, I'm gonna pass this test.

I'm gonna get an A out of this test that life has given me.

And in order to get the A, you have to stand up, you have to look at the situation, understand what it is, and you have to decide that your dreams and your goals are more important than what you're feeling in that moment.

Even at the time of loss, loss of a loved one, loss of a job, a relationship went bad, finances are tough.

Even through all of those things, some may take longer to overcome than others, but all of those things, if we survive them, then we will become better because of them.

Not because of the act of losing someone, for example, but because of all of the gifts and the blessings that you will receive after that and the strength that you'll have after that.

So I look at pain really as something that gets me motivated to move beyond where I am and to never have that level of pain again.

That's a big one.

Because you don't want to experience that pain again.

It becomes your lesson, your what not to do next.

Absolutely.

When you grow up in the South Side of Chicago, how did you have these big goals?

Because I'm guessing it didn't seem like you grew up in an environment where there was a lot to look up to in terms of what you've achieved now.

How did 32 years ago, did you decide, wait a minute, this is where my life is going?

Because you didn't have a lot of those images around you.

Sure.

I mean, the first thing was my uncle who lived in Puerto Rico at the time, Uncle Ben, and he was an entrepreneur.

And I was so young, Roberta, I didn't even know what that meant.

I couldn't have been probably more than five or six years old.

And every time he visited us in Chicago, I would listen to him and my parents talk.

They would sit at the kitchen table, and he would tell them about all the places he's traveled to and how the deals he would work on.

Some of them went through, some of them failed, some of them were very successful.

And I was just intrigued because this was something different than I'd heard every single day.

In school, they teach you to become a teacher.

You can become a doctor or an attorney.

Never heard president until recently.

But there were these same jobs that they would tell you that you can get.

I never heard them say you can start a business.

That's just something that was not even mentioned in grammar school when I was in school.

But it was my uncle that gave me that spark.

And as I got older, especially in high school, I dug into anything I could about entrepreneurship.

I had one business class.

I didn't get very good grades because I was never focused on the curriculum that the schools wanted to teach.

But the class I did the best in was a business class.

It was Business 101.

And Mr.

Hennessy was our teacher and he had come from a company called 3M.

And this guy had the white shirt, the tie.

He dressed like UC Business Men Today dress.

And I just remember I got the highest grade that I'd ever received in high school in that class.

And I couldn't wait for that business class.

So that was the spark, Roberta, that started me along this entrepreneurial drive journey that I'm on.

And as most of us can probably look back and attest to, most of who we are today was rooted in who we start to be developed as as a child.

Right.

For good or bad.

We bring that stuff with us.

And fortunately for me, I brought the passion and the fire and the desire to be an entrepreneur through life to this point.

Which brings my next question.

If that many years ago, your uncle planted that seed of being an entrepreneur.

You went to college, I think, for like-

A couple of years.

Oh, a couple of years.

A lot of us say, I will finish the degree as a backup plan just in case the entrepreneurship thing doesn't work out.

Because it's tough, Tony, be honest.

It's tough.

How were you so, your gut, your instinct, your soul, telling you this is the way to go despite all the other fears a lot of us have.

How did you just keep saying this is where I'm going?

I never had a safety net.

That was not an option for me to fail.

Even to today, I have no safety net.

I'm 100% in.

When I was in college, the reason I didn't finish college was because I worked more at college than I went to class.

I worked in the computing affairs department in college.

And I literally was in the labs all day, every day, morning, noon, and night, learning the technology, working at the help desk, helping fix people's problems, learning so much from other experiences that people had.

And that's what I really did in college.

Even though the courses that I took would have taken me down a road to become a programmer, I don't wanna be a programmer.

I want to be an entrepreneur focusing in technology somehow, some way, because that's what I loved.

And at that particular time, there was no marriage between the two.

And I had to make that.

And I focused completely on learning technology and everything around it.

Technically, I wasn't supposed to work more than 20 hours, I think, in a week because of the work study program.

I worked countless hours.

Every time someone had to take off a class or for an exam, I was the first one to volunteer to take their shift.

So I learned so much that I was excited and I was hungry.

And I wanted to get out of this learning environment into an environment of achievement.

And I said, I can't achieve what I'm looking to achieve here at this institution.

It was like a cage for me.

I had to break out of it.

And that's when I decided I have to get into the workforce and I have to start a business.

I want to be an entrepreneur.

I can't sit here and just read about it and hear about it.

I have to get involved in it.

So there's no safety net.

As an entrepreneur in my life, I don't know about other people.

If I'm going to jump, I'm going to jump.

If I'm going to walk across a tightrope, I don't care about a safety net because that's going to allow me to not focus as sharply and clearly as I need on my goal.

If I believe in my head, well, if this doesn't work out, everything I do has to work out.

It has to work out a thousand percent.

I don't look at an off ramp, so to speak.

So I'm clearly focused in on the goal and whatever I have to do to achieve that goal, I'm going to do it.

24 hours a day, seven days a week.

That's the life of an entrepreneur.

And we don't look at failure.

I don't look and say, well, this may fail.

It's not an option.

Every day it's how is this going to work?

What new skills I need to develop today that I didn't have yesterday?

Who do I need to contact today that I didn't talk to yesterday who's successful in this space?

And that's what it's all about.

So I don't look at the failures.

I don't look at the past.

I don't look at a safety net.

It's just eyes straight ahead on that goal.

And that's it.

That is what a lot of people want to do, but somehow, I don't know if we don't have the courage to, or the fear of in case it doesn't work out and you have kids, I have a mortgage.

What if one month I can't pay the bills?

What's gonna happen?

Because I think a lot of us do know what we love to do.

What gets us as excited as you were with computers.

What's scarier though, than all of those things you mentioned, a mortgage and kids and everything else.

What's scarier than that to me, is not becoming the person that you were meant to be.

That's terrifying.

What if you don't become the best version of yourself?

What if you don't give it 100% in this life?

What are you left with?

Because I tell you, dreams will become nightmares if you don't follow them.

If you have something burning inside of you that you wanna do, it should not matter what you studied in college.

It shouldn't matter what your job is today.

It shouldn't matter who you're in a relationship with today or how much money you have or don't have.

None of those things ultimately matter if you have a goal or dream that you're trying to achieve and you're not on the path to get there.

So if people are looking to be business owners and they're still working, chances are they're not gonna be a business owner.

Because at a certain point, you have to get out of your comfort zone and you have to take the first step and go start a business, right?

So you can't become what you're looking to become if you never start.

That's true.

When it comes to your first job at IBM, was it one of your mentors who showed you the business side and not just the technology side?

Would you like to talk about that?

Absolutely, that's my guy, George Gower.

Still talk to him today.

Oh, that's amazing.

Yeah, he's a wonderful, wonderful man.

I was on the services team and we were doing a lot of tech stuff.

But George was the sharp dressed guy with the sharp suits, the suspenders.

And he drove a Mercedes.

He looked like the sales guy.

He looked like the account rep, right?

The marketing representative.

I think their titles were at that point.

But he looked like the businessman that I had seen in every magazine that I read up until that point that was described in every business book that I ever read.

He was that person.

And I had the ability and I was blessed enough to be able to sit literally in the same room with George.

His desk was not far from mine.

And I had to overcome the fear of rejection and walk up to him and say, Hey, George, I wanna be a business person.

That's my goal.

I wanna be in business.

And he used to call me T-Man.

He said, well, T-Man, let's go out and let's go have some lunch and we'll talk about it.

And George, bless his heart, he was just so willing to help.

And he showed me that beyond the technical stuff, that there are way more opportunities in selling and being able to meet a client's needs and deliver for them.

And he taught me how to dress as a business person, as opposed to a service engineer or technician.

He showed me that.

Most important, Roberta, what he showed me was, George would make sure that at the end of the day, he went home, he cut the grass.

He picked his kids up from school.

He was a great husband.

And the thought that I had was if he can do all of that and still produce at a high level in sales and in business, then it's possible for me as well.

And he was my first mentor and my lifelong mentor.

Great, great person.

But we can all use people like George.

The thing is, like I mentioned before, you gotta get over that fear of asking other people for help.

Because as soon as you ask, you'll find that people are really willing to help.

You just have to raise your hand and say, I need help.

That's it.

That's been my experience, especially since starting this podcast.

You'd be amazed how many guests give me tips.

Even if it's off the record, you know what?

I think if you did this, it will improve this on your podcast.

And I take all their tips because a lot of them have been there or they in tech, they know how to do things better.

And I always, always appreciated that.

Now, when you talk about how he had time for his family, so are you saying that you don't have to work until midnight to provide for your family to prove what a great husband and father you are?

Well, it's a couple of different things, Roberta.

One is George was an employee at the company.

So his responsibilities did end at a certain point in the day.

He's an entrepreneur now as well.

So he actually has his own business.

He's had it for a number of years.

It's a different dynamic.

So as an entrepreneur, you're responsible for your business 24 hours a day.

And people often ask how do you obtain balance?

You don't.

There is no such thing as balance as an entrepreneur.

There are going to be times that you have to dedicate more of your time and energy and resources to your family because they need you more at that point.

Whatever they're dealing with, they need more of you.

And you're going to have to have your business come in second place.

It's not going to be 50-50.

A lot of us, we don't have boundaries on should I do the work on weekends at 11 p.m.

when the boss says, answer this email and things like that.

There seems to be a lot of gray there over, I'm just an employee.

Shouldn't I just switch off my phone at 5 p.m.

when I go home?

The thing is, Roberta, Iyanla Van Zandt said this years ago, we teach people how to treat us.

Yeah.

Right?

So for example, at a certain period of time on a Friday night, I don't respond to any business email or phone call until Monday morning to work hours.

Because if I allow people to reach me 24 hours a day, seven days a week, it's me teaching them how to treat me.

It's me showing them how to disrespect my personal, my family time.

So we have to set boundaries.

That's the reality.

In work and in business, we still need to set boundaries.

I still work on the weekends and at night, for sure.

There's always work that needs to be done.

However, I think the difference is during the day, I'll work on things that I have to physically talk to people or have conversations.

And at night, I'll work on some of the other things that I don't need people for.

Marketing, social media posts, proposals, the back office stuff that still needs to be done.

But during the week, you have to have boundaries with people.

Right.

Especially if you're an employee.

It's one thing, like you said, if you're an entrepreneur, the business depends on you.

What did you realize were important soft skills when you started working at IBM?

What were the soft skills that you realized, wait a minute, if I have this skill in addition to my technical, this helps with your business, the relationship building and things like that.

I think one of the things that I learned back then, and my mom taught me this, was just to talk to people.

And even to this day, as you look around, it's so difficult to talk to anybody at your bank.

Make an appointment today for any reason, and these companies avoid having conversations with you.

Everything is automated and it's very frustrating, right?

But the thing that I learned back then and the thing that I employ today is having conversations with people.

I answer my phone today.

Roberta, if you call me, I'm going to answer my phone.

If you send me an email, I'm going to reply to you, right?

And that skill of the interpersonal communication, the ability for you to look in someone else's eyes and have a conversation, I'll tell you what it does.

It builds trust, it builds credibility.

More important than that, it gives you a connection to that person in ways that you wouldn't have had before.

For example, in business, if you're selling to someone, in other words, telling them what you have to offer, and that's all you're focused on, you're probably not going to close the deal.

In business, if you're looking at someone eye to eye, or you're having a direct conversation with someone, and you listen to them, they will tell you exactly what it is that they need.

And your job as an entrepreneur is to find a solution for them.

That comes from a conversation.

You can't do that in email.

You can't do that on a social media post.

Oh, a recited script of, okay, when you sell this air fryer, this is what you say to Tony.

Exactly.

It's the relationships.

The most valuable business relationships I've had in my entire life, entire life have come from me sitting down at a meeting with representatives from another company and them telling me what their needs were and me and my company coming up with solutions.

And it was all a conversation.

And then when we agree in principle, then we draft up a statement of work or scope of services.

We issue a proposal or quote and they sign off on it.

And then you cash your check and then you go save the world.

But it starts with a conversation.

And that's what's missing from business today.

And life, that's the soft skill that I wish more people had and respected.

Just like we're having a conversation now, so many people want to benefit from this conversation.

If you and I had an email exchange and you just posted that, there's no debt to it.

No, speaking of relationship building and business, my apologies upfront for bringing this up.

When your mom was critically ill, you had a business associate that called you in the middle of that storm.

And when you told them what you were going through, they just said, oh, just call us back when that's done.

Like they did not even hear what you said about what your family was going through.

Has your experience been that business is really that, has no soul that much?

Yeah, it doesn't have a soul.

I've been a business person for 32 years, an entrepreneur for 32 years.

Generally speaking, business has no soul.

And then the question becomes, should it?

That's not for me to answer, but it's for me to decide how I want to run and conduct my business.

And you don't have to apologize for bringing that up.

I'm an open book.

So my mom was in the hospital.

She was diagnosed with stage four cancer and she was literally on her deathbed.

They kept telling us she had 24 hours to live.

And I had two phones, one was a personal phone and then one was my business cell phone.

And my business cell phone just kept ringing, kept ringing, kept ringing.

And I figured it was important because it was from the same business partner.

And it was at the end of the year.

Basically, I called this lady back and she was just a sales rep at a company, pretty big company.

And she said, well, you know, we're closing out our end of the year.

You know, we need you to hurry up and invoice us for this stuff.

I said, okay, I'll try to get to it in the next couple of days because I'm here and I didn't want to go into great detail.

I said, but mom's critically ill.

I'm literally at the hospital.

Said, I did bring my laptop.

Let me get stable with her condition with the doctor.

And then I'll have someone at the office work on it.

You know, her comments at the very end were, okay, so just see if you can get it done today.

And my thought was really, you didn't hear anything I said except-

Before that?

She needed me to invoice them for work we hadn't even completed yet, because this is how big companies are, because on the 31st of December, their fiscal year closes.

And they want to make sure that their revenue books before midnight on the 31st of December, so they can get commission.

So her commission was more important to her than what I was doing.

And that's okay.

That's okay, because I can't control how other people are.

I think the moral of the story and the purpose behind your question was, in business, what is the life?

And here's the reality, that is transactional for most people.

It's what's the transaction today that somebody can buy a product or a service, some commodity, in exchange for money.

And that's really what business has become.

It's become transactional instead of relationship based.

Again, go back to customer service.

You used to be able to walk into a bank and talk to a teller.

They charge you now a teller fee to walk in and talk to the people where your money is already at.

It's crazy.

Everything is a transaction, but I'm not here to change the world in terms of changing all of that or complain about it.

But what it does is it gives me the ability to offer even better value for my clients.

Because I continue to talk to them.

I continue to engage with them in a very direct manner, whether it's hundreds of thousands of them.

They can reach me.

And I think that's the lesson for entrepreneurs is if you forget who your client is and you forget that each one of your clients is connecting with you, doing business with you, because they perceive that you have value, why would you toss that away?

We shouldn't.

It's those relationships that they want to have.

And that's a lost art, unfortunately, not just in business, but also in personal life.

When you can sit at the table with three friends and three of them are on phones.

At dinner, oh yeah.

So they're there, but they're not there.

What's the point?

You could have stayed home.

We could have just talked on the phone.

You probably would get more attention that way.

When you're on the phone, because they're on the phone, right?

Exactly.

And by the way, disclaimer from Tony and myself, we know that business exists to make money.

We're not discounting that at all.

We're not underestimating how important that is, but the human element is what we're trying to focus on.

So my question is, how was your relationship with that company?

Did it affect you at all?

Or you just thought, you know what?

As long as our company makes money, I don't care how she spoke to me, let's just focus and put feelings aside.

Well, the reality of that particular engagement was, we were on a long-term contract, five to 70 years.

So you can't just unplug, right, from that relationship.

And she's just one person that we dealt with out of probably 100 people at that particular company.

But what it did was, it confirmed what we already knew, which was they view this relationship as a transactional relationship.

And we said, okay, no problem.

We'll just make sure that we dot the I's and cross the T's.

We'll do everything the contract states.

But when it comes time for us to do a favor, which they often ask for, this $17 billion a year company, they often ask for favors from us little guys.

We just politely said, if it wasn't in the scope, we're not gonna do it.

We just maintain a transactional relationship, which is what they've basically ultimately showed us that they were about.

And that's okay.

Again, that's not a knock to them.

What I'm saying is, again, going back to the statement, we teach people how to treat us.

That's all.

And I'm all in.

We were all in on other relationships.

We went way above and beyond what we were scoped and contracted to do, because our goal is deliver the best service possible.

And I think that's the lesson.

No matter how other people show up in the world, you can't control that.

But you want to make sure you deliver the best version of yourself.

You deliver the best product or service offering that you're required to, that you're contracted to do.

And you can't take this stuff personally.

I didn't take it personally, because she didn't know me personally.

I just asked for a little bit of latitude.

She wouldn't extend it.

And I said, okay, no problem.

And here's the thing, Roberta, I got the work done.

I called back to the office.

It still showed up.

Absolutely.

I called to the office.

They got everything invoiced.

The lady made her commission.

Everybody was good.

No hard feelings whatsoever.

But I think the moral of that story was, don't expect in business and in life, other people to be equally yoked as you are in your emotional responses, in your business responses, right?

Maintain your level of integrity and dignity.

You have to maintain that no matter what the world presents to you.

Because your reputation is at stake, yeah.

Do your best, show up as your best, and do what's necessary going beyond.

Because remember, the goal is an important thing.

My goal wasn't to please them.

My business goal was really far from that one engagement, that one relationship.

We had several really big clients.

But the important thing is, what's the goal that I had for the business?

What's my personal goal?

And what are my dreams?

And I couldn't let this little incident derail those things.

That's just a speed bump.

You continue on your journey.

And again, in business, you have to get tough, because people don't care about other people in business.

They don't care what you're dealing with, and probably they shouldn't, right?

They came there for the business reasons, yes, of course.

Yeah, exactly, and you can't be emotional about that, because if you do, that's when you're gonna give up.

You don't give up, you don't quit.

Yeah, don't quit for sure.

You and your family have traveled to many parts of the world, and you said travel is your best teacher, which is something I've also said.

This is the first country I live in, I said, travel is your best teacher.

Would you like to talk to us more about that?

It is.

Back in 2015, my wife and my son and I decided that we would start our annual road trips.

And before then, we had had many people visit us in Puerto Rico every year.

We had big family gatherings, and we were just a little tired of that because it just took up so many resources, time.

When people left, I would sleep for days, right?

And it was at a certain point where we wanted to do a big road trip.

So what we did was we bought a van, a conversion van, so we would have space.

And we started in 2016, we did road trips, 16, 17, 18, and 19.

We hit 48 states during that time driving, many of them several times.

The only ones we didn't hit was Hawaii and Alaska.

Exactly, so we did the lower 48.

And during that time, we traveled to, I believe, seven or eight countries as well.

We flew.

What we were really trying to do is make sure that my son saw the world, for him to meet people who didn't look like him, for him to experience cultures that he had not had previous experience with, for him to try food and song and dance and learn the ways that people around the world live.

And it became an amazing experience for all of us.

And interesting thing, Roberta, when we look at TV today, we can look at a movie, and almost every single movie, we say, oh, look at that, I remember that street.

Oh, we remember that building.

When I first went to New York, do you know how exciting it was to be at the top of the Empire State Building?

I remember I had my Sleepless in Seattle moment.

Exactly.

But you learn so much from, that's the best thing I've ever spent money on in my life.

I don't remember half the stuff that I bought, but I remember literally the experiences that we've had around the world.

And I tell people, spend your money on experiences, not things, and the empathy that you would develop for people around the world, and even for people who are in the States, because I tell you that we talked about this a little bit before, but people have the perspective that America is the greatest country on earth.

You have to ask yourself, what criteria are you using to make that determination?

Because I've been to countries where they wouldn't leave their country for anything.

They love their country, and they have just as much pride in their country, in their community, in their people that we do in the US.

So I believe, ultimately, that travel will teach you a lot more about yourself and a lot more about other people than probably anything else that you can do, anything else you can spend money on.

The self-awareness, yes.

I find that my living in South Korea, especially because that was the first time I got out of South Africa, it's learning about myself.

I was like, huh, I thought I wanted that, and I was told I should want this, but hey, wait a minute, do I?

You learn so much about yourself.

Yeah.

And another thing, Roberta, most people in the United States speak one language.

When you go out of the United States, you'll be surprised.

Most people speak two, three, four, five languages.

Oh, like you, I see.

Yeah, I'm Zulu.

I'm from the Zulu tribe.

So Zulu is my first language.

I speak English.

I learned Afrikaans in school, the Dutch language.

So even though I'm not fluent, but if I listen to the news, I can understand 80% of it.

And a bit of Korean because I was there.

So yeah, it's common when you step out of this country to find people who speak more than one language.

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

But travel is just amazing.

It's an absolute great teacher.

And we have way more travel to do in the future.

One of the reasons why we work hard is so that we can travel and we can go visit people around the world and have those different experiences.

And we get with the locals.

We love talking to the locals and visiting the local places.

And also, Roberta, to sit down at the little outdoor cafes or in a park and just people watch.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Again, Roberta, that's the importance of having a why.

So when you ask about the pain early in the conversation, how do you deal with painful situations, you have to have a reason why you're doing all of this stuff.

And if you keep that reason, that goal, that dream in mind, then it helps a little bit.

It helps with the pain.

It helps when your business partner is insensitive because you got a bigger picture in mind.

It becomes the fuel you were talking about.

Absolutely.

Yeah, that is so true.

Tony, a lot of people lost loved ones during COVID.

You detailed very much the pain you felt when you lost both your mom and dad.

What can you say to those people who recently lost loved ones to find the courage to keep going, to still focus on your goals like you did despite that level of pain because it's unbearable?

It's very difficult.

And I just lost a cousin recently, a young cousin, 26 years old.

I was at his funeral not long ago and looking at my young cousin who's like a sister to me and losing her first son, her first child, you can't even describe it.

And there is nothing that you can physically say.

No matter how many losses you've experienced, you can't console a parent who's lost a child.

And the reason I mention that is because even though when my dad died, it was very difficult.

When my mom passed, I was there.

I was holding her hand when she passed.

I haven't seen a level of pain like a parent losing a child.

I've never seen or experienced that firsthand, right?

And the thing that I would tell you is there are levels of pain that people go through.

So I don't want to make a blanket statement to say, we'll get over it.

But here's the thing that I know for sure.

I know this absolutely for sure, that every single day that you continue to live, I'm not going to say it gets easier because I don't necessarily feel that's the case, but every single day that we live and we continue to move forward, we figure out ways to manage our emotions on a daily basis.

Because your emotions today may be very different than they are a year from now.

I think the other thing I would say is be comfortable with how you grieve.

Don't let anybody tell you what you should do or what you shouldn't do.

You have to be very aware that your situation is unique.

It is unique because it's happening in your life.

You're experiencing it as opposed to witnessing someone else going through it.

Your experience is going to be different.

My parents died two vastly different ways.

One was sudden, one wasn't really sudden.

And the level of grief is different.

When you lose one parent, then your energy goes to the surviving parent.

But then when the surviving parent passes, not only do you grieve them, but you grieve the loss of both of your parents at the same time.

So it seems like you may grieve for the second one more than the first, but now you're grieving for two instead of one.

So what I would tell people is be comfortable knowing that whatever you're feeling is the right feeling because it's your experience.

Be comfortable knowing that every single day there's going to be some tool that you're going to develop that's going to allow you to get through one more day.

It doesn't get easier, like people say.

Time doesn't necessarily heal.

I wish I would stop saying that.

Yeah, I do too.

But time doesn't necessarily heal all things, like people say.

It doesn't because you're going to always have triggers.

Birthdays, special days, a song, a picture.

There's going to be something.

But the thing that I would say from my personal experience, what I did was I used my love of my parents to move an agenda along that included their legacy.

We helped out.

We serve hundreds and hundreds of people for meals at Thanksgiving and Christmas time.

We've given our backpacks in their name to new school, their students that are attending school.

So many different things we've done over the years to honor them.

It doesn't make the pain of losing them any less, but I was able to take that pain and to say, okay, what can I do to still keep their memory fresh in my mind and then to show the world that they were great people, even though they're not here, by doing great things in their names.

Is there anything I didn't ask you you wanted to share with our listeners today?

I think that you've covered a lot.

We talked about the book, The Gift of Pain.

And the important thing to the audience members, the thing to remember is that there is a gift in pain.

There is a gift.

You may not recognize it now, but one day you probably will, and it could be years down the road.

But the pain of losing a relationship, losing the job, maybe it's a blessing that you lost the job because now you have to fend for yourself and start a business.

Losing that relationship, maybe it wasn't the person that you were meant to be with in the future, right?

So maybe it was a blessing.

Maybe it was a gift.

But if we hold on to the things that we lose so closely and so tightly, we're never going to be able to move forward.

So the gift of pain for me, all of the gifts that I receive, I describe them in the book.

I didn't want to write about a whole bunch of stuff that I acquired over the years and success and all of that.

I really want to focus on a few difficult times and how I was able to move through them and how life continued, how business continued and grew in the midst of those challenging times.

So it's inspirational.

It's aspirational as well for people to want to do a lot more.

Everyone who's read it so far has told me that it feels like a conversation between them and me.

Yes, it feels like you are not only relating your life story but helping me, not only through the journey, but understand why you shared some of the things in your life that you shared.

Yeah, and me and Tipi, we don't do that.

From what I hear.

But it's okay.

Words of wisdom from Tony R.

Kitchens, bestselling author of The Gift of Pain, speaker and entrepreneur for 32 years.

Tony, thank you so much for spending your time with us today and for sharing your insights and your story.

Thank you, Roberta, for having me, I really appreciate it.

And I look forward to hearing from your audience members.

I do return calls and emails.

I'm glad because the next thing I was going to ask is where do we find you in the internet?

Anything that you want to share with us where we can reach you if we want to send you emails and calls.

Absolutely.

tonyrkitchens.com is my site.

You can find links to all the social there, contact information.

giftofpainbook.com is where you can find a link to the book.

tonyrkitchens.com and giftofpainbook.com.

That was Tony R.

Kitchens.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Roberta.

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