George Appling on How to Make Intentional Career Choices | EP 545

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Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles.
And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long-form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries and athletes.
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Welcome to episode 545 of the PassionStruck podcast. I'm your host, John Miles, and I want to start by sending a huge thank you to each of you who show up week after week committed to your growth purpose and living a life filled with intention.
You are the heart of this community and it's your dedication that makes the PassionStruck movement so impactful. If you're new here, welcome.
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This week's earlier episode with Jessica Zweig, an award-winning entrepreneur, personal branding expert, and the best-selling author of The Lightwork. Jessica shared profound insights on harnessing your inner light, embracing your authentic self, and using spirituality as a tool for personal growth.
If you're on a journey of self-discovery and want to learn how to step into your infinite potential, be sure to check out that episode. It's packed with inspiration and practical advice.
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Today's episode is going to be transformative, especially if you're navigating questions around work fulfillment and finding a career path that doesn't align with who you are. I'm thrilled to welcome George Applin, author of Don't Settle, a pick your path guide to intentional work.
I absolutely love this interview with George and he brings a wealth of experience from leading leading companies and startups to creating nonprofits that help veterans and first responders, his diverse journey is a testament to what's possible when you approach work with intentionality. In our conversation, George takes us on a pathfinding quest to answer some of the most critical questions in life.
How can you align your career with your passions? What does it mean to pursue intentional work? And how do you make deliberate choices that transform your professional and personal life? We'll cover practical tools like his MetaPaths framework, which gives you five distinct approaches, independent, money, passion, experiment, and balance, that can guide you in aligning your career with your passions. You'll learn how to apply these paths to make intentional decisions about your work and life, whether that means pursuing your passions directly or creating a career that funds what you love outside of work.
We'll also discuss the Japanese concept of Ikigai and why it's only the starting point. George will share actionable exercises to help you go deeper in understanding what truly fulfills you and how to plot a path that fits your unique goals and lifestyle.
His insights will empower you to stop following the default career path and start making deliberate choices that lead to joy, productivity, and a life you love. And remember, you can watch every episode of the Passion Struck Podcast on YouTube, where our community continues to grow.
You'll find us on the John R. Miles YouTube channel, along with our Passion Struck Clips channel for bite-sized insights.
So let's jump into today's conversation with George Appling and discover how to design a career and a life that truly aligns with your passions and values. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
Now, let that journey begin. Hey, PassionStruck fam.
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I am absolutely thrilled today to bring George Appling to the PassionStruck podcast. Welcome, George.
Thank you, John. Happy to be here.
Today, we're going to be talking about your brand new book, which thank you for sending me a copy. I absolutely loved it, and it has so much in common with my own book, Passion Struck, so I can't wait to dive into this.
But I want to start with your backstory. Looking back to the start of your career, it really impressed me that you decided to pursue such a rigorous and ambitious academic path.
You've got a couple of master's degrees from Harvard, two bachelor's degrees from Texas A&M. What led you to do that? It was funny.
I asked my mother the other day, where did my ambition in school come from? Because I remember very clearly in junior high at 11, 12 years old, taking great pride in my little report card saying all A's. I mean, I remember that I can still see that little report card.
And I was like, where did that come from? And she said it was just always there. And I've got three kids and one of them is like

that. She just takes great pride in making all A's.
And so I think just being ambitious about

education was somehow just always a part of me. Like we don't really, we can't figure out where

it came from. It just is.
I have the same thing. I have a son and a daughter and my daughter

has always been very conscientious about wanting to get A's and really being studious, etc.

My son is much more the empathetic type of leader.

And I think he's got a ton of ingredients that would make him a great person in the C-suite because he's the type who gets along with everyone and seems to know the right things to say at the right time. But kids are so funny because they are so darn different from each other.
And I guess I look at my brother and sister and see the same thing. That really resonates because two of my three kids are twins and they're 14 years old.
And the girl twin is the one who wants all of her grades to be 99s or 100s. And the boy twin spikes on empathy.
Like he just feels what other people are feeling and he cares and he's kind. And so they're quite different.
And they're twins and they've done every single thing together their whole lives. So I'm sure it's biological somehow.
I am sure. Well, given this education that you had, one of the things I always like to ask is, was there a teacher or professor along the way that you remember who changed your life for the better? If you'll indulge me, I think there are two.
When I was in high school in a very small town in Texas called El Campo, a tiny little town, like one McDonald's, one Dairy Queen kind of town. The German professor, whose name was Paul Sechting, I actually saw him last week.
He encouraged me to study abroad. And so I went to Germany for the first time on a study abroad program when I was 16 years old.
And that started a lifelong love of travel. And I've been all over the place and lived all over the place.
And so I do credit him with kicking it off. The other one is a little bit of a longer story.
When I was at Texas A&M, there was a gentleman there named J. Wayne Stark, and he was the director emeritus of the Memorial Student Center, which is a big establishment, the MSC.
And when I was there, he was already retired, and he was considered the wise man on the mountain. And he had his director emeritus office back in the corner, which nobody knew.
But it turns out if you made a 4.0 for a couple of years, he would send someone out in the middle of the day to tap you on the shoulder. And this sounds different now because of Marvel movies, but they would tap you on the shoulder and say, Mr.
Stark wants to speak with you. And then the clouds parted and the angels sang and something special is about to happen.
And he gave me the following advice. He said, you're doing a degree in accounting and that's useful.
And he's a big fan of doing a degree that's useful, science, engineering, business. He said, but look, you're at an educational institution where there are world-class faculty in a lot of different disciplines.
And you would really be remiss to not study under them because you don't want to miss this chance to become a well-rounded person. And so he gives me this piece of paper and he says, I want you to take these classes.
And it was Shakespeare, the philosophy of art, metaphysics, medieval history, I mean, all sorts of random stuff. And it was Mr.
Start. So I'm like, okay.
And so I did that.

And I just started taking all the classes that I had to. And then I just started taking everything

on that list and everything that I thought was fascinating. And I got to the end of my fifth

year as non-graduate and realized I only needed two more classes and I could have a degree in

political science. So I just stayed the summer, already had my job offer for McKinsey.
I was like,

guys, can I start in September instead of July? They say, sure. And so then I picked up my

Thank you. science.
So I just stayed the summer, already had my job offer for McKinsey. I was like, guys, can I start in September instead of July? They say, sure.
And so then I picked up my second degree in policy. And so I think that that advice was really impactful to me.
I love it because you got the technical aspects, but you also got that well-rounded philosophical background as well, which I think is such a strong combination. Very similar to, ironically, what I studied at the Naval Academy, because we all come out of there with an engineering degree, but I also studied political science.
And it was interesting because one of my favorite instructors, she had clerked for the Supreme Court. And through her, I got to really understand the legal system and how things work, which was hard to, a hard thing to grasp when you're in your twenties without having a guidepost like that.
That makes perfect sense. Well, I want to talk to you about Booz Allen for a second, because I came out of the military and I couldn't have thought, because I was a junior officer at the time, a better landing place that I could have gone to than Booz.
And I love their, so much of their methodology, their no unturned approach. And on the federal side, they had these different teaming mechanisms where you would have one team working on a proposal, another team working alongside them, but really to challenge that team to make sure that they were doing their best.
And so much of the discipline and other things that I saw there benefited me throughout the rest of my career. What were some of your biggest takeaways from Booz? So I worked at two strategy consulting firms.
One was Booz and the other was McKinsey. And I really credit them with an incredible learning experience.
I like to say I learned more in my first three years at McKinsey than I did at Harvard Business School. And Booz is, of course, very similar.
And what's beautiful about these firms is that they're 100 years old. And so they've really had the chance to do the Kaizen, right? Do the continuous improvement, get better and better.
What I learned from them, which I think is the most important thing, is to let facts and logic lead you to conclusions rather than start with your conclusion and cherry pick facts and logic to support it. And I think it's a really valuable skill in business and life to be open-minded enough to set aside your hypothesis, your preconceived notions, and let the facts and logic lead you to the truth.
That's what those firms taught me. Well, lots of things, but I think that's the important one, the most important one.
I think that's great. And I'm sorry at this point to see that Booz and Co.
isn't a standalone entity anymore because similar to when I went to Arthur Anderson, I always thought Arthur Anderson was top notch. And it was really one component of the way that they governed that really did the firm in, meaning that the engagement partner could override the governance partner, which none of the other big four allowed that.
And as a result, it can cause greed and other things to permeate.

And it's just such a shame because method one and so many of the methodologies that I learned there that they still use today at Accenture were just so far and away above what some of the other firms had. My college roommate of three years went to work for Arthur Anderson, and he really waxes nostalgic about how wonderful the place was.
And then they just had that one screw up called Enron that took down this revered institution. It is.
It's a very sad story. I was, you don't know this about me, but I was there at the epicenter.
So I was in the Houston office. Ironically, I had never worked on Enron because they actually needed people to work on other energy clients other than Enron so we could be a little bit more diverse.
But I remember I was a senior manager at the time and an FBI agent, one of our internal cybersecurity people show up at my door and they said, we need your computer. You'll get it back in about 48 hours.
I said, I've never worked on Enron. I have no data about Enron.
Well, needless to say, I never saw that computer again. And about three weeks later, I had charted a new course because things came crashing down very quickly.
Wow. I did a consulting project at Enron.
It wasn't in the stuff that went south, but it was there in the business and it was quite something. Well, that business was quite something at its time.
It was. Well, you and I then took a similar path, different ways, but we both went into industry.
You spent time at Siemens and Brightstar and other places eventually becoming a CEO. When did you start feeling the need to move away from this traditional corporate path?

And what factors for you influenced that feeling?

I think my entire career, even as a 20-something, I had this notion that at some point, I wanted

my work and my passion to be the same thing.

But I didn't know what that was or what that meant.

And I knew that I would have a higher probability of success if I built the capabilities that came along with an industry career. And I knew that I would have a much lower risk profile if I aligned my work and my passion with a bunch of money in the bank.
And so I had that thought the whole time. And so I had a very clear savings goal.
When you work at a 100-year-old firm, what you're going to make each year. So I had my spreadsheet and how much I was going to spend and how much I was going to save and all this kind of stuff.
And the moment came when I was like 36 years old and I put a note in my calendar. It was on a BlackBerry.
You remember when we had BlackBerrys on our holsters or belts and we thought we were cool? We thought we were like Billy the Kid with our BlackBerrys? Man, that phone was awesome. What are you talking about? It was great.
I would bang out emails with my thumbs on the plane. I love that thing.
Anyway, I put an invitation or a meeting on my 40th birthday, so four years since, and it said in all capital letters, STOP. And what that meant to me was stop doing what the economy expects me to do and do what I love or do what I'm passionate about.
So that's I gave myself four years to figure out what that meant. And it was only one year after I put in that calendar invite that a friend of mine said the Texas Renaissance Festival was for sale.
And that was the moment the clouds parted and the angels sang and I got hit by a lightning bolt and it turns out that the renaissance festival is the only thing I've loved my entire life other than my mother I went there as a 12 year old on a school trip you know yellow school bus the whole thing I think I missed a year or two when I was 13 14 but that I went to that show 38 years in a row and so so that's traveling back to Texas from three years in Boston, three years in Germany, a year in England, a year in Russia, a year in Australia. I didn't want to mess up my streak.
And what was fascinating about that is that it had never occurred to me. That was a business.
It was this thing that I loved. Like when October came, I just got giddy.
I was so excited to go to the Texas Renaissance Festival. But when my friend said it was for sale, I started scratching my head going, oh yeah, I guess someone owns it.
And someone, there's a P&L, a balance sheet. And I started doing some numbers in my head.
And I think that might be a really good business. And that's it.
That set me on the path. And so I actually tried to buy the Texas Renaissance Festival, which if you lived in Houston, I'm sure you're familiar with, and that didn't work.
And then I tried to buy the one in Dallas, and that fell apart one day before closing, which means like multi-million dollar loan from a big bank, signed purchase agreement, escrow, like everything is done one day. It fell apart.
And then so then I co-founded Sherwood Forest Fair, which is the, we say Renaissance Fustle because that's what people know.

It's really a medieval fair because we're set in the 1190s.

So I co-founded that with a business partner and we opened up in 2010.

So we've been doing it for 15 years.

And this past, we just do eight weekends.

That's the standard for this business.

We had 167,000 patrons in 17 operating days.

So it's just 10,000 people out there every day eating turkey legs and drinking meat and watching jousting. That's what I love.
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I have a really good friend who won the apprentice she was on the year that not donald trump who am i thinking of oh what's her name she's everywhere has her own cooking she's known for martha stewart martha stewart how can i okay i'm gonna say that again because i can't believe i blew it so what this reminds me of is i have a good friend who won The Apprentice the year that Martha Stewart did it. And she went on to lead her on online brands.
But coming out of that, she found that doing events and festivals, she didn't do a festival like yours, but she and her husband for many years concentrated on these festivals, whether it was a wine and beer festival, or they did a lot because she ran Women's Running World magazine around big races and promoting them and running them. And it was through her that I realized how lucrative these things could be.
So when you think about a medieval fair like this, what are the moving parts underneath it that a person who's attending it might not even see? Because I agree with you. I go to these things, and I know they're a business, but I don't really think of it as a business.
Absolutely. It's not really a joke, but it sounds a little bit goofy when I say people think that owning a Renaissance Festival is really fun and sexy.
And it is. But a lot of it is the line to get into the parking lot, clean toilets and the beer lines.
You have to put enormous amount of energy and then making sure people can get into the parking lot fast and they can get a beer fast and they can go to the bathroom fast. So there's a lot of just operational stuff going on.
And of course, then the key elements of the value proposition are the stage acts. So we hire the jousters and the falconer and the jugglers and the comedians and all these guys.
And then we have our artisans. We have 170 artisans.
So there's the bootmaker and the hatmaker and the glassblower. And you have to manage all those people.
And then there's just enormous amounts of investment. In some parts of the country, the Renaissance festivals are in public parks and they just take a few weeks, they build it up.
It's more like a tent city. But in even more of the country, as in Texas and New York and Ohio, the fairs are permanent.
So it's a permanent theme park. I've got like 200 buildings.
And so there's always investment in more parking, more underground electricity, more water pipe, more storage tanks for water, all that kind of stuff. And then finally, probably one of the most important things is the marketing.
I just did a talk an hour ago at, I'm at the University of Texas McComb School of Business. And one of the students was interested in event production.
And she asked, what do people mess up the most? And I said, what they mess up the most is the marketing investment. So I have this benchmark of spending $2 or $3 per patron that you want.
If you want to have 10,000 people spend $20,000 on marketing, and a lot of event producers underestimate the amount of marketing spend they need to do and they don't and they miss doing it rigorously right so in my first year 2010 i tried everything even though i thought billboards were dumb i'm going to try them anyway and then i did an exit survey where i asked people check off everything that you saw and you could add up all the check marks divide into the the spend by vehicle, by radio station, by television station, by billboard location, and you can get an ROI. And it turns out billboard's crushed.
And so those are some of the key success factors in the event business. Wow.
So I want to take a step back here because many of the listeners who are tuning in today are probably sitting in the same place you were sitting. I know I was sitting there about the same age.
I had gotten this job at Dell when I was 39 to be a CIO there, but I had this feeling for a while that I wasn't really doing what I considered my passion. And it was more like I was going through the motions and I felt like I was climbing the ladder and I was getting more money and all that, but I just didn't feel fulfilled.
But a lot of times it's difficult because I don't think we're taught how to weigh the risks and rewards of leaving a stable job, whether it's a corporate position or it could be you're a doctor, you're a lawyer, something else to pursue your own ventures. What going into this were your biggest concerns and how did you overcome them? My biggest concern was whether it was going to take off or not.
I'll never forget opening day in 2010. I had spent my marketing budget and I had no idea if 30 people were going to walk

through the gate or 300 or 3,000 or 10,000. I had no idea.
And so I'm just sitting there sweating bullets and the cannon goes off and 3,000 people walked in. I was like, okay, this is going to be all right.
So one was I spent a solid marketing budget for year one. But then what I did, and I think it's a good idea, is I stayed in the real world at big corporate jobs for the first several years of building my passion business.
So I was building my theme park and I was a booze and company partner at the same time. And then I was the CEO of a billion dollar cell phone distribution company at the same time.
And what that enabled me to do is to write checks to get my passion business to scale. And so I did that for the first four years and we've been in it for 15 years now, but to scale the business.
And then that worked. And now the business is at scale and it's really successful and doesn't need anything for me.
Well, let's take someone who might be earlier in their journey. Let's say someone's in their mid twenties and maybe they've come out with a business degree and they're working kind of in a lower level position, working their way up, but they have this big passion on the side.
Maybe they want to be a writer. Maybe they love music, whatever it may be.
What are some things that they can do? And I know we're going to get more into this right now in their career where they could be setting the seeds to do what they really love while doing this thing that maybe is giving them a paycheck, but they're not completely thrilled about. That's the exact topic of my book.
The whole book is about how to deal with that kind of thing. I can step back and describe my framework where I can talk about that individual person.
Which way do you want me to go? Let's talk about that individual person. And then I'll go into the book after that.
Yeah. So you're 25 years old.
You have a business degree. You're in a job that's okay, but you're not passionate about it.
And you want to be a writer. I think one of the very important things this person needs to answer is what is their need for financial security? And you can really think that through.
And in the book, there's a little tool that helps you think through that because it's things like, do you need to live in an expensive city or are you OK in a less expensive city? How many kids do you want to have? Do you expect to pay for their college? Do you have expensive taste? Do you need a new car in a few years? Do you expect to have health problems? Right? So getting a handle on your need for financial security. And then at the same time, really testing your readiness to follow your heart.
If the person wants to be a writer, they really have to test their readiness to be a writer. And I tell people when I talk about my book, especially young people, don't trust yourself when you're testing your readiness.
Ask other people because people are not very good about assessing their own capabilities. Ask people that you trust to assess your capabilities.
Ask people to assess your capabilities in a way that's anonymous, right? That would be great. And so I would say to that person, look, if you're ready from a capability point of view and your need for financial security is low, you should probably start writing commercially.
Go for it, follow your heart. But if your need for financial security is medium or high, I would keep working at that regular business job.
And I would try to orient that regular business job in a way that builds out your skills, right? See if you can take that regular business job and shift it towards doing more writing, right? Or shift it towards digital marketing skills because that will be useful for an author, right? So be intentional about learning things in your regular business job that are gonna help you be a writer or follow your passion later. That's what I would say to that person.
I'm glad you brought that up because us both being authors and having published books. I don't think I realized that I was going to need more practice in marketing and promotion that I wasn't actually writing the darn book.
That seems to be a much bigger focus of getting the thing out in the world than actually writing the darn thing. So definitely.
And it's a real challenge because the kind of net margin on a book is so low, it makes it hard to spend marketing money on it. It it's a big challenge.
It absolutely is. Well, George, let's talk about don't settle.
In the introduction of your book, you compare intentionality to physical fitness, calling it a superpower. I absolutely, because you've read my book and listeners of this podcast know my podcast is all about intentionality.
So I definitely agree. It's a superpower.
Can you elaborate yourself on what intentionality has meant for you and how practicing it has shaped your journey and why it's so transformative? Definitely. I've somehow, I didn't choose to be intentional.
I just was, right? So I think it's easier when it comes naturally to you. But if it doesn't come naturally to you, I think it's really important to try to figure it out.

It meant everything to my career. So when I got out of college and started working, I wanted to make partner at McKinsey.
And I knew that financial progression, and I knew my cost of living, and I had a savings goal. I wanted to have a million dollars in the bank by the time I was 36 years old and or less.
And I was thinking that way at 22. And so then it's OK, well, I need to succeed.
And a lot of people wash out strategy consulting firms. I really hunkered down and figured out what does it take to succeed here.
And they have their capability matrices and they have their feedback forms and I'm really focused on succeeding there. And because I was successful there, I ended up getting into Harvard Business School.
And then I just kept being intentional the whole time. And then that example of when I was 36 saying, I want to marry my skills and my passion, even though I don't know what that means, there was a very intentional choice.
Like, this is what I'm going to do. And I'm giving myself four years to figure out what that means.
So, yeah, I think intentionality is absolutely a superpower. I also think it gives you great comfort when you have chosen your path.
Even if your work and your passion don't have anything to do with each other, if you've made that decision, this is what I'm doing.

My passion is smoking pot and playing video games on Saturday. That's it.
It's the only thing I want

to do. And I'm going to repair diesel engines for a living because I can make $100,000 a year.

And if that's your decision and you're intentional about that, I think you're going to be much more

I love you're going to be much more fulfilled than if that just happens to you. I think there's a lot of peace in doing what you've decided to do as opposed to what you defaulted into or what the world expects you to do.
I think that's a great way to look at it. And I remember I did an interview with Angela Duckworth.
You and I both are fans of her work. And I really wanted to talk to her about intentionality because I really pressed her on it.
I said, I think you missed an ingredient with grit. I think you didn't talk enough about being intentional.
And in her world, intentionality is really the study of self-control, which she has done a lot of work on. And she came back and said, I wouldn't disagree with you.
Passion and perseverance aren't the only two quadrants that you need to be concerned with. You also have to have the self-control in order to make the right choices.

And this is something that I think you nailed in your introduction by saying being intentional means consciously owning your choices. And I don't think people think about the power of choice

enough, and especially the micro choices that we make, because I have always found it's those

micro choices that really determine your endpoint much more than the bigger decisions we tend to make. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I talked to various mental health practitioners.
First off, I love Angela Duckworth. She's a keynote speaker at a conference I'll be in in January.
So I'm really excited to see her in person. I think a lot of mental health practitioners will tell you that the first hurdle they have to get over with patients is convincing them that they have agency.
And so that's something I talk about a lot in the book and in my talk is people typically have a lot more agency than they think they do, right? You can make decisions every day that make your life better. And I was in my talk with, if you take 1.0, 1.0, think of that as a step, and you raise that to the 365th power, that equals one.
But if you take 1.01, so imagine that is 1% better, and you raise that to the 365th power, that's 37. This is night and day.
So I always tell people, when in doubt, act. Make a decision today that will make your life better.
And if that's going from zero push-ups to one, that's a step. If that's going from walking 2,000 steps to 3,000 steps, take it, right? Take the step every day to make your life a little bit better and own that choice.
You have the power to do that.

Don't make excuses.

Take the damn step.

Well, I'd love to hear before we go into more of the concepts in the book, or maybe you can apply it to this. Let's dive deeper into how you use the power of intentionality in one of your endeavors.
after you founded the medieval festival Festival, you launched a mead making company, which is now renowned as having some of the best mead in the world. Can you talk about that path? And I mean, because it's one thing to say, I've got a renaissance festival, people like to drink mead here, I want to create my own to actually implementing the the idea and being intentional while you're trying to be a partner in a firm and run the festival itself? Yeah, great question.
So there's a couple of different pathways here. In the mead business, there was a little bit of luck involved in that.
I think it behooves us to confess when there's luck involved with what you're doing. So my first year of Sherwood Forest Fair is 2010.
And my cousin comes up to me during the fair and says, I make an incredible mead. And I fancy myself a mead connoisseur because I've been going to Renaissance festivals forever.
And I was like, okay, I'll try it. And so we went and sat down and I'm humoring him, right? And I try the mead and I said, wait a minute, that really is the best mead I've ever tasted.
What's going on? And he goes, it's an old family recipe, been making it my whole life. Grandparents made it.
I got something here. I'm like, okay, well, this is amazing.
You know, do you have a license? Do you produce this stuff legally? And he goes, no, that's where I need your help. I don't know how to do business.
I know how to make mead. And I keep getting arrested because I sell it and I'm not allowed to.
I'm like, oh God, I'm like, okay, I know how to do that. And so then we got into business together.
And now that business is really flourishing. And so a big part of that was luck.
But another part of that was that skillset of knowing how to build a business. And another part of that, which is going to be a good segue, was just strategic thinking.
The mead business in the country in a year is mostly Renaissance festivals. The retail market is there, but it's just not that material relative to festivals.
A mead is a festival drink.

And I could already see that at my show, and I had mass market meads in year one, it's outselling the beer and the wine.

And I think back over my mind, like, yeah, this is what people drink at shows.

They drink mead.

And so strategically getting into that business could be really wise because I get to internalize

that margin.

Well, then that segues to getting into another business. So I own this land and I've got a Renaissance festival that runs for six to eight weekends in the spring, but I own the land.
I'm like, okay, well, I need to do something else with the facility because it's a full facility. What am I going to do? And then I launched a Celtic music festival which is just like Scottish and Irish music not period specific but geographic specific all-time periods and it was because I could see Celtic festivals around the country being successful and I'm like I love that be like flutes and fiddles and bagpipes I'm in like let's go and so I launched the Celtic, which we've now done, this is our 14th year to do it in the next month.
And I'm like, well, I've got the summer. And so I launched a medieval summer camp.
So Robin Hood summer camp. And we had 542 kids over the course of four weeks this past summer, incredibly fulfilling, successful business.
And that all came from just a business strategy of, I've got a bunch of fixed costs and I've got assets that are not generating revenue for 10 months a year. I need to come up with other events.
And so then I followed all those natural strategic footsteps and it all worked out. And the next thing you're going to do is create a program that executive teams that need to do team building can come to your forest and do a magical team building exercise.
Absolutely. We've got swords and bows and arrows and horses and glass blowing, and we'll do a vision workshop for you.
I think people in those companies would love it. Take a sword and get to hit each other.
I'm sure they've only dreamed about that a thousand times in their minds. So that's it.
We can do that. And three weeks from now, I will spend all day Saturday and Sunday at the university of Texas, Arlington, and I will be getting paid to teach sword fighting, man.
Well, we've got to love love that it's a hundred bucks to work 10 hours a day for two days but that's what I love well I just want to mention a couple things that you talked about and in case people didn't really catch them so you start this festival you now have this piece of land and one of the things that I was always taught is you got to look for right-of-ways in businesses. So a right-of-way is this.
When I was at Lowe's, our main business was retail. But a right-of-way for us is we ran one of the most sophisticated supply chain systems in the world.
So you could make a lot of money by moving other people's products or using that to teach other companies on how to do it better. I mean, they're right-of-ways like that.
But for you, because you have this land, you want to use it more times of the year. If you can use this property to make a product, you're using it to make more money.
And you leaned in on, you could buy other people's meads, but then you're losing out on the margin potential and you can control how much you make and the quality of it and produce a superior product where you're making more money off of it. So lots of key things for people to learn from that, because whether it's a festival or whether it's your own personal business, it's these right-of-ways that we often don't think about that become easy stepping stones that people can take.
Exactly. You said it better than I did.
Perfect. That's what I did.
John described it. That's what I did.
I want to get back to your book, Don't Settle. And in it, you introduce, which is really at the heart of it, this matrix that helps people identify their unique rear paths, or as you call them, meta paths.
And in here, you describe them as independent money, passion, experiment, and balance. Can you explain what each one of those are and how these meta paths work? Sure.
So the five meta paths, the meta path defines a relationship between your work and your passion. So we've got five different paths that govern that relationship.
The Passion Path is make your passion and your work the same thing now. The Independent Path is the opposite.
It's that your passion and your work don't have anything to do with each other. the experiment path is mostly for people who don't know what their passion is

and so the experiment path is try things. And you can try things in different organizations, different geographies, different parts of one company.
And I've got some rules in the book around how to experiment in a way that makes your resume look good. But you're trying things out to look for that spark, right? You're looking for that passion.
Then there's the money path. And the money path is passion smashing.
I've got to be rich or I've got to be rich. And then maybe I'll worry about passion later, but I got to make money.
That's for our Goldman Sachs friends. And then the balance path, which is the one that I did, which is, I know I want to have my work and my passion be the same thing, but I'm going to do a regular career first to build the financial security and the capability set that maximizes my probability of success 10, 15 years down the road when I switch over.
And so the framework leads you to pick one of those five pathways. And then I've got a chapter in the book on each one, and it lays out a game plan.
So I really wanted the book to be tactical. You pick your path and then here are the five next steps and pitfalls to avoid.
And it's a work plan for pushing that path forward. So you mentioned earlier that you're at the McCombs School of Business.
You're trying to talk to a lot of college students about this, which is great because whether they're coming out of high school early in their years at college, this is really important information for them to get. So for someone who's a freshman or a sophomore in college, how do you approach laying out these ideas? Because at that age, I mean, many of them probably don't even, aren't even thinking that far ahead.
So how do you help close that gap for them? What I'm finding is college students, even the early ones, so freshmen and sophomores, freshmen, that's not, you don't put an S on that word. Freshmen and sophomores, 18, 19, 20 year olds, they're absolutely wrestling a lot with what am I going to do with my life? Am I going to not enjoy what I'm doing? How can I find something that I love? How do I figure out what I love? They're wrestling with this topic a lot.
And so my talk, which I just did an hour ago, is I summarize the book in 35 minutes. And then everybody does my little pick your path tool online.
It takes five minutes and they pick their path and we talk about the next steps. And so it's really resonating because they are wrestling with this topic and they're wrestling with it a lot.
I gave the talk at Texas A&M University a couple of weeks ago, and there's about 100 kids, I shouldn't say kids, young people in the room. And the professor started with, how many of you are worried about your career? 100% of the hands.
How many of you are worried that you're going to find yourself five or 10 years from now at a job thinking, oh, God, I really don't like what I'm doing? 100% of them. Right.
So they're absolutely worried about this stuff. That's why the book and the talk are resonating so much.
I want to take a different scenario here. So let's not take a person who's at this point of their life.
Let's take a person who's further into their life. I mean, maybe we'll just use me as an example.
So I, similar to you, I didn't know it was called the balanced approach, but I believe I was taking the balanced approach because I was trying to reach a level of capital that I could get out of what I was doing because I was finding I was not, it was not lighting me up inside. In fact, you can probably agree with this, that you reach a point where when your job becomes dealing with HR issues and the politics of the day, it gets to be a major drag.
And that's where I had gotten. And I had been building up this capital for years and years because I wanted to launch.
At that point, it was different than what I'm doing today, but something akin to this. And I knew I needed the capital to get it going.
But then an unexpected life event hit me. I had been married for 22 years and all of a sudden wound up in a situation where I was getting divorced, not because I wanted to, but because life happened.
And all of a sudden, this war chest I had built up is now significantly depleted. And so now you're faced with this situation that you really want to start this passion project, but you're back to you need to earn more money.
And what do you do? What would you give someone who I'm using my example, but there are other people are in a similar situation. I would say, one, get real clear on how much money you need to give the passion project a go.
And two, I very strongly believe that you can start building out a passion business while working in the real world at the same time. That's what I did.
And so I would keep working. I would dabble in the passion business, write the business plan, take the steps that you can take, get to the number you need to give it a go.
And then even if you can, direct your real world career in a way that enables you to learn capabilities that are going to help you on the passion project. It's a standard balanced path.
It's just, it's slower because you lost half your money. So let me give you another scenario, which I think could be common in, for many of the college students out there.
And I'll relate this to me. I had grandparents who really felt like their grandkids should be doctors.
And they had this in mind of the life that they thought that we could have. And I think in some cultures, there's even more and more pressure on this.
So the kid is basically told you're going to be a doctor or you're going to do this profession. And they know in the back of their mind, it's not something that they love, but they're being forced into.
And down the line, they're hoping for an outlet that they can go into. And I think, unfortunately, this happens more than it's more common than I probably even think it is.
How could they go into this knowing that they're in this state and facing this pressure? And how do they pick a meta path when that's thrust on them? I think it's a great scenario. It's a terrible scenario, but it's a great question.
First, I would say to the parents, you're making a terrible mistake in pressuring your kids or grandkids into a career. That's awful.
You really shouldn't do that. And it's not only these being a doctor.
We've got a lot in small family businesses where the parents expect the children to work in the business. I think it's a tragic mistake.
And if you just read some business history, you're going to learn pretty quickly that it's far more likely that you're going to frustrate your kids than it is that they're going to flourish in your, the parent's path. So one, to the parent, don't do that, right? That's awful.
I've got this beautiful business that I'm completely in love with, Sherwood Forest Fair. And my kids do work there.
They work for other people, not me, but there's no pressure or expectation whatsoever that they're going to work there as a career. That's point one.
Point two is I would go into the matrix and it's kind of like a Keanu Reeves thing and see what your path is. The answer varies based on your need for financial security.
And do you know how to monetize a passion? Can you do it now or do you want to do it later? So let's say in my toolkit, you land on the balance path. And the balance path is you're going to do a career for 10, 15, 20 years, and then you're going to switch over.
If you know what your passion is and being a doctor will certainly build the wealth to maximize a probability of success, then I would say, will it build the skill set? And it may or may not. And if it doesn't, I'd probably go try something else.
But if it does, right, if you're on the balance path and being a doctor, which is what your family's pressuring you to do, builds capabilities and wealth, that might be just fine. If you're on the passion now path, so let's say you want to be a musician, your need for financial security is very low, and you're talented enough to get paid.
Paid enough, you know, enough by your definition, my framework would say, go be a musician. And I think at that point, you know, once you're an adult and you're 18, I think you have to be brave enough to say, I'm not going to be a doctor.

I'm going to be a musician.

And I'm doing that knowing I will probably be low income, but I'm OK with that.

I know how to manage that.

And that's what I'm going to do.

I mean, I think the real common scenario is someone knows they want to try to become an actor or like you're saying, a musician or something like that, where your odds of really making it big are quite low and it takes a lot of sacrifice. I remember I was just listening to an interview that Stevie Nicks, the lead singer of Fleetwood Mack gave.
And she said before she got into Fleetwood Mack, she was working as a waitress, and she was barely making enough money to put food on the table and didn't think there was ever going to be a path that she could see of getting out of the situation, and then a path emerged, and obviously now the rest is history. But oftentimes you go into these things with this passion that you want to do something.
What happens if you're now a few years into it and this passion project isn't working out? How do you still keep it alive while maybe doing something else to help tide you over? Meaning I often think sometimes when you hit a closed door, at least for me, it means I need to open a different door. It might mean instead of acting in the way I intended, maybe I have to do a shift and it's a different angle of that business.
I don't know if you understand where I'm there are lots of stories of, especially like actors and musicians who got their big break right after they decided to give up. There's a lot of stories about that.
Yeah. So I would say you probably shouldn't follow it.
So this is really an interesting thing. You should not follow your passion when you're 21 years old if you're not confident that you can make the financial living that you need, right? If you expect to have three kids and pay for their college and you have expensive taste from your background and you're a mediocre musician, but you're really passionate about it, that's probably not wise to be a musician, which kind of gets into the things in my book I talk about around testing your capabilities and having other people test your capabilities.
There are lots of people where, so that's for people in the arts. Following your passion in the arts as a 20-year-old, I'd say only do that if your need for financial security is low, for whatever reason it's low.
And I'll give a neat story about that. And your capabilities are good enough to meet that hurdle.
So you got to do those two things and you can do it when you're 20 years old. Great exemplar of that.
And then I do want to go back to people whose passion can actually be lucrative. I have an exemplar in my talk, a friend of mine named Roxanne.
She's a musician and she's a leader of a band called Wine and Alchemy. She's been a leader of this band for 17, 18 years.
She's never going to be rich, and she knows it. And she chose music because it meant the world to her.
She had a hard time imagining being fulfilled, doing anything else. And she knew she was good enough to make the little money that she needed.
And the key thing is that she knew she was frugal.

And she's so talented and frugal that she'll go to Spain in the summer and put a hat down,

play music for a day, get 200 euro, spend the next day touring as a tourist.

The third day puts the hat down, makes 200 euro playing music.

The fourth day is touring again.

So that was this perfect combination of talented enough to make the amount of money that she needs, which was low. And so that's my guidance for young people who want to follow the arts.
Then there are plenty of people who are passionate about things that actually have good money. In the class I just talked to, there was a young man who he's passionate about cars and he wants to own his own car dealership.
And it turns out he can go work at a car dealership for 10 years and learn all those capabilities and make plenty of money and save it. And then learn how they finance dealerships and build that network and that reputation and that capital and those skills.
And maybe it's 10 years down the road, he opens his own car dealership. So he's following his heart the whole time, but it's not so hard from a financial point of view.
So those are these nuances that I think I'm trying to tackle on the book. It reminds me of the police song, Wrapped Around Your Finger.
Well, and when you said working as a waitress, I filled in a cocktail bar. Yeah.
Well, there you go. Tells you how old we are.
So last year, one of my favorite interviews that I did the entire year was with Dr. Bob Waldinger.
And Bob has been leading the Harvard Study of Adult Aging now for the past two decades as its director. And it's something that you highlight in your book.
But I'm going to ask you about it in a little bit different way. You bring up history in the book and you're talking about skirmishes and bad behavior from King John, King Philip II of France sets out to reconquer Normandy, et cetera.
And there's this William Marshall character who plays a huge pivotal role. What can we learn from William Marshall about the good life? Oh, listen, I've never had this question asked me before, and it's going to be my favorite question of all time.
William Marshall lived in the late 12th, early 13th centuries, and he's widely considered the greatest knight to have ever lived. He served five English kings over his life.
And I'll say a couple of things about him. One is a quote, and I use it in the book.
And it's just a little bit of an admonishment to the people who can't get out of smoking pot and playing video games. Marshall said, and by the way, the job title Marshall comes from this guy, William Marshall.
And he said, know this, for this is the heart of it. Idleness shames a young man.
And I think it's true for young women, too. That's what he said.
Idleness shames a young man. So that gets back to something I said earlier is take the step every day.
Take the step. If you do one push up rather than zero, do that, right? So that's one thing is he, William Marshall, encourages us to act, and I think we should take that lesson.
The other thing is that he built such a reputation that he ended up being one of the richest, most powerful people in the world, and it really was because of reputation. And so there's this great moment where King John of England is such a jerk that the crown prince of France has invaded England.
Now the crown prince of France is married to John's niece. And so there's a lot of people thinking, that's close enough, right? The king's niece, she can be the queen, close enough.
And John was such a jerk that half the barons of England turned against him, and they're fighting alongside the crown prince of, the Dauphin, the crown prince of France, who is Louis. And so then John dies, and there's a war.
I mean, this is a hot war, and France has conquered half of England. This is like 1215-ish, 1216-ish.
And King John dies. And he has a son, Henry, who could be Henry III, but he's young.
He's 10 years old. And William Marshall had such respect amongst the nobility that they all got together.
And they looked at him and they said, are we going with the prince or the boy? And the prince meant the French prince and the boy meant the 10-year-old son of King John. And Marcia said, we're going with the boy.
And that was it. I'm going to get choked up.
Everyone abandoned their lives at France and they all sided with Henry, who became King Henry III and ruled for 50 years. And then you asked, what's the lesson learned?

He had that power because of his reputation.

And he had that reputation because he kept his word and he was loyal.

He was loyal to his oaths.

When he said he was going to do something, he did it.

And he was pretty old by that time, right?

He's older than we are now.

And this is in 1216. And he had kept his word for so many decades that everybody held him in high esteem.
So much so that when he said, this will be the next king of England, everybody said, okay. I got a little excited there, John.
I got a little excited. Well, I love that story.
And further on in that chapter, you liken him to a modern day version, which was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And so I was a portion of the book I really love.
So I'd encourage people to read it just for that chapter, if none alone. But another thing you went into that I really loved is this whole idea of understanding the difference between being a victim and being victimized, meaning going back to this power of choice.
We all have a choice of what we allow to happen to us as opposed to making our life happen for us. This is a good way to say it.
And this is something you really go into, whether it's someone's experiencing brutality, adverse childhood events, racism, or systematic violence. Everyone has a choice.
And I think the best illustration of this was by Viktor Frankl. Can you maybe take this and run with it using him as an example? Yeah.
So, I mean, the Viktor Frankl story is certainly worth everybody knowing. And then I'll just, I'll back it up to something that I'm really interested in.
Viktor Frankl, he was like a psychology teacher who was in the Nazi camps, the Jewish extermination camps in the Holocaust in the 1940s. And he wrote it, he made it out and he wrote a book.
And the book was an analysis of what are the differences between the people who survived the concentration camps and the people who didn't. And what he came up with is the people who survived had a purpose, right? They had something deeply, profoundly important to them that they were living for.
And he went on to create this school of thought around having a purpose in your life is a brilliant driving force for fulfillment and success and productivity and all sorts of things. And so those people who had that purpose, then that generated the willpower for them to survive.
And so I think that's a really powerful anecdote. The topic of owner mindset versus victim mindset, I think is really important.
I'm planning to write an article about that soon. I've got it.
I got the outline, the whole outline written. The owner mindset is, some people would call it stoic.
It's that I can't really control what happens in the world, but I can control how I react to what happens in the world. I get to control my own emotions and I get to take action every day to make my life better.
Whereas the victim mindset is the world is against me. There's too many structural conditions against me.
I have no agency. I can't take any steps.
I'm screwed for whatever reason. And I think this is one of the great fights for the next few decades.
And we are not fighting it. But it should be a fight.
Because what's happening is the Stoic people have their flourishing community. And the victim mindset people have their flourishing community.
and they're all in their confirmation bias bubbles. And these two camps are not talking to each other and they probably should.
And the thing that I want to write in my article is the victim mindset people tend to be much more inclined and educated to talk about mental health. Whereas I think the owner mindset, the stoic mindset, I think is better for mental health.
And if we can convince the victim mindset people that their mental health will be better if they accept the philosophy that I can't control what happens in the world, but I can't control how I feel about it, that will be better for your mental health. I love stoicism and boy has your fellow Austinite, although he lives a little bit outside of Austin, benefited off of that.
I'm going to talk about one last topic. Last year, I had the privilege of interviewing Scott Galloway.
It was one of those interviews that I was surprised he said yes, because he doesn't say it very often, but I really loved his book, Adrift. And he just released another great one.
But it was really compelling to talk to him. But you did something in your book that I also did in mine.
I push back on Mark Manson, you push back on Scott Galloway a little bit, because you have a model around Akagi. Scott doesn't really believe in passion.
And I agree with you. I think this is one area that he doesn't have it right.
No doubt. I love Scott Galloway.
I think he's brilliant. I probably see an Instagram clip of him every day.
But he's got these three circles. And it's basically, I pronounce it Ikigai.
And my publisher went down his whole path of how do you pronounce that? And they actually made me choose. They said, they're Japanese people on either side of how to pronounce this.
And so I chose ikigai, although it sounds dumb. And so ikigai is these four circles.
And the ikigai is Japanese for your reason for being. And the concept of ikigai is your reason for being is if you can spend your time at the intersection of four circles, what you're good at, what you can get paid for, what the world needs, and what you love.
If you can spend your time in the middle of that, those overlapping four circles, that's your reason for being, your Ikigai. And Scott Galloway in his book basically takes the framework and just deletes the what you love circle.
I'm like, why the hell would you just delete the what you love circle? That makes no sense whatsoever. Of course, that should be part of the math.
And of course, there are a lot of people that follow their heart right away. And it's great as opposed to what he does.
His guidance is follow what you're good at. And then the passion might come or he'll say the passion will come, but follow what you're good at.
And I think I said in the book, he needs to meet more Renaissance vessel workers because there's a lot of Renaissance entertainers and craftspeakers and also artists and musicians and even car dealer guys that they follow what they love immediately. And if you do that under the right conditions, then that can be a beautiful decision and a wise decision.
And so I poke at him for why the heck, and he knows what Ikigai is. I've heard him quote it.
He took Ikigai and deleted the passion circle or the love circle. I'm like, come on, man.
So the last question I want to ask you is along these lines. I think we're on the verge of a major shift.
I allude to this in Passionstruck because I see this shift on the horizon. I think the world is cyclical.
And even you touch on this in the book, what the world needs changes. There isn't nearly demand for blacksmiths that there once was, although you still know a few.
I think we're going from this period where we have shifted from a time where you had tons of people who were entrepreneurs to now the past 30, 40 years where entrepreneurship has taken a backseat and people have taken safety over that bet. I think personally, we're going back to a phase where more people are going to be like blacksmiths, but very differently.
I think they're going to be solo entrepreneurs, but now in the digital world versus the blacksmiths world. What do you think of that? I agree with that.

I think COVID was a spark that led a fire of entrepreneurship.

So I think if you look at the number of companies founded,

it exploded in 2020, 2021.

And I think it's stayed up.

So I think entrepreneurship is booming.

Just numerically, it's true that people are founding companies. The other piece of evidence for that is the gig economy, right? There are just millions of people now, solo entrepreneurs, that their work is gig for different kinds of things.
And I think it's a beautiful thing. I think a lot of these people that are doing that are following their passion.
And another element of that is a lot of them like they just feel like they're in control of their time and they're not really. It's good to not have a boss, right? It's good to have a good boss, but that's hard.
It's hard to have a good boss. There's a great sense of freedom being an entrepreneur.
It's stressful and it's hard, but there's a great sense of freedom and control in doing it. So I agree that the entrepreneurship is flourishing.
The class I just talked to at UT was an entrepreneurship class. I heard plenty of young people.
George, I love the book. Highly recommend this for all the viewers and listeners of the show.
Where's the best place people can go to learn more about you, the fair, everything else that's going on? I've got an author website, georgeampling.com, and it's got something about all the different things that I do. And yeah, you can buy the book at all the online booksellers, Amazon, Mars and Noble, Target, all those guys.
Well, George, I've been looking forward to this and wish we had more time because I really enjoyed it. And thank you so much for joining us on the show.
Same here, John. I feel like you and I have a lot in common and I hope you stay in touch.
What an inspiring conversation with George Appling. His insights on choosing a career path with intention, understanding your unique relationship with work and finding joy in your professional life are invaluable.
One of the biggest takeaways from today's episode is that fulfillment and success come from making deliberate choices, whether that means aligning your work with your passion or designing a career that supports what you love outside of work. George's MetaPaths framework is such a powerful tool for anyone at a crossroads, and it reminds us that we don't have to settle for a default path.
We can create a life and career that truly resonate with who we are. As we wrap up, think about the areas in your own life where you may be on autopilot or simply going through the motions.
How can you start making intentional choices that bring you closer to the life that you envision? Remember, the power lies in choosing your path rather than letting it choose you. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Please take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review and share how you're applying these insights. And if you know someone who could benefit from George's message, please share this episode with them.
Your support helps us grow this community and empowers others on their journey to intentional living. For links to everything we discussed today, including George's new book, Don't Settle, and the tools he shared, check out the show notes at passionstruck.com.
You can also support the show by visiting our sponsors at passionstruck.com slash deals, or you'll find discount codes and special offers from our partners. And remember, each of these resources helps fuel the show and bring you inspiring Thank you.
you and you think these messages could inspire your organization, I'd love to explore how we can work together. Whether it's a keynote, workshop, or team session, my goal is to help teams tap into their potential and start making intentional, impactful choices.
You can learn more at johnrmiles.com slash speaking. And if you haven't already, subscribe to our Live Intentionally newsletter for exclusive content, insights, and our weekly courage challenge, which helps you put these lessons into action.
Before we go, here's a preview of what's coming up next on PassionStruck. Joining us is Madison Marsh as she reflects on her transformative year as Miss America.
Madison shares the highest challenges and lessons learned during her reign and how she's using her platform to leave a lasting legacy. We'll dive into her mission to inspire others, her passion to put an end to pancreatic cancer, how she hopes to foster connection and make a meaningful impact.
It's an episode filled with reflection, empowerment, and actionable insights on how to lead with purpose and grace. You won't want to miss it.
Think of the people that are Olympians and the work that it took to get into something like that. The people that become the superstars, people that make the breakthroughs in research, none of that came from someone doing something easy.
You don't get greatness from taking the easy path. You get it from the challenge.
You get it from the days that you fail and you fall down and you suck at things and you take that and you take your weaknesses and turn it into strengths and you learn from it. You learn

from the people that are better than you. And I think that challenge and wanting to meet that

challenge is what makes people into success. That's what gives them that greatness because

of that willingness to fail and try and get up and try again until you get it right.

Thank you as always for spending your time with us here on Passion Struck. Remember the fee for the show is simple.
If you found value in today's episode, share it

with someone who could benefit. And as always, do your best to apply what you learn here so you can

live what you listen. Until next time, live life, Passion Struck.
Jack in the Box's new Banana French Toast Sticks

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