Taking Charge
What does it mean to start taking charge? In this episode of Incorporating Superpowers, host Justin Recla welcomes guest Norman Bacal to the show. Norman is a “rewired” attorney who became an author, motivational speaker, and more. This interview explores his journey of creating his own law firm, and how he pivoted when it all went away. Tune in today to learn all about taking charge!
Justin Recla:
Welcome back to another episode of Incorporating Superpowers. Like so many times before today, you’re going to be in for a treat, because today my guest is going to talk about well, we’re going to talk about we’re gonna explore what is take charge of your life of your business of your future and what it means to, to look at how you live your life and recognize that it’s okay to fail. It’s what you do with the lessons that you learn from the failure that drives you and creates the future for you moving forward. My guest today is normally called easy an author, a motivational speaker, he’s an I would dare to say, former lawyer, rewired, lawyer rewired. There you go a rewired lawyer. Norman, welcome to the show today.
Norman Bacal:
Thanks so much, Justin. It’s an honor to be here.
Justin Recla:
You know, some of my best friends are lawyers. And I think we get along because of the logic and critical thinking piece that requires to be, you know, required to become a lawyer. And we just, you know, lawyers to see the world differently. And I love the fact that you use rewired lawyer because you’ve got quite the experience. And folks, it’s if you haven’t seen Norman’s TED Talks, you’re going to want to go watch them. It’s absolutely brilliant normally. First and foremost, thank you for being here today. Talk to me about well, who’s normally called Why do you do what you do?
Norman Bacal:
Ah, well, you know what, when I started out as a lawyer, when I left law school, I knew I wanted to be a tax lawyer. But I actually didn’t even know what tax lawyers did. And when I started my career, at least for the first three or four years, what came back to me was, you seem to have a lot of potential, but there’s something missing. And I couldn’t figure out what it was. And it actually took my wife to point it out that I was missing. I guess she called it initiative. But it was like she, she set off a light bulb. But imagine sitting through a review, you think you’re doing okay, and your boss says the norm. There’s something wrong with you. But I can’t tell you what it is like. So I went home angry, and I came back the next work even angrier at myself, for having let that I was kind of letting my career happen to me. And going nowhere. And from that moment onward, I made a change in the way I saw everything. And I realized I missed the message. The first message I wanted to give everybody that, that if you want to succeed, you can’t sit back and wait for it to happen you gotta take charge and make things happen. take initiative. And when I started to do that, suddenly I started to think see things that I couldn’t see before. So fast forward 25 years, and I became a partner in my law firm. I ended up moving, I took a bold step. 10 days after my fourth child was born. And my wife is the saint in this story. We moved, we moved cities, I opened a new office started from scratch. And it took on the beginning of something I didn’t even know once again I didn’t even know if I knew how to do it. Like how do you build a business from scratch? I didn’t know how to do that. And over time, sort of I pick myself up by failure. I picked myself up fell I learned how to build a business I took my tax practice and turned myself into a Canadian and ultimately an international film finance expert. I worked with Canadian producers, I ended up working with American major American film studios. I sat on the board of Lionsgate for 10 years, in fact, I was sitting in the boardroom the day they decided to produce the Hunger Games. Oh, wow. Like like how cool was and these are things I never could have predicted. And for 25 years, I built that operation, I ended up coming to lead the overall national and international operation. And, you know, my I’m, I consider myself privileged, I wouldn’t call it luck. But I had the advantage of getting advice from some people along the way, including my wife, which was really helpful and, and helped help me with my career. And I swore that one day I was going to give back and I made it my mission, particularly once I began to run the operation, but I made it my mission to pass along as many lessons as I could and pay it forward. And now that I’ve retired from practice, and we can get to that story later, but now that I’ve retired, I really consider it as much as A duty or a mission to really help other people and help pass along the lessons that I had to figure out.
Justin Recla:
Oh, man, I absolutely love that, you know, my part of my personal belief is that I agree with you, it’s part of our business, our responsibility to pass that along, right? Not just for our children, but for those who are seeking help those that are like, how do I do this? What’s it look like? Hey, tell me it’s not scary, right? And if they can learn from how we did it, then yeah, absolutely. Why don’t we share? That’s I mean, that’s like you and I were talking about before the show started that’s why superpower network and superpower experts exist to bring everybody together in the same conversation, because that was part of our marching orders, is to get everybody into the same conversation.
Norman Bacal:
Exactly. Exactly.
Justin Recla:
And, I loved the fact that you, refer to it as superpowers because in the end, each of us has our own particular superpower or talent or, or God-given gift, and we just have to find it. And once we find it, then we have to figure out how to use it. Norman, you get me you really, really get me. Love you man. I love you. This is I knew we were gonna have fun in this. Normally this is what I want to I’m gonna go to break real quick because this is there’s so much more on the back of that I wanted to explore with you. Because it’s important that before we do go on break, where can people go find more information about you?
Norman Bacal:
All right, the hardest thing. The greatest challenge in terms of finding is spelling my name, right. So if you can get that get me it’s Norman Bacal. One word NormanBacal.com. really as simple as that. And you can find out everything you need to know about me. You can find all my books out there. The links to Amazon and the links to my public speaking so feel free once again, NormanBacal.com Simple as that.
Justin Recla:
Fantastic folks. Go take a look at New Orleans TED talks. Go check out his books. Go see what he’s doing in the world because it matters. Want to get all the different perspectives that you can Norman’s putting out a lot of good in the world and you’re gonna want to partake in it. Stay with this. We’ll be right back.
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