Making Your Law Firm a Happy Place With Former Disney VP Brad Rex

Imagine this: it’s 9/11, you’re the leader of a Disney theme park with ten thousand guests inside. The news of the terrorist attacks broke, and you’re scared your park could be a target. There’s also the concern that if guests get wind of the report, there could be a stampede at the park’s exit.

To make things worse, it’s your second day on the job, and the park has never been closed with guests inside. Which protocol do you follow? How will your team respond to such an unprecedented event?

That Tuesday morning Brad Rex saw the Disney Way spring to action. Without being told, EPCOT cast members lined the promenade and smiled and waved goodbye as people were leaving. While many of these cast members were from New York, Pennsylvania, and D.C., they stayed in their positions and took care of the guests first. The cast members knew that moment was going to be a last memory for the guests before going into a very challenging situation.

As an attorney, how do you ensure that no matter the situation– from the incredible to the mundane–your employees deliver an exceptional client experience every time?

Brad Rex says it starts with your firm’s culture. Disney delivers a exceptional guest experience by recruiting, hiring, and training great people. They put tremendous effort into training cast members and instilling the culture of Disney in each of them, from the custodial team to the C-Suite.

It also starts at the top with great leadership. You need leaders who get the vision, focus on customer service, remove barriers to creating excellent client service, and empower your employees to make decisions about client interactions.

Want to know more about creating an impeccable client service experience?

Listen to this episode of The Judd Shaw Way featuring Brad Rex, President, and CEO of eHome Counseling Group. Together they explore the Disney way of creating great client experiences, the role of core values, hiring right, becoming a better leader, and more.

In this episode:

[00:37] Judd Shaw introduces his guest Brad Rex
[02:07] It’s 9/11: one day after Brad started as VP of Disney’s EPCOT Theme Park. Second day on the job, ten thousand people in the park, a potential stampede scare, what does he do?
[05:09] The Disney recipe for excellent client service
[08:52] Core values as the foundation for great client experiences
[10:11] What Brad had to learn to get into operations at Disney
[15:48] From operations at Disney to death care, Brad’s experience improvements journey
[17:13] Multisensory experience, what it is, and how to create it.
[20:02] Brad’s foray into reinventing the behavioral care industry
[22:54] Qualities of a great leader and pride-derailers to avoid
[28:46] Assuming a new leadership role and learning from failure
[35:11] The servant leadership approach and why it works
[36:17] What’s next for Brad?

Transcript

Welcome to the show. I’m your host, Judd Shaw. Today I’m joined by special guest, Brad Rex. Brad is a graduate of both the US Naval Academy and the Harvard Business School, both with distinctions. He has had a long executive corporate career. He was picked up by Walt Disney Company, where he was started in financial and strategic planning for parks and resorts. He was later tapped to lead the EPCOT Theme Park. Following that, he was chief customer officer for Hilton Grand Vacations. He became CEO of a funeral company, following now as president and CEO of eHome Counseling Group, which is a online mental health counseling company. He is also the author of The Surpassing! Life: 52 Practical Ways to Achieve Personal Excellence. Brad, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Judd. It’s wonderful to be with you here today.

Brad, in August of 2001, you were with Walt Disney Company and they name you now leader of EPCOT Theme Park. I looked in research and I saw that over nine million people had visited EPCOT that year. You started on September 10th, and now found yourself the second day on the job and it’s 9/11. What was that like?

Well, it was obviously a very challenging time. I had never run a Disney theme park before. I was actually at a media training program. We were getting ready for a big press event, and the consultant that was doing it was from the Washington, D.C. area. She got a call in her cell phone. She said, “Is there a TV anywhere here?” We turned on the TV and we watched as the Twin Towers were attacked. Other executives in the room said, “You know what? We better go activate our emergency command centers and get prepared here,” because we frankly didn’t know if we were a terrorist target.

We did that, went back, and the challenge was we had only closed the parks one time before in history, and that was in preparation for a hurricane actually in the prior year, but actually the parks never opened. We had never closed the parks with guests inside, and we had about 10,000 guests in the park at that time. We were very concerned that if we talked about a terrorist incident or whatever, people might stampede toward the exits. What we decided to do was to use the best thing that Disney has, and that’s its cast members.

We asked the cast members to pass the word amongst the guests, “EPCOT is closing early today due to a national incident. Please proceed to the exits and return to your resorts and you’ll get more information.” It was a very orderly exit. The one thing I’ll never forget, Judd, is that without being told, our cast members went out and they lined the promenade, and as people were leaving, they smiled and waved goodbye. Because they knew that was going to be a last memory of those folks before they were going to go back into a very challenging situation for our world.

We just had amazing cast members, and you have to realize many of the cast members were from the New York, Pennsylvania areas and D.C. areas that had been attacked. The first inclination would’ve been to run backstage and call home, but they stayed in their positions and they took care of the guests first.

My podcast always focuses on client service, something about client service, building a world-class customer service organization. For all those listening, Disney calls their employees cast members. What you’re really talking about is having all of your employees get into a client-focused mode and give this guests an experience that didn’t traumatize them and allowed for this orderly exit. How do you implement that so quickly and so well with your frontline team? How do you do that?

Well, it’s something that you have to create in your culture. A couple things that Disney does, the first is, in their hiring, they select great people and that’s … You’re only as good as the people that you hire in your organization. They put a lot of effort into recruiting, hiring, and then training their people. Everybody goes through a program that’s required to really learn about the culture and what Disney’s all about and this whole focus on guest service. That’s the first thing.

The second is the leadership, and you’ve got to have great leaders who get the vision, who are focused on customer service, who remove barriers to creating great guest service, and allow the cast members to make a lot of the decisions about that interaction with the guest. If you’re required to force people to go up the chain of command to make a decision, then you essentially are not going to have great service. You’ve got to train your frontline people to make those decisions, which is what we saw at EPCOT that day.

Without being told, they knew intuitively what they should do, and that’s very challenging. It takes a long time to do. I would say again, training is incredibly important. Especially these days, many people don’t know how to interact well with other people, and so you have to do things like role playing and really finding the best people. But there was interesting study done and it looked at interactions between a person who had a grocery store counter and the guest there, the customer. The bigger the smile of the person behind the counter, the more the customer had a good experience.

At the end of the study, they said, “Well, how do you get people who smile more?” They said, “You hire happy people.” Actually, part of your interview with Disney is to see, are you a positive, outgoing, happy person? Same thing with Southwest Airlines. It’s funny to me when I go to a business and you serve the lawyers and the receptionist is the most dour unhappy person possible, and I’m thinking, “Why in the wouldn’t I have a very positive, happy person as that initial welcome into your office?” Because that can set the tone for the rest of the interactions throughout the day.

We gave our front desk the title ambassador of first impressions.

Absolutely. That’s exactly right. Actually though, if you think about it, and again, this is a Disney thing, every person in your organization is a salesperson for your organization, and they represent your organization. We tell people when you put on that Disney name tag, you’re not just representing yourself, you are representing all of Disney, and that’s a big responsibility.

We use our core values to help us serve as a beacon for how we want our cast members at my company to go about their day, right? In their daily task responsibilities and contact with clients, and it sounds like Disney has done just that in terms of their vision. When these cast members have to jump into action, it’s almost built into their DNA. They know inherently what Disney would want them to do as people are leaving to give them a positive experience.

Well, we talk about the four priorities, safety, courtesy, show and efficiency. That is your order of priorities when you’re making a decision. The number one thing is always safety, and then the next is courtesy. Let me give you an example of that. If you were to see someone at Disney, let’s say, climbing up on top of a wall, a guest was climbing up on top of the wall, you would first courteously say, “Sir, please, don’t climb up on that wall.”

If they were to continue, you would get much stronger, and you’d say, “Sir, get off the wall now,” because now it’s a safety issue, right? When people know these are the priorities, then, for example, safety, courtesy, show efficiency, Disney always wants to go along with the show. But if, for example, it’s a major lightning storm, out of safety, they’re going to cancel it. When you give people very clear priorities that way, they then know what decision to make in a particular circumstance.

You moved from financial strategy with Disney over to operations, which I think from what I understand was actually unusual at the time. To get into operations, what kind of training did you need?

Well, my mentor and boss at the time was Lee Cockerell. Lee was the executive vice president for operations for all of Walt Disney World. Understand what a huge job that is. Four theme parks, I think at the time they had 20,000 hotel rooms, two water parks, what is now Disney Springs, and he was over all of it. When I went to Lee and said I was interested in getting into operations, he said, “That’s fine, Brad, but I want you to learn what operations are like here at Disney, and I’d like you to do a program where you actually train in frontline roles across Walt Disney World.”

My first job in operations was in a staff role, but in addition to doing that job, I spent about a day a week in costume in 50 different roles and locations across Walt Disney World, over 400 hours of in-costume training. I made beds at the Grand Floridian. I hauled trash at the Magic Kingdom. I rode the Tower of Terror in the middle of the night for maintenance, and Lee said, “I don’t want you to just go and observe. I want you to do these jobs, so you understand what it’s like to make beds for eight hours a day, or what it’s like to work in the quick service restaurant kitchen.”

There was nothing that could have prepared me better for taking over at EPCOT because I really had an understanding of the jobs, and I had also made relationships with a lot of the frontline cast members, who now knew me, trusted me, because they would say, “You’re a vice president. What in the world are you doing out here hauling trash with me.” But when I would do that, they would get to know me and then they became my listening post through the organization, and so they would come to me and tell me things like, “Hey, Brad. This program’s not really going very well,” or, “Hey, you’ve got a problem in this location. You ought to look into it,” and I often knew about things long before my other executives that worked for me.

Now I know why I heard a rumor that you were the original Undercover Boss.

There you go. Absolutely. Absolutely.

It sounds like it’s one of those sayings, you can’t tell somebody else to do something and unless you really know how to do it, right? If I’m going to tell somebody even down to how to sweep a floor, the best way to do it is I got to learn how to sweep the floor myself. I’ll learn the efficiency, I get a good whatever on it, and I build a relationship.

Well, it sends a great message in your organization. I wasn’t really allowed to have favorites at EPCOT, but I did have a favorite team, and that was the custodial team. They were so incredible, and I would put on a custodial costume and I would go out and pan and broom in the park. The amazing thing when I did that was that I became invisible. I could be out there and no one would know or even guess, “Hey, here’s the vice president out in the park in a custodial costume.” I could watch how the managers interacted with our cast members.

I could see and talk to the guests and get their first hand opinions. It also though sent a message because the word would get out and the cast members would say, “Did you see? Brad’s out here panning and brooming in the park?” It would say, “Look, every single job here is critically important.” I used to meet with the custodial team and in pre-shift meetings, and of course there’d be a buzz, “Oh, vice president’s here. Vice president’s here,” and I would say, “You know what? If I disappeared for a month, the park would keep running. There wouldn’t be much that was missed. Everything would be fine.” If you disappeared for a day, what would this place be like? Filthy restrooms, kitchens, trash all over. Who’s more important, you or me?

Well, I know that Walt himself would be proud because if I know the history, somewhat, not as much as you of Disney, I know that a big thing when he was sitting on that bench with his children at that merry-go-round, as his story goes, it was very important for him to develop a theme park that was clean.

Absolutely. That’s another thing that you learn on day one as the Disney cast members. Everybody picks up trash. It would really annoy my kids when I’d walk through the park and I’d go and bend over, pick up a napkin, throw it away, and they’re like, “Dad.” Then it would really annoy them when I would go into a mall and do that. Okay. They’d be like, “Dad, we’re not at Disney. You don’t have to do that here in the mall.” But on the other hand, you just think about if everybody did that, how much nicer things would be? Yeah, everyone is trained to keep the parks clean and do everything they can because it just makes a whole lot better place to work.

Lot of talk about trash, but I have to tell you, I heard actually one time that they said if you want to find leaders in your own organization, look for the ones that walk by and pick up a piece of trash and throw something out.

Absolutely. That’s a good indication.

I got to ask, we’re talking about Disney and you go from Disney to death care. How did that happen?

Well, very interesting story. I got a call. I had Disney, gone to Hilton, then had my own company for a period. That’s actually when I wrote my book, The Surpassing! Life. Then I got a call from a recruiter, and she said, “Brad, I’ve got this private equity backed company. They have a roll up consolidation play. They’re looking for a CEO. Are you interested?” I said, “Well, is it theme park, resorts?” She goes, “No, it’s funeral homes and cemeteries,” and I was like, “Ah, that wasn’t quite on my radar screen.”

But what really intrigued me was she said, “This is an industry that hasn’t changed in 50 years, and the private equity company realizes that a funeral is an experience. They want someone who knows how to do experiences, and they specifically targeted the hospitality industry and they said, ‘Oh, and by the way, if we could get a Disney person, that would be even better.'” The opportunity to really revolutionize or innovate in an industry is what attracted me, and that’s actually what we did. We brought a lot of Disney basically to the funeral industry.

Judd Shaw:

You leave the happiest place on earth to go to a cemetery. Tell me about when you talk experience, I did read that there’s a multisensory experience. What is that?

The company that I led was Foundation Partners Group, and we created something called the ShareLife multisensory experience. You ask the question, why would someone have their service in a funeral home? One of the biggest competitors to funeral homes these days are hotels and restaurants that do celebrations of life. If you think about a hotel, it’s well set up for that sort of thing. Why have it in a funeral home? Well, what we did was to create this ShareLife multisensory experience, where we would have, on one of the walls of the funeral home, a large screen.

We’d have high-definition projectors, high-quality sound, and even a scent generator. Those of you who’ve been on the Soarin’ attraction at EPCOT, it’s a large screen, automatic screen, and they have scent generators. When you’re going over different areas, you may have the scent of oranges or incent or whatever it is. With that ShareLife experience, you could do your service anywhere. You could do it at the beach, at the golf course, at the Eiffel Tower, because we would use the projectors and the sound and the scent-

Wow.

… to recreate those areas. One of the things I was most proud of, Judd, when we did that was our veterans backdrop. You may be familiar with the missing man formation, where the planes come in and then one plane veers off.

Sure.

We would project that on the back screen as we played taps for veterans, and it was just absolutely incredible.

Powerful.

But it really released the creativity too of our directors and the families that we served. For example, one woman was known in her community for inviting people once a year to her lake house and they would have a big barbecue, and this would be opening the entire community of … It would really be honoring first responders in the community. At her service, we actually had taken pictures of the backdrop from her lake house, the view from her lake house, and then we pumped in a smoke scent to remind people of the barbecue that was served.

It was just incredible what we could do and…completely different experience for people. The other interesting thing we did was to bring technology in and webcast services, and realize this was long before COVID. Actually, when COVID hit, Foundation Partners Group was in a very unique position to serve people because they were able to do things more remotely than anybody else out there.

Tell me about eHome.

About six years ago, a good friend of mine came to me and said, “How would you like to reinvent the behavioral care industry?” He had picked up an article about veteran suicides, and he said, “If we could take the counseling to the veteran and do it virtually, so do it just like we’re doing by video, face-to-face video, then we remove the whole confidentiality or stigma issues because the person can do it completely privately. They don’t have to travel to a counselor’s office, sit in a counselor’s waiting room. We have much more accessibility.”

You realize that a lot of people live in areas that don’t have any counselors and they’re not going to drive two to three hours to a counseling session so we can help prevent these suicides and help veterans to get better. That got me interested and I’m in, and he said, “I need you to build out the whole company, the infrastructure.” We formed eHome counseling and spent the last six years providing virtual only mental health counsel services.

Now, it’s interesting, when COVID hit, a lot of counseling services were forced to go online at bricks and mortar facilities, but we had already created all that. Then we used metrics in our care. It was interesting because when I entered the industry, and again, I hadn’t had any background in behavior health, I was just shocked to find out how few providers, counselors use any kind of metrics. How do you know if what you’re doing works if you don’t have some kind of measurement of it?

From day one, we do a comprehensive assessment for everyone who comes into our program on multiple conditions, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and then we actually reassess you as you go through so we can track your improvement and you can track your improvement, and you see that you’re getting better. Because another big question people ask is, “Well, how do I know when I’m done?” Because of this assessment process, we can tell you, “You’re back to a normal level. You’re discharged. You’re done.”

The other thing we did was to have a fabulous client care team that talks individually with each of our clients to find out what they’re looking for in their counselor and then match them up with a counselor that meets their needs and their schedule because that’s another huge issue out there. People say, “How do I find a counselor?” We do that for you. Once again, trying to remove the barriers to care. Mental health is a huge issue right now because of COVID, and it was bad prior to COVID, but now COVID has made it dramatically worse, and so we’re just trying to help as many people as we can to get great mental health care.

That’s great work. In all these years, you’ve had a lot of bosses. What characterize as a great leader?

I think there’s a couple of things. One is humility. You really find the great leaders out there are humble men and women who admit what they don’t know, who want to learn from others, they are not the kind of lorded over people or being autocratic or my way or the highway. They really are great listeners. I’d say humility is very important. Integrity. We talk about that a lot, but if you have leaders who lack integrity, people don’t know where they stand.

You can see if you look at companies like Enron, leaders without integrity can not only take down themselves, they take down their employees, they take down their companies, they can take down their entire communities. Integrity is also critically important. Third element is is the person out there doing this to serve? All right? There are people who do it to make money, who do it for their own power and glory. But the great leaders out there really want to serve the people who work for them and help them to achieve their highest potential.

There’s a great phrase. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, and great leaders care about their people and therefore create trust. Because if you know that your leader’s looking out for you, you’re going to trust that leader and you’re going to follow that leader. I think that’s critically important. I talk about the four C’s, competence, commitment, character and compassion. That’s what the great leaders all have. Some leaders out there, they’re competent and that’s fine, but if they don’t have character, if they aren’t committed, if they don’t have compassion, they’re not going to be a great leader and they’re probably not somebody you want to follow.

We’ll get to your book in a minute, but I did read it. That humility point, is that related to when you talk about pride derailers?

Absolutely. There’s a chapter in my book called Humble Success, and the ways that pride can derail your career and your life. Oftentimes, that comes from where, again, you’re not accepting of others, you’re not listening to others, you are thinking you know it all. A good leader will be the first to admit that they don’t know at all or even any of it, and they’ll ask questions. One of the things I learned when I was first starting my career, I was afraid to ask questions. Because I thought, “Well, if I ask a question, people are going to assume I don’t know things.”

But the reality is people know you don’t know it, and they’re just waiting for you to admit it and ask the question. I really switched into much more of a mode of help me understand why do we do it this way, show me how to run this point of sale system. Okay? Then you really change the dynamic because now that person is leading and teaching you, and they appreciate that and say, “This is somebody who’s willing to learn and wants to do better.” Yes, absolutely. If you-

But hold on, Brad. I got to challenge you here for a minute, because-

Of course.

… I want to find out how that doesn’t happen in your life and other great leaders. You graduate with distinction at the US Naval Academy, you become an officer on a nuclear ballistic submarine, you go to Harvard Business School, you’re tapped to lead one of the greatest resorts, if not the greatest resort in the world. How does pride not creep into your life?

Well, I believe, for example, higher education should show you how little you know, not how much you know. I don’t know about other people, but when I went to the academy, I thought, “Oh, I’m this hotshot high school graduate, BMOC, big man on campus,” whatever, and when I got to the academy, I found out, my number one, there were a lot of people that were smarter than I was. But number two, all these different areas, aeronautical engineering, mechanical engineering, economics, physics, math, and you find out how little you really know.

Then the same thing I went to business school. I met with these incredible classmates, incredible professors and who would know things in depth about marketing or finance or operations because they had spent most of their lives in those areas. That I think really keeps you humble. Then every experience I got into … I’ve had 20 different jobs in 12 different industries in 35 years. You find out how stupid you are every time you change jobs because you have to learn that job and learn that industry.

Now, I will say one benefit of having that many industries and everything is you see patterns and you are able to go into a new situation and know what to focus on. But still, anybody who thinks they know it all is clueless and really doesn’t know anything at all.

I also found a common … I’m hearing a common theme that every time you join a new company or went into a new industry, you continue to say today, “I didn’t know anything about it. It was totally new.” I went from the happiest place on earth to funerals. I went from funerals to counseling live people, right? Where’s the first place to start?

When you take over a new job?

Sure.

I would say you first you have to learn as much as you can from as many people as you can. Leaders are readers, so you should constantly be reading. When you enter into a new industry, obviously be reading about that, but also talking to industry experts. Talk to people who have been in the industry for a long time. Now, I think one benefit that I had was I would go into these situations with fresh eyes, and I was always willing to ask, and again, not in an offensive way, but help me understand why we do it this way.

In many cases, you would find out people couldn’t tell you why they did it that way. It’s just that’s the way we’ve always done it, and you say, “Well, you ever thought about doing it this way?” As I said earlier, using metrics and assessments. Well, we just never did that way. When you come in with fresh eyes, you can ask questions, and in some cases, they’re perfectly reasonable explanations. But in others, you find out that it’s just the way it’s always been done and that’s where the opportunity lies to change things.

You want to try to be in the head of what’s going on, but also you’ve got to be careful not to be too early in what you do. I had a company that I was the CEO of that I started that failed because it was too early in the cycle. It was genetically guided nutritional supplements, but this was back, whatever, 15, 20 years ago, and that whole idea was just too early. If I had started that company today, it probably would’ve been successful. You also have to … That’s humbling in and of itself when you have a company that failed. All these experiences though add up and give you, I think, hopefully a great perspective on life.

How much did you learn from that failure?

Well, again, it was very humbling. It was you can find out that maybe it’s a great idea, but it’s all about the timing on the idea, and it’s also about the partners that you’re with. But you learn and you make mistakes, and the whole thing is then you don’t make those same mistakes again and you go into it the next venture hopefully more knowledgeable, and that one ends up being successful.

Judd Shaw:

Let’s talk about your book. You’re the author of The Surpassing! Life: 52 Practical Ways to Achieve Personal Excellent. I have to tell you, I read the book available on Amazon in I think paperback and in Kindle version. Easy concepts, quick chapters. I enjoyed it. I think that we could all love to have more money, health, strong relationships, success in our personal lives and our professional lives. There’s really these topics that can take us from a good life to an amazing one. How did you come to write this book?

Well, I really wrote it to share with my kids the mistakes that I had made in life so that hopefully they wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Then got to the point, well, maybe this would help other people. I was a speaker prior to writing the book, and what I found is people would come up to me after my talks and say, “Where can I get your book?” I’m like, “Well, I don’t have a book,” and they’d say, “Well, you got to have a book. Then actually, Lee was a great, as I mentioned earlier, mentor. He’s a fabulous speaker and author, and I can’t count how many books he’s written and how many languages that they’ve been translated into.

But he said, “Yeah, if you want to be a speaker, you need to write a book.” That was really the genesis of it. I appreciate what you said, Judd, about easy, simple chapters. It’s 52, two to three page chapters. You can read one a week, one a day, but it’s meant to share some ideas and give you practical advice. I really think young people ought to read it because I find today a lot of young people, there are many things that they don’t know how to do. For example, you talked about financial. How should I invest my money? How do I budget? How do I do these sorts of things?

It was interesting. I had a young couple and I talked to them and they’d read my book a couple years ago, and they said, “We really wished we had followed your advice on investing, because we …” They weren’t specific about it, but they said, “We lost a lot of money in a bad investment.” They said, “If we had only just done what you said, we would be a lot better off today.” The whole idea is how can I help people and maybe get them to think about things a little bit differently and give them what some might say common sense, but unfortunately, as they say, common sense is not all that common these days? Hopefully, it can help people.

I love the purpose of that book, and I didn’t know that. As I’m reading it, the real feeling that overcame me as I’m reading this book is I have to read this to my kids. I really felt that way. Was like, “I’ve already made some of these mistakes. Let me try to correct them.” Some of them are … I could’ve used this back then, but this is a book I need to read to my kids. I didn’t even know that’s why you read it, and that’s exactly what comes through when you read it.

Oh, well. Thank you. Thank you for that. I think that the best thing for any type of author or speaker is where somebody comes up to them later and says, “Hey, this really had an impact, and the things that I did because of reading your book, for better life, for me and my family,” and, I mean, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Right. At the end of each chapter, you have action plans and payoffs. A lot of these are from very basic, just getting better sleep, going to the doctor, becoming more productive, living healthy. But I also found an undertone in many of these, which is servant leadership. When it comes back to being a leader, can you tell me more about that?

Yes. Once again, I think servant leadership, I think it’s the only type of effective leadership at the end of the day. It’s not just in the work environment. It’s in your family environment, for example. Do you know serve the other members of your family? If you’re a husband, do you serve your wife, or do you expect her to serve you with your children? Do you teach them to serve other kids that they interact with?

It’s a much broader spectrum than just say in the work environment. There are many books I’ve seen in the business environment about servant leadership. But if you think about if all of us were primarily trying to help others to achieve more, to reach their potential, how much better of a world would we live in if it’s all about serving others rather than being self-serving and just taking care of yourself?

Brad, you have accomplished so much in your life. What’s next for you?

It’s interesting, I’ve talked to people who say, “Oh five-year plan for my life,” and things like that, but I haven’t ever been able to really do that because if you look at it, these different opportunities have come up and I’m a person of faith. I think God has a plan for my life. An interesting story, when I was in the Navy, I trained in Orlando at the Naval Training Center. That’s where the nuclear power program was. That’s all gone now. It’s something called Baldwin Park.

But I was there in ’81 and early 1982 with my wife, and I remember in May of ’82 as we were leaving, I said, “You know what? Sometime we’ve got to go back and visit that new theme park that Disney’s opening at the end of the year,” and that was EPCOT. Who could have ever dreamed that I would come back and actually lead EPCOT? That’s where life can take you. But what really drives me at this stage in my life is what can I do to help people? That’s what really got me into counseling, running a nationwide counseling company, because there’s so much need out there.

When you help someone who has a mental health condition, you’re not just helping them, you’re having a legacy impact on their entire family because you think about their kids and everything else. If you can help them, then those kids are going to grow up completely differently, and we see that time and time again. That’s what makes it worthwhile. That’s why I get up every day. I just encourage everyone to try to find something that will help other people in what they do.

Speaking about helping, who are the clients of eHome Counseling? How would somebody get in touch with eHome?

We, again, are nationwide. We’re in network with all the major insurance companies. That’s a big deal for a lot of people. They want to use their insurance. We also are a major partner with Wounded Warrior Project. We treated thousands of veterans through the Wounded Warrior Project. If you’re a post 9/11 veteran, you can get free mental health care from Wounded Warrior Project. It’s an amazing organization. I really encourage veterans to contact Wounded Warrior.

But yeah, anyone can contact us, ehomecounseling.com. It’s our website. You can reach us by phone, by email, by contact form, and we just want to help people. Judd, I know many lawyers listen to this. We are a member benefit of The Florida Bar Association, as well as some others. The Philadelphia Bar and Wyoming Bar and a few others. We actually have a page on our website dedicated to lawyers. If you’re in the legal profession, you and your families, we’d love to take care of you.

Lawyers, just like anybody else, mental health is certainly a topic.

Lawyers actually have twice the incidents of mental health issues compared to the general population. But they also are much more hesitant to get care, and that’s why the confidentiality of eHome is very important. You don’t have to be seen going into a counselor’s office.

Wow. Brad, thank you so much for coming to the show. I really appreciate it. Everybody out there, The Surpassing! Life: 52 Practical Ways to Achieve Personal Excellence, and I’m telling you, read them, your life just goes up when you close a chapter. I felt like my life just got better.

Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure being with you here today.

Brad, thanks so much. Bye now.

🎙️ Meet Your Host 🎙️

Name: Judd B. Shaw

What he does: Judd founded Judd Shaw Injury Law (JSIL) and serves as the firm’s Brand Chief. He founded the firm on the premise that clients come first. Over the years, the success he attained for his clients helped JSIL grow significantly. Judd’s clients are not just another number to him or his law firm.

Company: Judd Shaw Injury Law

Words of wisdom: “At Judd Shaw Injury Law, it’s all about high-quality representation and excellence in client service. Our clients are counting on us to win and the stakes are high. Our endless pursuit for awesomeness through our core values, the ability to WOW our clients, is in our DNA.”

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🎙️ Featured Guest 🎙️

Name: Brad Rex

Short Bio: Brad is the President and CEO of eHome Counseling Group, an online mental health counseling company. He’s had a long executive corporate career, including serving as the Vice President EPCOT at Walt Disney World, where he led all aspects of a complex $600,000,000 theme park. Brad is a graduate of both the US Naval Academy and the Harvard Business School, with distinctions. He is also the author of The Surpassing! Life: 52 Practical Ways to Achieve Personal Excellence.

Company: eHome Counseling Group

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