Steve Garraty: The Cancer Diagnosis That Changed Everything
I’ve spent most of my professional career with a microphone in my hand.
On TV as a broadcaster for the Kansas City Royals, my job is to shine the light on the players, coaches, and people behind the game. On my podcast Rounding the Bases and as a keynote speaker, I do the same for business leaders and change makers.
Trust, leadership, and connection are the themes I talk about most, and each of them comes back to a single word that’s easy to market but difficult to live: Authenticity.
Recently, that word took on a deeper meaning for me in a conversation with Steve Garraty, a Vice President of Sales at Salesforce and the author of Greatfruit: How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.
At 18 years old, Steve survived stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The tumor removed from his neck was the size of a grapefruit. Decades later, that same grapefruit became the centerpiece of a story about resilience and perspective.
It didn’t take long to realize it was also a masterclass in authenticity.
SINGLE: from private pages to public vulnerability
Authenticity rarely starts in front of an audience. It usually begins somewhere much quieter. For Steve, that place was a journal that was originally meant for his eyes only.
“My parents had me do a diary . . . as a form of therapy,” he shared of the genesis for Greatfruit. “They suggested [it] as a form of kind of dealing with it, and so that’s what I did. And that ended up being the skeleton or the bones of my story.”
At 18-years-old, Steve thought he was invincible. He was drinking, partying, and wrecking cars.
Almost overnight, he went from living hard to chemo, losing hair and losing friends (including a girlfriend), leaving him with what felt like little more than his thoughts and a blank page. It was then that this diary became private record of survival, and eventually, something else.
“When it was a journal, it was easy because I never expected anybody else would be reading it other than myself . . . eventually, I thought this is really a story about adversity,” Steve explained. “The older you get, I think the less you worry about what other people think and how they perceive you, so the book is very vulnerable.”
At the time he began writing, authenticity was safe because it was private. No one would see it, so no one could judge him for what he put on the page. But somewhere along the way he made the choice that every authentic leader and storyteller has to make: to show the unpolished version.
I relate to that more than I ever imagined I would. When I wrote my own books, friends and editors constantly pushed me to be more vulnerable. It was uncomfortable territory. Despite the fact I regularly stand in front of thousands of people in a ballpark, the spotlight is aimed at someone else. Turning the focus back on yourself is an entirely different type of exposure.
Authenticity often starts as the scribbles you think, maybe even hope, no one will ever see. The courage comes when you decide the unfiltered story might be exactly the one someone else needs to hear.
DOUBLE: The daily practice of being real
What struck me most about Steve’s story is how much his authenticity shows up in small, daily decisions, not just the cancer narrative.
He talked about the seven people who stood by him in his darkest days: his parents, his brother, his sister, two friends, and a nurse he didn’t know prior to his diagnosis. Their presence shaped the way he now sees, leads, and treats others.
“I do think it was kind of my North Star in the way that I lead at both business and home,” Steve said of the values his key supporters instilled in him. “You don’t always know what somebody’s going through . . empathy is something I try to lead with.”
Many of us nod our heads when we hear the word empathy. It gets real during the one-on-one meetings when someone’s job or sense of identity is on the line. Very few talk about how it actually plays out when we have to make tough calls. Steve does.
“If I inherit someone that’s not a good fit and eventually have to make the decision that they’re in the wrong role,” he shared. “I try to do it with a high level of empathy and think about what would I do or how would I want to be treated in their shoes”?
Then there’s gratitude, which to Steve is a visceral memory more than buzzword.
Remembering the day the oncologist told him he was in remission, Steve said without hesitation that it ranks above even getting married or having children. Anyone who has been through that kind of experience knows that it changes the way you see the world.
I see a version of this in baseball every year. It could be a player who thought his career was over getting called back up, or a pitcher rehabbing from Tommy John surgery feeling 100% for the first time in a long time. They come back different in a way that you can almost hear.
Authenticity is the imprint left by the people who carried you when you couldn’t carry yourself. And it shows up, more than anything, in how you treat people when no one is keeping score.
TRIPLE: from ‘why me’ to ‘why not me’
One of the biggest authenticity traps storytellers fall into is the temptation to rush to the happy ending. We love the clean arc: adversity hits, lesson is learned, person emerges stronger, credits roll. Steve’s story is more honest than that.
“I did not see much positive in my fight with cancer when I was going through hit,” he said plainly. In fact, his mental shift didn’t come until months later in a quiet, almost ordinary moment. “I watched the movie It’s a Wonderful Life for the first time and it changed my perspective.”
Steve talked about how quickly his life flipped. In a matter of months, he went from a year of hell defined by chemo, isolation, and despair to being in the stands at the University of Georgia, joining a fraternity, dating, and being a normal college kid.
“It was not one ‘aha’ moment,” Steve described of the shift in his perspective. “That movie got me thinking about how fortunate I was. Then as I hit milestones in my life, those moments really started to get framed up.”
Only then could he begin to say that cancer, something that nearly killed him, might have actually been one of the best things that ever happened. Not the experience, per se, but the because of the person it forced him to become.
As a broadcaster and a speaker, I love a good comeback story. The stories are always real, but if we skip too quickly past the years when nothing made sense…they run the risk of also being incomplete.
Authenticity doesn’t demand that you call your hardest chapter a blessing, only that you tell the truth about how long it took you to see the good in it…if you ever did at all.
HOME RUN: celabrating singles
On Rounding the bases, I love asking my guests about Small Ball, the little things that add up to big results. With Steve, that led us to a discussion about what authenticity looks like in daily practice.
“For me its growth. Every customer meeting, every coaching conversation I have, it’s what small, little learnings we can take from that,” Steve shared. Then he continued, “It’s recognizing small, incremental little steps, right? And then It’s also like, how do we learn . . . how can we get better?”
On the baseball side, I very rarely interview a player who hit a home run because they were trying to. Those big plays come after constant self-evaluation and doing the little things right. The home runs are simply the product of everything else.
If we only measure authenticity by the home runs, we miss the quiet, everyday swings that actually change who we are…and it’s what keeps me coming back to that grapefruit.
A tumor that size in an 18-year-old kid is the kind of thing that could have ended Steve’s story before it began. You may never find yourself in that scenario, but life guarantees we’ll all have our own hard chapters, marked by the adversity that caused them and the people that stood by us anyway. The question becomes whether you have the courage to tell the real version, and allow your scars to become someone else’s hope.
For me, that’s authenticity.
Listen to the full interview here or tune in to Rounding the Bases every Tuesday, available wherever you get your podcasts.
LEARN MORE ABOUT authenticity FROM JOEL
Book Joel Goldberg for your next corporate event. He draws on over 30 years of experience as a sports broadcaster. In addition, he brings unique perspectives and lessons learned from some of the world’s most successful organizations. Whatever your profession, Joel is the keynote speaker who can help your team achieve a championship state of mind.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Joel Goldberg 0:01
Hey everybody! Welcome into another episode of Rounding the Bases, presented by Community America Credit Union, invested in you. You know, I always start out my show with a shout out to my friends at Chief of Staff Kansas City, but today I'm going to do so with a little bit of a twist because same message. If you're looking for a job, if you're looking to hire someone, if you're looking for a great resource, whether you're in Kansas City or around the country, they're the best. They believe in strong culture. They believe in people. I partner with them on a lot of events, and I took advantage of that partnership today because the Wi-Fi in my house. I know we all deal with things like this from time to time. The Wi-Fi in my house is out, and I thought, okay, I've either got to reschedule this interview or let me check over to Chief of Staff Kansas City. They said yes, we got a conference room for you. So I'm not my normal studio, but I'm excited to be able to bring you another episode with a phenomenal guest today. I'm round to the bases. I'm joined by an inspiring man whose cancer diagnosis became his determination to live a more fruitful life. His name is Steve Garrity, a Salesforce vice president of sales and author of the book Great Fruit, that is equal parts memoir and motivation. After surviving stage three Hodgkin's lymphoma at just 18 years old, he turned a life-altering challenge into a lesson in resilience because sometimes the hardest chapter in your life is actually the one that changes the entire story. And I'm happy to be joined right now by Steve. And and really, I you know we could talk about Salesforce, we could talk about the career, we could talk about speaking, we could talk about leadership, and maybe we will. We definitely want to talk about the book because I think that any one of us, at some point in life, will go through something that is extremely difficult, and we may do it a lot. And it may not be a cancer diagnosis. It might be something with a family member. It might be whatever it is. And Steve lived that from a very early age, and now has modeled that his whole life. Steve, thanks so much for joining me on Monday Basis.
Steve Garraty 2:07
Yeah, thanks for having me on, Joel. Excited, excited about the conversation.
Joel Goldberg 2:12
I love the book title first and foremost, and so great that you're in Tampa too because you're in the grapefruit state. It is a grapefruit state, isn't it? Or no, maybe it's not the state, but I always think about the grapefruit league for baseball. So a lot of grapefruits down there, and and and you've got grapefruit, and I'm wondering about that title because it's it's creative, and I suspect turned what could have been, pardon the pun, a very sour moment and a very scary moment, and maybe a life-threatening moment for you into a very prosperous and and long life way since 18 years old. Tell me about the title, and then we'll get into the story.
Steve Garraty 2:50
Sure. So the title is well. First off, Joel, it took me about 37 years to to write this book. I say that half jokingly. It started as a diary, when I was 18, going through cancer, my parents had me had me do a diary to you know as a form of therapy. Over time, I think there's a story about the story and just how it took me that long and how it morphed the motivation behind why I wrote it. But it's funny, I got got the book finished and I was working on getting it out there, I know you're an author, so you probably went through this too. But one of the biggest things I struggled with was coming up with a title, and actually, a buddy of mine read it. He helped me. I was going to call it "Why Me? Because to your point, when you kick this off, we all go through you know bad chapters in life, right? It's not always in the form of cancer. Everybody's got a different story, but when that happens, I think a natural human reaction is to ask, "Why me? and play a little bit of that victim mentality. And I did that pretty much throughout my 1011, months that I went through chemotherapy, and so I thought about calling the the book "Why Not Me, and there's just there's a lot of similar titles out there. But a buddy of mine who is a creative marketing kind of guru, he read my book, and really the whole concept is how do we take adversity in our lives and use it to grow and develop and transform and live a better life. And so he kind of oh, and I guess the other part of that was when they took when they diagnosed me with cancer. It started with a lump in my throat, and when they removed a mass that they later determined to be cancer, it was the surgeon said it was the size of a grapefruit. So this buddy of mine came up with the play on words that you know it was the grapefruit that came out of my neck-sized tumor, and then it ended up being a blessing and kind of leading to a lot of change in my life that was needed and and led to me led to the way that I lead both in work at home as a father, as a husband, as a you know friend. So. That's that's where the title came from.
Joel Goldberg 5:02
It's incredibly deep, and I say that with with total sincerity. I don't know why that wouldn't be sincere. I just, but other than that, we we sometimes can overlabel some things as very deep or very whatever, and and it just so much meaning to that. And I think there's there's so much that you just said that I want to pick on because, or pick through, you know, your your parents had the the foresight to tell you to throw it in a diary, which I'm curious what your thought was at the time. I mean, nowadays we would hear people refer to it more as journaling, right? And you know, get your thoughts out there and how therapeutic that can be, as an 18-year-old kid about to deal with a challenge that you could have never expected you would have. Right? I mean, 18-year-olds are invincible. Come on! I mean, we don't really lose that invincibility until we're older, for the most part. And so you're now facing this this challenge, and your parents are telling you write it in a diary, which at least after the fact to me seems like such a brilliant idea. Oh, by the way, it helped with a book down the road as well. But what what did you think when you get your diagnosis? How did you push through it as a teenager, and what did you think about your parents saying, "Start a diary"
Steve Garraty 6:20
Yeah, it's a great question. I I love the word you used. We I think at 18 we do feel invincible and we feel like we're gonna live forever. When when I had this mass in my neck and they were scheduling the surgery, they told myself and my parents there was a 30% chance it would be cancer, and I can honestly say it that never scared me. It never worried me. Because again, to your point, at 18, you think you're going to live forever. And my parents, though, as you can imagine, and now that I'm a parent, I can't think of much worse than being told my child has a 30% chance that something's going to be cancer. But at 18, so prior to cancer, if I back up for a minute, Joel, I was I was drinking and partying and partaking in other substances at a rate that was not sustainable. I had wrecked my parents' car cars five times in high school under the influence of something, and so I was headed down this pretty pretty bad path, but I was hanging out with a lot of not great influences, and so a lot of my my so-called friends at the time were were not the best influence. But when I was diagnosed, and even at 18, I think even if I had good friends at the time, you kind of the saying that you find out who your true friends are when you're going through something like that is so true, and so I had a few friends that did stick by me and did help, and I write their heroes in my story. But my social life pretty-I couldn't drink anymore. I couldn't go to parties. My social life pretty much dried up. I had a girlfriend in high school. We lasted about a month or two into the chemo, and then we ended up breaking up, and it was just it was a year of hell. But I think the social part for me and how that quickly kind of dried up, and my friend group quickly shrunk. My parents just felt like, you know, from a that that writing would be a good form of therapy and helping me get that out because I was struggling not just with the chemo and the physical side of it, but I was struggling with the emotional and the mental part of it. It wore me down over the course of those 10 months going through chemo, and so there was a lot of different aspects in the struggle. And my parents felt like getting that. They never thought I would end up writing a book. I think that was the furthest thing from their mind. I was always good with numbers, not with not with English. I did well on the the math part of the SAT, not the English. But yeah, I think they they really suggested as a form of kind of dealing with it, and so that's that's what I did, and that ended up being the the skeleton or the bones of my story.
Joel Goldberg 9:03
I mean, first off, for most of us, writing a book is not easy. There are some people that have the gift that will crank out book after book, and I'm not talking about ChatGPT. I'm saying that they could just, you know, mind to pen and paper or keyboard, and they could do it. I'm not one of them, but I felt like with my podcast, with all my baseball experiences, that I've been collecting stories my whole life, and then all I had to do was be the storyteller that I've always been and put that on paper. And you know the hardest part was getting advice along the way of like you got to be a little more vulnerable on stage, in your books. You have to make it a little bit more about you, which was hard for me to do, even being in the spotlight that I am. That that spotlight usually is me sharing. Or shedding, showing the light on someone else. You had to turn that light on yourself, and I'm wondering how hard that was. Or was it the motivation just to know that you could inspire and help other people, a young Steve Garrity out there, or an adult Steve Garrity, whoever it might be? How hard was it for you to to be vulnerable?
Steve Garraty 10:25
So when it was a journal, it was easy because I never expected anybody else would would be reading it other than myself. And it was a journal for a long time. I think in my mid 20s, Joel, when I got out of college and I had kids, when I when I had young kids. I started thinking that story was something I wanted to leave to my children because there were a lot of valuable lessons in there that I thought hopefully they could learn without having to go through something traumatic like cancer, or when they did face some type of adversity like that, they would be better prepared. So, so phase two, I guess, of the story writing 37 year journey was I want to leave my story to my kids, and then eventually, as the book got more finished or more baked out, I thought this is really a story about overcoming adversity and how adversity can make us better versus just a cancer story. And so I thought other people might benefit from it, and at that point in my life, I guess at you know the older you get, I think the less you worry about what people think and how they perceive you, and so the book is very vulnerable. You hit on a couple, or you you hit on something there. I think you know the first chapter of my book starts with my worst moment of my life. There's a chapter in there about going to a sperm bank with my father because I was told the chemotherapy would prevent me from having children and tried to make that pretty humorous. But it's about the, the book's pretty vulnerable. My wife was reading it before I published it, and she kept saying, "Are you sure you ,you sure you want to put this out there? But yeah, I guess the older you get, the the less I worry about that. You know, I don't worry as much about what people think anymore.
Joel Goldberg 12:07
And easy for me to say, but I mean, I've got to think that you could push you and push that vulnerability when you've already overcome the the the hardest thing in your life or one of the hardest things in your life. I know that's easier said than done, but and and getting older does help too. That we we we start every day that goes by, Steve. I start to find myself saying I don't care about that anymore, which is very liberating thing. Although it makes me feel as though they might be listening to this, that I'm I'm turning more into my parents as they turned into their parents, and on and on and on. We we've reached that point in life, but the benefit is all those people that are going to be inspired by this. I want to go back something because you you talked a little bit about how it helped you in in work as a leader too. You referenced that briefly, and look, you you work your work with Salesforce, not just on stage, but working for Salesforce, how how did this life changing or life saving event model the way or affect the way that you lead from a work standpoint, and how you parent as well?
Steve Garraty 13:13
Yeah, I think there's not a day that goes by, and it's been 40 years now, right, since I was diagnosed. There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about it, but I do think it was kind of my north star in the way that that I lead at both business and and home. But to answer your question, I would say you know empathy, gratitude were a couple things, paying it forward. So there was a you know when I went through that, and you know, I think your listeners and you too, Joel. Like, if you think about the worst thing you've ever been through, there were probably people who helped you get through it. And for me, it was it was God. And then there were there were seven you know people that that were my parents, my brother, my sister, two friends that just went above and beyond, and then a nurse who I didn't know prior to to getting diagnosed, and she ended up just being an angel. And so I think the way that those seven folks stood by me and helped me get through that, all in different ways, you know, different relationships, obviously, family, friends, and then a stranger, really kind of created a lot of empathy for me, and in a number of ways. You know, I think one, a lot of times we, you get into an altercation with somebody on the highway, right? You don't know what they're going through or what they're facing. I think that was something that really stuck out with me. Is we're interacting with people on a daily basis, and you don't always know what somebody's going through, and just the empathy that those folks showed me in helping me get through, you know, kind of my darkest days, and so empathy is something I try to try to lead with, especially at work. You know, like as an example, I've been in leadership a long time. If I'm having, if if I hire somebody or I inherit some that's not a good fit, and eventually have to make the decision that they're in the wrong role. Right? I try to do that with a high level of empathy and think about what would I do or how would I want to be treated in their shoes? If it's one of my employees struggling with something, again, I try to really put myself in their shoes and think how would I want my manager to to respond to me and what would what would motivate me and help me long term as an employee if my manager did this? And so empathy is is one. Gratitude. The day I was told that I no longer had cancer like even having children and getting married that doesn't rank up there with the oncologist walking in, and surprisingly, we didn't know there was going to. You know, you kind of don't know when the end is when you're going through cancer. You just keep getting the treatment, and then you know, eventually one day they say, "Hey, we got it all. You're in remission. So that day was just gratitude, and I think that stuck with me, and then I would say a third one is I mentioned paying it forward, but a third kind of intangible was perspective, and that started with believe it or not, I I did not see much positive in in my fight with cancer when I was going through it. And about six seven months after I finished treatment, I watched the movie It's a Wonderful Life for the first time, and it changed my perspective. I started to begin to look back at cancer again. Keep in mind, I was 19 at the time, and so that movie had had the biggest impact on me that a movie ever has, and that it got me thinking about what are some of the positives that can come out of that, and I was taking a lot of things for granted. I was making a lot of unhealthy choices. I was not treating the people close to me in my life in in the correct way. And that movie really started to reframe how I looked back at my experience with cancer, and it it it put me down this path of thinking about how do I become a better husband? Eventually, how do I become a better parent? I got into leadership pretty early in my career, and I think that was because I wanted to help others. Started my career in sales, and I was always the one. Usually, salespeople are pretty independent and kind of want to do their own thing. I was always wanting to help the new person, or take them out in the field, or help them navigate a, you know, a tricky customer or a sales cycle, and so I I kind of felt like that tied back to my experience with cancer and and having a heightened appreciation for people that stuck by me and helped me. I wanted to do that for others.
Joel Goldberg 17:42
Well, I mean, as a leader, as someone that's been in sales for a long time, as a VP of sales at Salesforce too, and you know, sales can be such a cutthroat business. Usually, is right, but sometimes I think, and TV is the same way too. There's room to be cutthroat and still vulnerable. There's room to be cutthroat and still be willing to care about people and to make connections and and to actually make it authentic. At least I believe that. That I'll I'll believe that as long as I'm I'm around and and and it's lost you know by a lot of people. There's not time for that. You got to go, go, go, and I've got to guess that one the the adversity that you went through from a young age, but two maybe just who you are in general. I I want to hope gives you a competitive advantage because to me it sounds like that's so much of who you are.
Steve Garraty 18:41
Yeah, I'd I'd like to think so. Yeah, I'd like to think so. I think the most successful salespeople, though, that I've met in my journey in my career are the ones that really try to understand, again, using empathy, really trying to understand what problems the customer is trying to solve. What they're trying to achieve, what the business is trying to achieve, and then what's getting in the way. And then figuring out how does what you know wherever I've worked, how does our products and solutions help the customer get from where they are today to where they want to go and overcome those hurdles that are in the way. I think the best salespeople do that really well, and they do that by asking questions and and really putting yourself in the shoes of the customer. You know, movies, TV, all that. It's, it's you see the more the hard closing car salesperson, or or nothing against car sales, but you see the really aggressive type of salesperson that is is closing, right? As Alec Baldwin said, and Glen Garry, Glen Ross always be closing. I think the best salespeople do a much better job asking questions, listening, using empathy, and trying to help the customer.
Joel Goldberg 19:57
That leads to the close. At least I believe that it does, so you you could you could still stick to always be closing, but in theory, and there even are some good car salesmen out there too. I'm not trying to protect very much so, but yeah, very much. But I believe it's the best ones, at least the ones that I want to work with, that I want to buy from, do what you're talking about. So yeah, I think that's universal. It's often forgotten. There's so many life lessons here, business lessons here, that that are applicable. I'll ask you when we wrap things up more about being on stage and the speaking element because I want to be able to promote that as well. Certainly, as a fellow speaker, it's important to me. But let's let's hit the baseball-themed questions. So, what's the biggest home run professionally that you have hit in your career?
Steve Garraty 20:45
You know, I would say collectively, Joel is the, it's the people that I've hired and helped develop and coach and get to a level of achievement that either one they didn't even think was possible when they started working for me and and for the company I was with, and I would say too is is helping them get to to grow their career. And so I've had the the good fortune of working with a lot of folks that I was able to help get in the leadership roles, sometimes get promoted higher up than I am. That for me is the biggest home run. Is is and I'd say when they reach back out to me and ask for advice, which I I do get periodically, even though we don't work together anymore, we're at different companies. That's the most rewarding. But I'd say that's the biggest knowing the the impact I've been able to have on some folks over my career is is the biggest home run.
Joel Goldberg 21:38
I like that home run a lot because it's not one moment. It's it's a it's a work over time, and it just that that speaks to to your leadership and and the people that you've been able to impact. How about a swing and a miss along the way, and what did you learn from it?
Steve Garraty 21:55
You know, probably my first year in leadership, maybe my first two years, I felt like all I, all I did was swing and miss. But I'd say the biggest one was not realizing that in leadership, it's not about you; it's it's about them. And I think when I went from being a salesperson, an individual contributor, where I only had to worry about myself, and then going into leadership, I thought everybody would behave like me, act like me, want to be managed the way that I wanted to be managed, and it took me a while to figure out that. And I probably ran some good people off because it took me a while to figure out that you can't manage everybody the way you want to be managed, and you can't get, you can't break through to somebody and coach somebody the exact same way. You can't even give feedback exactly how you'd want feedback because everybody's different in that regard. So I'd say I swung and missed a lot on that until I kind of figured out, and I had a good coach who helped me help me figure that out. That hey, it's not about you, and you got to make it about them and figure out what makes them tick, what motivates them, how they want feedback. That that was probably a big swing and a miss for a while, till I figured it out.
Joel Goldberg 23:08
It's a common theme in in all of that there, with leadership, with sales, with relationships, on and on. Last of the baseball theme questions: small ball. What what are the little things that add up to big results for you.
Steve Garraty 23:22
Yeah, I I love that concept of yours, by the way.
Joel Goldberg 23:25
Thank you.
Speaker 1 23:26
I, I would say for me it's it's growth. So what I mean by that is every activity, every customer meeting, every coaching conversation I have, it's it's what small little learnings can we take from that, and so when I've got a new salesperson, it's it's one recognizing small little incremental steps, right? It's you know maybe they got to first base for the first time, as it really you know for us that's you know maybe they had a really good customer meeting or they got a next step from that call. So it's it's recognizing and then praising the employee for those small steps, but then it's also like how do we learn from how how can we get better? So getting out of a customer meeting and asking the salesperson, getting them to kind of self evaluate and figure out what what did I learn, what could I have done better, and then how can I improve on the on the next meeting and the next customer meeting we have? And so for me, it's really all around you know just just being a constant learner and trying to develop and grow from everything that we do, and I think that happens in small steps, not big home runs.
Joel Goldberg 24:38
That that is so good, and you know I constantly I think about this, and obviously there, you know I'll play with a a couple of words, play on words, small balls one of them, those baseball theme questions, and that that's it. I mean my my speaking is a lot of baseball stories. It's never meant to be a baseball speech, but I,you know, can...you find the deeper meaning. And, and to me, you talk about maybe that young salesperson or someone that's new. Celebrate the fact that they hit a single. Celebrate the fact that they got to first base. That it's not all about the home run. And I say this over and over again because to me it's powerful. That I have very very rarely in my career, interviewed a player that hit a big home run that said they were trying to hit the home run. It came as a product of everything else that they did. So I love celebrating the singles or in baseball. Sometimes small ball is making it out and sacrificing yourself for the good of everyone else. And there's nothing better to me than watching in the dugout everybody celebrating that moment that doesn't get the same type of credit or attention that a home run does. Those are those little moments every single day. I think that that that you're talking about.
Steve Garraty 25:49
Yeah, yeah, 100% I I think when we do strike out or we do have a miss, right in in business, I think our our biggest lessons come from our our failures and misses than they do from the ball that we hit, and so yeah, I'm a big believer on that. Trying to diagnose when we lose a sale or we lose an opportunity, what what can we learn from that? How do we, how do we adjust our swing on the next on the next at bat that we get with a customer?
Joel Goldberg 26:16
All right, I want to get to my four final questions as we round the bases, and always a favorite part of mine: talking to fellow speakers. Which I don't know what the percentage is of speakers that I have on the show. Maybe a quarter of of the people that I have. I'm almost making that number up out of nowhere. But you know, in this speaking world, we we meet a lot of fellow speakers, which is which is a lot of fun to be able to do, to learn, to be able to hear the story. So, tell me about getting on stage, and what you hear from people, what you're trying to do when you get up on stage, and inspire and motivate people.
Steve Garraty 26:50
Yeah, I'm probably early in my journey on that, Joel. My book was published last year, and that's kind of led to these speaking engagements that I'm starting to do, and and they're starting to get a little bit bigger, but my topic is typically on again adversity and how we can leverage adversity to to to grow and to develop and to be better, whether it's at home or at work, at church in the community. That's that's kind of the theme of of you know, and I use cancer as about kind of like you said. Your speech isn't about baseball. Mine's not about cancer, but you know, cancer is kind of kind of used my my experience with that on how do we how do we grow and develop from that. That's that's kind of what I think my theme is and what I typically talk about.
Joel Goldberg 27:38
Well, let me shift to my second question, which is related then, as we round the bases, and and that's going to be about that diagnosis. And I read, and I've seen it in multiple spots. I think that that you said that it's the best thing that ever happened to you. I hear that from a lot of people that go through something difficult. So I, that makes sense to me. It's it's a very common thing when you survive something that it shapes you. So less maybe about that, more about when. When did that happen for you? Was there an aha moment where you said, you know what, I'm grateful for this. I'm glad that it happened, or was it a series over time? Was there a moment you got there, and and and how did you get there?
Steve Garraty 28:19
Yeah, it was a, it was over time. It was not one aha moment, but if there was, I guess, a big moment, or what started it was, you know, again, it sounds cliche or corny, but it was watching for the first time in my life. It was ironically, I watched It's a Wonderful Life that Christmas after I finished diagnosis. I think that got me thinking about it, and then as I hit milestones in my life, you know, I got married probably a couple years after that. I had children, two children in my 20s. Those moments, I think, I also I went from a year of chemo and losing my hair, losing most of my friends, losing my girlfriend. It was a horrific year, and three, four months after I finished treatment, I was in Athens, Georgia, going to the University of Georgia. I was going to football games. I was going to tailgates. I was ,you know, dating. I was, joined a fraternity. I had 120 fraternity brothers. All of a sudden, it was like going from one extreme to the other. And when I saw that movie, and I started thinking about how fortunate I was to be where I where I was, six months, you know, nine months after I finished treatment, that's when I started going down that path. And then I think hitting some of those life milestones in my 20s really kept re-emphasizing. And then once I got into leadership, I kind of looked at helping others, and tying it back to my experience with people that helped me. But yeah, I would say a lot of that happened in my, you know, from 20 to 30 years old is is when that really started to get framed up.
Joel Goldberg 29:55
Yeah, part of the journey, and and and now so much part of who you are. All right, the third question I'll ask as we roundthe bases, I'll I'll go back to the inspiration that you received from It's a Wonderful Life because that's a that's a movie that came out in the '40s. You were not born in the '40s, neither was was I. I think you might have me by a couple of years, but you know we're both in our '50s, and and so you know time passes, and then there are certain timeless classics. Have you been able to share that with your kids? Now you have, I believe, a grandchild as well. But have you been able to pass that on to your kids? And if so, how did that affect them?
Steve Garraty 30:34
Yeah, the movie specifically, Joel?
Joel Goldberg 30:36
Yeah, the movie. Yeah, the movie.
Steve Garraty 30:38
Yeah. So my birthday is four days before Christmas, and so that movie's always you know on around Christmas time, and my kids joked that every year growing up I would make them, you know, it was my birthday wish, right? Was we're gonna watch because I think they got so tired of it that they they would say no every other day but on my birthday it was kind of like okay it's Dad's birthday we got to do what he wants to do and so yeah, we always watched that movie. They did. They knew a little bit about my story. They didn't know my full story till till my book came out, and they read it. And I think there was a lot of things in there that surprised them. But yeah, that that movie. I think they understand why I like it now after reading my book and and kind of the the lessons that I got out of it, I I elaborate on that one of the chapters in my book.
Joel Goldberg 31:24
Well, I mean, cool that that they're starting to see that now too, and and that that movie and your story now now carries on with them at a time where it sounds like they're they're ready to to have that, and that's you know that's the growth we want from all of our kids, of course. All right. the The final question, the walk off. It's interesting that you just said that that your your kids are learning a lot just in in reading the book. Your wife was saying, "Sure, you want to do that or not? Which is which is great. By the way, almost everything I write, I send to my wife first. Is this okay? Is this okay? And because she knows me, you know, better than anyone. But what have you heard from people? I always love to hear about the feedback from someone that is writing or speaking on something that can change people's lives, and I'm I'm sure that you have heard from a lot of people that have been vulnerable or been moved by your story, which I can only imagine does a lot for you on the inside as well. What have you heard in general from people?
Steve Garraty 32:24
It's, man, it's, it's been, that's been the best part. You know, I'm not on the New York Times bestseller list. Oprah's not interviewing me, so there hasn't been. You know, I've sold a good many books. There hasn't been you know newfound fame from it. The the rewarding piece though is is what you just said. It's people reaching out in in ways that I didn't anticipate. I give you an example like one person from my church. I didn't really, I'd met her. I didn't really know her well. And then a lady from my high school who haven't seen in 40 years. Both of them lost spouses and their husbands in the last few years, and both of them read my book and reached out just unsolicited, and in tears, talking about kind of what they took out of my book, and it helped them a little bit with perspective and what they were dealing with. And so there's been a lot of stories, I guess, to your point of people reaching out, talking about what they took from the book and how it helped them. Whether it was a, I've heard divorce. I've heard you know grief, losing somebody, losing a child, which I can't even imagine. So I've had folks reach out and bring up something traumatic. In some cases, much worse than my cancer experience that they've been through, and how the book helped them with perspective and maybe reframing how they think about it, and that that's been unbelievable. Like I don't think I could have envisioned one that happening to the degree it's happening, and and two how how good it feels that you're helping somebody in that regard, and so yeah, that that part's been awesome.
Joel Goldberg 34:03
It's the best part. It's it's it's why you write that book. Look, there there may be some people that that are recognized by Oprah and on the New York Times bestseller list. I'm not one of those either. So to me, it's like this podcast. It's like the books. You do it hoping that that it inspires people, that it can make a difference in people, and and hey, if you, you know, if somebody wants to compensate you for it along the way, that's a little bit of a bonus. But but the the greater to me the the greater reward is is everything that you're talking about. Steve is a passionate supporter of the National Pediatric Cancer Foundation, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Metro mini series, among many others, understandably. But this book, and you're speaking, I think, will and already has, will impact lives. And and so interesting. It's such a fun journey too. And you could find out. Wait a minute. It wasn't just a cancer survivor or someone going through cancer. It is someone going through a divorce. It is someone going through adversity. So this. This really applies to everyone. If you want to learn more about Steve, and we'll have it in the show notes as well. If you're looking to bring him in for inspiration as a speaker, if you want to buy the book, which of course you can get on Amazon and those places too, but the one-stop shop is his website, stevegarraty.com. G-A-R-R-A-T-Y. SteveGarraty.com. Steve, it's such a pleasure to meet you, to be able to share a piece of your story, and hope that and know that people will be inspired by hearing about it. And I would encourage everyone to go out there and buy Greatfruit: How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Fife. Steve, thanks so much for spending time on Rounding the Bases today.
Steve Garraty 35:39
Yeah, thanks, Joel. I really enjoyed it.