Connect with Michael Moore and Bob Wierema

The Climb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-climb-podcast/
Bob Wierema: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-wierema/
Michael Moore: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelpmoore/

Connect with Brian Ferguson

Brian Ferguson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-ferguson-arena-labs/

Arena Labs Website

Brian Ferguson: You're at a level one trauma center in Washington, DC. We're in there on a Saturday night at one o'clock in the morning. This is typically when, because of people being out of bars et cetera, you get a lot of trauma. And one time there were two people in there screaming and another person moaning. Just hearing that as I was standing there, I thought ‘it's insane what this does to the human emotion and cortisol levels.’ 

And what's crazy is if you were to observe that and you think about this whole body of knowledge that's come out of the military in the last 15, 20 years about post-traumatic stress and about the implications of people who are in very high stressed emotional environments, either combat or otherwise, we've put a massive amount of resources into helping those people. And yet we ask these trauma nurses and ICU nurses and physicians to go home and have dinner with their families. And no one thinks twice about it because they're not deployed. 

So, we think about this as the environment is different. You might not be deploying overseas to Afghanistan or Iraq, but you are doing consequential, heavily emotional work that has a chronic element of stress. And when you look at the implications of chronic stress on human beings, that leads to higher levels of cortisol over time, not being able to focus, not being able to sleep. There's a second and third order, long-term impact that has. 

Michael Moore: Today on The Climb we are joined by Brian Ferguson, founder and CEO of Arena Labs.

I'm excited about this one. I don't know Brian as well as some of our other guests, but we were introduced towards the end of last year, both being Gen Next members and got a chance to get on the phone with them for about an hour. And I don't know, 30 seconds in, I thought, dang, dang, dang. We got to get this guy on the podcast. What an interesting background. 

He'll talk more about Arena Labs, but I think it's an interesting time to have him on because of the passion of what Arena Labs does, and the work that it's doing for our frontline [00:02:00] workers right now, which is so important.

Brian, welcome to The Climb. We're excited to have you. 

Brian Ferguson: Thanks fellas. I appreciate it. 

Bob Wierema: I can't believe he agreed to come on after talking with you for the only 30 minutes. I mean, that was some, you must have a lot of faith, right?

Brian Ferguson: Yeah. We actually need it. Well, I certainly do, but we should also give a shout out to our friend Janeel Alonzo and Michael Davidson. Michael's one of your previous guests and is one of my dear friends and been a huge part of my life. And then Janeel who works with Michael is who I think set this up. So super grateful to her.

Michael Moore: Yeah, Bob as they say down in Texas, ‘even the sun shines on a dog's ass every once in a while’, I was on that day. My bullshit was flowing, and we had a great conversation.

Brian Ferguson: Michael sound cooler in a Texas accent, by the way. If I said it, it wouldn't sound as cool. 

Michael Moore: We try. So, Brian, before we jump in, I got a little taste of this, but just give us the background. I mean, who is Brian? What shaped you? How have you gotten to where you are today?

Brian Ferguson: This is a random way to answer that question. But I have over the course of probably the last 20 years tried to refine an annual process where I just review the last year, think about the year ahead. And then I come back to what I call my life plan, which is really just my best efforts to aggregate everything I've learned in my life in the past and where I want to go in the future. The front of that document – I don't let myself go beyond one page – but the title of that first page is ‘who am I?’ And it's my best effort to get outside of a resume or  the way that we often introduce ourselves in these kinds of conversations to remind myself of who I am, but it’s interesting, I'm coming to you guys from Cleveland, Ohio. before we started recording, we were talking a bit about that, but I grew up in the Midwest, which I think at this chapter of life, because I'm [00:04:00] back here, I spent the last 20 years away from the Midwest living in Cleveland, Ohio where I think a lot of the things I value in life come out of having been raised in this blue collar community outside of Cleveland, Ohio. And I was super fortunate. I had this amazing upbringing and community;  my family and I grew up with the town that I grew up in.

When we moved there, there was just starting to be this push into the suburbs of Cleveland where we were, but I had this idyllic youth. Our house was right on woods and my brother and I grew up in the woods outside all the time. And then, my mom was a nurse, my dad worked in the energy business, and I just had this amazing youth in the sense of the neighbors, the community, my friends, and I was a product of a public school system. That was extraordinary. 

I think my mom being a nurse, I never appreciated how much that ideal of service was seeded in me from a young age and my brother and I both were always drawn to service in ways that just were natural to me. But now in retrospect, I think are more prominent.

And then, beyond growing up in that town, I went to college in Ohio and then I'm pretty fortunate to bounce around. I lived in Washington DC for a while. And the first part of my life was in public service, mainly in national security. So, defense and intelligence diplomacy – that realm.

And that was right after 9/11. So, I was an intern actually. I had a really crazy sequence of events. I ended up as an intern in the white house right after 9/11. And that was an insane way to see the world through the lens of ‘how do we think about the future of America after a consequential event like that?’

And I stayed in that realm for quite a bit, lived in London for grad school. And then later in life, I went into the military and spent seven years in the military. And that was all part of what I consider that chapter in the national security public service arena, and in the course of that I just increasingly had this desire to build something.

 [00:06:00] When I do any type of psychometric or character test, I tend to register high on creativity, autonomy, and I was really ready to leave the public service life and go build. And that led me to my current chapter, which is Arena Labs. But I think in all of that, the really important elements in my life, like any of us, the things that matter: I've got a daughter who's two years old now, so I'm experiencing life through her eyes, which is beyond rich, and Lindsey, my wife – we’ve actually known each other since sixth ...