Season 2 – Episode 8. Released on March 31.
In Every Adversity Lies a Seed of Greatness (with Calvin LeHew)
INTRO:
Today I am at “The Factory at Franklin” with Calvin LeHew a fascinating entrepreneur and co-author of “Flying High”. His unwavering belief that, as he says, you become what you think about has motivated his physical, mental and spiritual success and made him an important figure in revitalization of historic Franklin, Tennessee.
BUMPER
I am Tajci.
At 19 I was a superstar and I was lost inside. I left it all behind, switched continents and started all over. Years later I found myself lost again. This time in the American dream.
This is a story about awakening. About living the life you were created for. About going inward and discovering the joyous and purposeful person you and I are both meant to be.
This is “Waking Up In America.”
TAJCI
Calvin LeHew! What an honor to have you on my show thank you!
CALVIN
Thank you for asking me to be here.
TAJCI
So you know what I first want to share with you is that joy, I’m sure you know this, that joy when you’re when you become aware of just how crazy connected we all are and how each of us has this, like significant and amazing part in this bigger picture that we’re all a part of. And the reason I’m saying that is because just the connections of how I got connected to you and learn about your story and how it has affected me and how having Stowe on the show and now having you has affect on the viewers. It’s just wonderful!
CALVIN
Thank you
TAJCI
Such a gift. So 2010, I think was when I first came to Franklin.
And I was working with Bryan Lennox, a producer and he brought me to The Factory for lunch and he told me how you had rebuilt, repurposed this old building were in right now. My husband Matthew has always been really interested in repurposing old buildings rather than…
Me, being from Europe you know we don’t just knock off the old buildings we breathe new life into them and Brian then mentioned something to me and I felt if that it wasn’t just the building that you built. You brought this spirit to the area.
CALVIN
One success led to another. I started off with small successes…
When I was a teenager my parents died and then I had drugstores, my fraternity brother and I started a drug store in Tallahassee, Florida which led to a chain in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. And we had problems but we set our mind to do something and that was the key: Setting your mind to do something.
See it mentally, visualize it and so… one success with problems and all… oh, with every adversity there lies within it a seed greatness..
It’s one of my favorite sayings that I read in Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Clement Stone…
The Interstate Highway System came along. I was a page in United States Senate 1956-57 when the Eisenhower introduced this bill for interstate. It was one of the greatest things that ever happened to our country but it started killing little downtowns like Franklin in all over the United States. The Kmart, Wal-mart, Sears and Dillard’s went out to the interstate intersection which is great. I was president of the Chamber of Commerce here in our little town and I had been over in Europe in the Tennessee Air National Guard. I fell in love with those little cobblestone streets, the baker living above the bakery shop, the sidewalk cafes..
TAJCI
Where the life is.
CALVIN
Yes, I said: guys, this is what we need to do… we can’t compete with Kmart, Wal-mart, Sears and so forth and I couldn’t sell it to them.
TAJCI
You couldn’t sell it?
CALVIN
I could not sell it. So I went up on Columbia Avenue across from the Carter House and I built a little what Southern Living did a big story on it, they called it “European Village With the Southern Flair” and there was 26 shops and restaurants and it was the baker living above the bakery shop, and the sidewalk cafe. It became the seventh largest tourist attraction in Tennessee.
TAJCI
We traveled for thirteen years all over America and I was so excited to see America and mostly what I saw was the Kmarts and Walmarts and interstates. And I just can’t thank you enough.
CALVIN
That was any town USA
TAJCI
Yes and my poor kids, after seven years they would be saying we we’ve been here before! No we haven’t, but it looks just the same. So yes and when I first came to Franklin… oh I was, well that’s why we moved here…
So you lose your parents when you were a teenager.
CALVIN
Yes both died of cancer
TAJCI
Within very short period of time…
CALVIN
Within six months of each other.
TAJCI
At that time you were at the military school?
CALVIN
No, I was at, I thought I might be going to West Point. I was at Swanee Military Academy for a year to get some military training and so forth and that’s when they both died but I never did go to West Point.
Mrs. Albert Gore, Al Gore’s mother was a friend of the family so she invited me to come to Washington and there I was a page in the United States Senate. First time in my life I’d ever worn a coat and tie, first time I’d never been in an air conditioned building.
You talk about an awakening!
TAJCI
Because you were from
CALVIN
Out in Hilsboro, Leiper’s Point. I was born above our country store there. Mrs. Gore… I was there off and on for six years and she said you’re not staying here unless you stay in school. So, because she knew my parents wanted me to be the first LeHew to go to college
TAJCI
They wanted you to be the first LeHew.
CALVIN
And I hated every day of school…
TAJCI
Why did you hate it?
CALVIN
I was very right brain, creative, looking out the window when the teacher was speaking and
TAJCI
You didn’t want to be put in the box.
CALVIN
No, I was never in a box. I was always outside the box…
All my life I’ve pushed the edge of the envelope. And I don’t know if we’ll get into it or not, but I lived through five major plane crashes because I build and fly experimental aircraft as the hobby.
TAJCI
You fly as a hobby.
CALVIN
And I like getting up there and looking down at the whole picture. I was raised in the Methodist Church there at Hillsborough Leiper’s Fork. And I had a lot of Jesus teachings and it was in my subconscious that “As a man think so is he.”
As we think we’ve become. And that resonated with me and I started believing. I heard too: these things you can do and even greater.
Well that was a great auto-suggestion for me so that had a big part of my life and I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me that was embedded in my subconscious. And then when I went to Washington, Norman Vincent Peale, I met him personally and read his book “The Power of Positive Thinking.”
It was all about the positive teachings of Jesus not all this hell, fire and damnation and you’re going to hell if you don’t do this and so forth, so that helped me so much and I would take the train up to New York and go to the Marble Collegiate Church where he preached and I got to be personal friends with him later.
And as a matter fact as an inside note, I started speaking about positive thinking and some of success principles and so forth and every time I would speak, I got little butterflies before you’d stand up there and get on the podium you know and I said, Dr. Peale, as many times as you speak all over the world to big audiences, do you still get butterflies? He said yes Calvin, but the key is to get them to fly in formation!
TAJCI
Beautiful!
CALVIN
Being a pilot I love that!
So my life just was transformed from being a little country boy from Leiper’s Fork, going into Washington, I got to meet 5 presidents, three of them on a personal daily basis before they became president: Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, when I was a page in the senate then and it was like, it was just unbelievable what I went through there and I did go on and graduate, to fulfill my parents’ desire for me even though I didn’t want to.
And then it was, what’s next for me?
TAJCI
By the way, your story is so beautifully written in the “Flying High” book that you’ve co-written with Stowe Dailey. Beautiful! And at one point you, going through the power of positive thinking and with connecting with your faith that’s what I really love.
And, you say, one of the first things… ’cause I got a lot of viewers that watch the show and say: “well, how do I do this?”
How do I live the life I am created for? What are the steps? Tell me how to do it? And you share a few secrets. You say that number one thing is just to write it down.
CALVIN
Yes.
TAJCI
So at that one point, you wrote down a goal to be a millionaire at the age of 35. So, how did that work out?
CALVIN
And I hit it at 33.
TAJCI
Oh, bummer!
CALVIN
And I was not any happier. I had a leaky roof, I had stopped up commodes, I had wealth, but I wasn’t any happier… that old song… who wrote it? Is This All There Is?
And then… but it was the mental, it was this stuff works! I wanted to do fire walking. Tony Robbins and the mind… is the mind that powerful that you can overcome and not burn your feet? So I went out to California and studied religions and all this stuff and it’s so… I’m more impressed with that
then in accomplishing things like this.
There is a such a thing as Law of Attraction, that you hear about so much. But I would emphasize go in silence and be alone.
I go to the woods. I go out to the timberland which I own thousands of acres and… with my dog… and, I’m alone there in nature and it’s like, get away from TV, the cell phone, all these mechanical devices and so forth and get as close to nature.
Get into the silence and ask: “What is my mission? What am I to do next? Where am to go?” And answers do come.
That impulse happens and that’s the most rewarding thing now to do something like this and not have to advertise for 72 tenants came here in these 14 buildings here. This is one of 14 buildings and there are larger buildings over here with the tenants and it had to be artistic, creative, unique, musical, food.
I didn’t want that Kmart, Wal-mart, Sears, Dillard’s and and all doctors, lawyers and all… I wanted the right brain: creative, music, artist… and those are the worst tenants you can have because they have a right brain and no left brain. They don’t know how to fill out a check book sometime and pay the rent. But I knew that but it started making millions after a while. Got a lot of problems but with every adversity there lies within it a seed of greatness.
TAJCI
Absolutely!
CALVIN
When you have a heart attack and fall down don’t get down in doom and gloom. Look, it may transform your life!
I think every adversity that I’ve ever had and seen other people had, it was actually a good thing because it stops you and made you think and go a different route
TAJCI
Yes. I think of it as that whisper deep within where I think where God can really speak to us. And where all the noises around are silenced so we’re not, we don’t set our goals or our dreams influenced by what others’ want us, what they have to sell us, or want us to desire.
And that’s why that place of silence is so important and when we connect into it willingly and open our souls then we can awaken and serve, and like you said serve. See? Franklin thriving…
CALVIN
When you said serve, that brings up one thing I’ve learned in life. It’s a universal law: you gotta give in order to receive and that’s in material things like if you wanted to be a millionaire you got to have a product or service out there that can bring back compensation. Another thing too that I want to emphasize, that the ego… my success brought me more success and I was on the front page of the paper and all…
At one time I was on 14 board of directorships: civic, social, banks and so forth. I wasn’t any happier. But my ego is something that when you start accomplishing, and you’re a millionaire and all the stuff… you ego gets up there and it is not a good thing to have. One thing I’ve also learned in all of this: there’s the physical, the mental and the spiritual.
I was so much into the physical and then later in the mental, and the ego and all these things but now I seek the spiritual. It is the invisible… it is more important then the physical things.
TAJCI
Yes.
CALVIN
Our minds send out vibrations. I’m on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Noetic Science, which Dr. Edgar Mitchell founded. When he was walking on the moon, he had this what we’d call a
religious experience. When he got back in the capsule to come back to Earth, that he was one with everything, the molecules of his body and Earth, and all. And he resigned from NASA and formed the Institute of Noetic Science. And I joined that when I was living out in California to study all of this mental stuff, and fire walking and all and it helped change my life. So there was one Board, I told my wife when we lived out in California, I’m going to resign from all those Boards.
And I did. I’m not joining any more. But the whole time I was out there I told her, there was one board I really would like to be on. And I just put it in my back consciousness and I still was a member of their organization, but not on board and about three months ago after being released of all this and all, I get this call from Institute of Noetic Science, the president: “would you like being on our Board of Directors?”
Oh yes! And it was a wish come true!
TAJCI
Yes!
CALVIN
And we’re studying the mind and how powerful it is. The Science part of the mind and its religion and science are coming together.
TAJCI
Oh, that was my question like it doesn’t mean that if I… because I do talk about it with a lot of people… does it mean that if I start discovering or learning, or studying the power of positive thinking that I have to, that I’m gonna lose my religion that I’m gonna have to leave my church, my faith community?
CALVIN
So what? I had left my church. I didn’t leave my teachings of Jesus.
TAJCI
Right!
CALVIN
Jesus Christ to me is still the greatest teacher I’ve ever had. These things you can do…
As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. We become what we think about be it negative or positive.
Our thoughts send out vibrations and can affect flowers anything… animals! Animals pick up on our thought I found out.
It’s just unbelievable, we’re doing research in California now about this along with some other institutions about how powerful the mind is. What you think about you bring about.
It’s called the Law of Attraction. I started… yes, I had unbelievable problems here the asbestos here, the clean up, the environmental alone was one million dollars to clean up this I had no idea what I was getting into. I didn’t pay about a million dollars for this forty-six acres and 17 buildings 350,000 square feet… but if I had seen the negatives… and in the college they taught me four things in real estate: when you see a building or real estate: do a feasibility study, market analysis, traffic counts and so forth… none that fit in with this. Four banks turned me down, said: no way are we gonna loan you money something like that.
Well, I got it anyway because of my positive thinking. I know we can do it, not just personality ego, Calvin. No.
TAJCI
But it also sounds to me that’s kind of power of prayer.
CALVIN
Yes, it is prayer.
TAJCI
When you just knowing that God will come through I’ve seen people heal from physical illnesses because of that kind of
CALVIN
Absolutely!
TAJCI
You set your mind I’m not gonna doubt. I know God will deliver.
It’s you know, we’re all different and we’re all on different journeys and I know for some people it’s very difficult to make these leaps, especially if we have if we have our lives so deeply rooted in a tradition.
CALVIN
Yes.
TAJCI
For me it’s like marriage: you go through tough times, you ask questions, you renew the communication and you stay within your union. You don’t have to run away. I ran away from my fame, my success, my career because I didn’t know what to do with it and I came to America to find this freedom like we were talking about to just be completely free and open to what I believe God has in store for me and what I was created to be.
CALVIN
I now realize that my uncle Earl in Lebanon, Tennessee had about 20 acres, a cow some pigs and chickens. I looked… I didn’t look down on him but I thought I wanna be something more than uncle Earl. But you know what now?
I have a farm out here. I love getting on the tractor with my dog, and doing farm work like uncle Earl.
We don’t have to be millionaires or top of the charts and so forth as you found out. That’s not where it’s at. It’s, yes, being ourselves, feeling comfortable inside, not holding grudges against other people having love, forgiveness. I can’t say any more than that.
TAJCI
Yeah that’s beautiful. Thank you so much because with that we can serve. We can make our world a better place.
CALVIN
Yes!
TAJCI
Thank you so much! What else to say? See you again on “Waking Up In America”.
STOWE (singing):
I was not born brave, I walked in
I walked in shaky shoes, So afraid of falling, failing
Scared to speak my truth
But life took a two by four
And knocked me from the nest
I closed my eyes and feared the worst
And never would have guessed
I’d be flying high no no nothing gonna get me down
I’m flying high…
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