Surviving Solitary: Insights from Captivity with Sam Goodwin

In this special episode of The Way Forward podcast, we delve into Sam's remarkable life story, from Division One hockey player to traveling through North Korea, being wrongfully imprisoned in Syria, and co-founding a tech company in Singapore. Discover how his harrowing experience of surviving captivity shaped his approach to leadership and life in the business world.

On a quest to visit every country in the world, Sam’s life took an unexpected turn when he found himself wrongfully imprisoned in Syria, accused of espionage and collaboration with terrorists. For 63 days, he endured the harsh realities of captivity, facing uncertainty, isolation, and unimaginable challenges. He shares with us three profound lessons that he learned while in solitary confinement that he continues as guiding principles for his day-to-day. Sam offers us invaluable insights on gratitude, resilience, and post-traumatic growth.

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Transcript

 Hi, I'm Leon Goren, president of PEO Leadership, a peer to peer leadership advisory firm. We're an amazing community of CEOs, presidents, and senior executives. Ask yourself, are you learning as fast as the world is changing? It's time for Ontario business leaders to band together for counsel and support.

It's time for you to tap into the business wisdom of our peer groups and unlock new ways to grow. I want you to come out a better leader and your organization ready for what's next. Take the first step at peo leadership. com. Special thanks to Aird & Berlis for helping us bring you today's PEO Leadership's Way Forward podcast.

Hi, I'm Leon Goren, President and CEO of PEO Leadership, and welcome to the PEO Leadership's Way Forward podcast. We've got a special session today as I'm honored to be able to welcome Sam Goodwin. Sam is an American entrepreneur, author, and public speaker. He played Division One college hockey, co founded a tech company, an NGO in Singapore, and has traveled to every country in the world.

In his journey to travel to all 193 recognized countries in the world, a feat only 100 people in the world could claim at the time, country 181 proved to be an issue. Upon entering Syria, Sam was wrongfully imprisoned on false charges of espionage. This took place in 2019. Sam shares his experience through speaking engagements worldwide, including audiences of elite athletes, faith groups, corporate conventions, U.S. military, and others. Sam earned a bachelor's from Niagara University and a master's from Washington University in St. Louis. He's currently pursuing a doctorate at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D. C. Sam, thank you for taking the time to speak with me and our leadership community again, and You know, it's only been a few weeks since we were graced with your presence here in Toronto.

Thanks, Leon. It's great to be talking again and really enjoyed my time with with PEO a couple weeks ago. So, it's great to be great to be back, so to speak. So, I'm going to ask you the more difficult questions because we had you personally. I don't like asking difficult questions in person. So, now that I have you here, it's all good, right?

You're hiding behind the screen. Okay. All right. Absolutely. Well, you were a hockey player, weren't you? Like those guys are pretty strong. That's the, that's the stereotype. Yeah. All right. So let's start at the beginning. And I was thinking about, okay, what was it like to be Sam Goodwin growing up in the Goodwin household in terms of sports and academics and family life in the early day?

I'm so originally from and grew up in St. Louis in the kind of heart of the Midwest in the United States. And I'm the oldest of five. So I have two younger brothers. Two younger sisters, the three boys, the three of us, we, we all played hockey. So that became, that became a big part of our a big part of our lives.

And we would often find ourselves on the road traveling to Chicago and Detroit and, and, and playing in hockey tournaments. Yeah. Could come, come from a, a relatively large Catholic family. And, and that was kind of the, and those were some of the, the, the key kind of pillars of my upbringing, I would say.

I'm already feeling bad for your mom and dad, like five kids. You all played hockey? So actually the girls did play for briefly and then they decided to to pursue other interests, but their There at one point or another we all played and actually my brother still plays professionally. So certainly, you know, hockey was a big part of our part of our lives.

I have three kids and I can only imagine going from one arena to the next arena because everybody's on different schedules. I don't think you probably, you probably didn't play on the same teams, different schedules. However, I guess I will take this chance to say there was one season. In high school, I was a senior.

My brother Paul was a junior and my brother David was a freshman and we all played on the same team and actually getting to what you just mentioned. My my mother, my parents just loved that because they could go to college. So one game or one practice and drop off three boys and everyone was in the same place.

So logistically it became convenient. And where's your brother playing now? You said he's playing professionally. Yeah. So he played at Penn state in college and now he plays he plays overseas in Europe. So he spent. Spent two years in Finland, spent a year in Sweden, and I mean, he's now in the UK playing for the Belfast Giants.

Oh wow, that's awesome. So you go from high caliber hockey player, sounds like your brother even kept it going there, graduate from college, And then I read in the bio, okay, I mean, no little fee, co founded a tech company an NGO in Singapore, but nobody really talks about it. So I was like, and we didn't talk about it when I had you in person.

What was that? What type of tech company did you have? Co founded? After Niagara I actually had, I had. A pretty bad concussion injuries. I'm in college and kind of throughout my career, but, but specifically in college and wasn't able to continue playing and that was, that was of course frustrating because it is something that I had been focused on my whole life, but it also opened up other opportunities.

And I had the opportunity to help start a tech company that was, that was based in Singapore. And at the time it, it seemed like. Kind of a crazy thing to pursue, but I decided to, to give it a shot. And I actually only plan to do kind of a short stint in Singapore, kind of an internship for just a couple of months, but I ended up staying for six years and helped get this company started when we develop an online game for kids.

So kind of a, it was an MMOG, a massively multiplayer online game and similar to. Like a Minecraft or a club penguin. And I did a business development and, and primarily investor relations for, for the business. And it was just a really fantastic way to begin my professional career. I'm having that type of kind of insight into the inner workings of a, of a small business that grew from just a handful of us, just two or three of us to 30 plus staff across four countries.

So some really incredible experience that I'm grateful for to have had early on. And that was where a lot of this kind of desire for a deeper understanding of the world and different cultures started as well from being, and living and working in Southeast Asia. Is that company still around, Sam?

No, it's not. The business kind of shifted to some, some investors in, in Europe. So I'm not connected with it anymore. So there was another sort of side trip because you did something that around the hockey side as well, then you end up in some, well, you've been to all the countries, but this one in particular was an unusual country to go.

To in the first, I think it was, it was a Korea you went to, but not North Korea, South Korea, I went in 2016 to, to North Korea was invited there to, to, to coach their national hockey team. And this is part of a broader concept that I think is really fantastic using a sport. To build cultural bridges, and that's what I was able to do in this situation and had a really fantastic experience there.

I'm not oblivious to the fact that, you know, I saw what they wanted me to see and getting off that tourist track, so to speak, and things can, can get relatively grim, but our, my experience was so positive, the food, the people, the culture, and, and, and the players, they worked hard, they listened, they were surprisingly skilled and skated well.

And so a really, a really memorable experience. So let's shift gears. So now we get into the travel to different countries. In 2016, you had already been to North Korea. How many countries have you been by 2016? You know, travel for me was never originally about ticking boxes or checking places off a list.

It was always about discovery, understanding travels, the best education that I've ever had. And so I wasn't really counting. It was just a personal preference I had, though, was I didn't like to repeat places. So even if I went somewhere and had a Great experience. You know, the next weekend, the next holiday, the next opportunity I had away from work, I would just go somewhere different, put this formula into play for about six years when I was living in Singapore and it was, it was early 2018, about two years after the North Korea trip, where I realized that I had been to about 120 countries.

Off the cuff, we're going to go here this weekend. I prioritize travel over. Over like everything. It was just what I spent all my money, my time, my resources on and, and I loved it. It was, it was kind of this just never ending kind of journey to better understand the world. As I was saying in the early 2018, I realized that after putting this formula into play, so to speak, for about six years.

I had been to about 120 and I remember thinking, well, well, how many are there? And  that was when I started doing some more research and I learned that there are 193. I'm fully recognized UN sovereign states. And at that point, the, my wheels started turning, the, the competitive athlete in me started thinking, well, maybe I could go to all of them.

And, and so that you were pretty close at 120. You were right there. Like, I mean, I hadn't realized you'd done a hundred and 20. I don't even know how many people in the world have done a hundred and 20 countries in the first year. Yeah, I feel super fortunate for the experiences for sure. But it that was kind of how it happened.

So going back to your question in North Korea, I'm not sure how many it was at that point. I just wasn't really thinking about it that in that way at that time. So you come to Syria, that's in about 2019, you enter Syria. I think you said from the North. As you like Syria would have been an unusual country to enter to and I'm sure you probably thought about it as you were crossing the border.

Did you think? That was the right way to go in versus Damascus or flying in like anything go through your mind at that time? Yeah, so I'm not gonna say that going to Syria was comfortable I mean there were there were many places that that I traveled to that weren't necessarily Comfortable and places where where I could feel the instability around me and whether it's political or physical military instability, but one of the most significant things that I have learned through my travels is that places that are negatively perceived or that Western media tells us we're not supposed to like.

These were places where I frequently had many of my best experiences and where my perspectives were most meaningfully impacted. So despite everything, despite the instability happening in Syria, I was confident that the same would be the case. And the area that I entered, it was controlled by the Kurds, which have a strong relationship with the U.

S. and was hundreds of miles from any ongoing conflict. Now I really liked one of your quotes. I don't know if it was intentional and when you're speaking, but you never judge people by the actions of their government and it kind of reinforces what you just said. Yeah, no doubt. And that's 1 of the, I would say more memorable things that I've learned through my travels.

And there's no doubt that in. In places around the world, there's instability there, that there are lots of challenges, there are also a lot of other things happening too. And I think it's underneath that there are a lot of other things happening. And I think it's important and very worthwhile to go and understand those because what I found everywhere in the world was people just like us, people who have the same interests that eat, sleep, breed, want to be happy or chasing some kind of goal.

Oftentimes, maybe our governments don't agree. But underneath all that are fantastic people. I know, like, and to this, these are the viewers and the listeners. Listen, Sam goes out. He speaks. You're good. You talk. You really get into the story and the heartfelt story of the challenges and the issues being taken as a hostage.

I know people can watch a little bit on TSN. You did an interview there. As well, so I'm not going to dive into all the different specifics, but there are a few things you shared with us on that day in terms of learning the whole idea of gratitude and leaning into gratitude. Maybe you could just there were 3 things, so maybe just talk a little bit about the 3 and give our viewers or listeners a little bit more perspective on it.

At PEO leadership, I'm surrounded by other business leaders who challenged me to become better. Les Mandelbaum, founder and CEO of Umbra. Leaders really need to step outside their world and get new perspectives. PEO leadership is more than peer to peer advisory. It's a community of top executives with global experience.

Our retail landscape is rapidly changing. PEO leadership has been vital in helping us navigate through this. The time to step up and lead is now go to peo leadership. com. Yeah, sure. So when I, when I went to Syria, I was taken hostage. I was accused of being, of being an American spy, collaborating with terrorists and things got.

Very uncomfortable and, thank God, thanks to a long list of people who worked tirelessly. The situation ended peacefully after, after nine weeks 63 days. During that time, my, my captivity was essentially split into two months. The first month I was held in, in solitary confinement. The second month I was held in more of a general population facility with, with lots of other inmates.

The, the first month. In solitary confinement, that is essentially torture. It's a cruel captivity tactic that's been used for years. And I spent a month in this. In this situation, and as Leon mentioned in my presentations, I kind of get into some of the details of the challenges and how it was feeling and what I was doing.

But there were there were 3 things that I really learned and keep kind of things that I shared today in my presentations. The 1st is Leon mentioned, perhaps a bit paradoxically was to lean. Into to lean into gratitude and you know, everything had been taken from me, but what I found again, a bit paradoxically was that when I became grateful when I had the perspective to take a step back and think I'm grateful to be alive.

I'm grateful for my health, my education. I'm grateful for the basic food and water. I'm being given. I even thought that there are people in the world Who being in this cell would be an upgrade for them. Having that perspective became this, this, this gratitude mentality became this silent rebellion against the uncertainty of the situation.

The second point, what I really came to understand in that cell was to control the controllables, control the things I could control. And these are things that maybe I learned through, through being an athlete, my entire life, or even being an entrepreneur, having a boss or a coach, tell us this. But many things, maybe the majority of things were out of my control.

I couldn't control when or if I'd be released. I couldn't control whether they finally figured out I wasn't a spy, but I could control my, my thoughts, my attitude, my prayers, my exercise. I could control how much water I drank when I went to sleep at night. I could control my routine within that cell. And, you know, my goal wasn't to, to get rid of negative thoughts or feelings.

Unrealistic. But my goal became to change the way I responded to them. And so that was the second thing that became very powerful for me. And then the third, probably a bit of a paradox, but to recognize this uncertainty in these challenges as an opportunity, I thought to myself, if I can maintain hope and persevere through this, I would be.

Then prepared to take on more challenges going forward, and I wasn't sure what all was going to happen. But this mentality became powerful to me in that in in that cell. And there's what I learned is there's a big difference between what uncertainty feels like and what's actually happening. So those those three points and became good.

They became, they were, they were life saving for me. And I found that the same approach I took to managing the stress and uncertainty of being in that prison cell is the same recipe responses that. I now use when managing challenges and uncertainty in my life today. And these are the things that I try to pull out and share with others in, in my presentations.

It's funny. Cause I, I actually lean into those three now more than ever. Like it was a chance for us to reflect, right? You spoke to us as an audience. We sat there, you know, we all think we're running difficult lives. We're running difficult organizations. We're going through challenges. It's been lots of challenges, COVID, everything, a lot of different organizations.

But the ability to lean into grounded and just to reflect and sit back, you know, very different circumstances, right? But that actually puts it in perspective. And then understand what you can control and then also realizing there's probably an opportunity here. Very thankful for for those, like, I am constantly thinking of those things and I know a number of my members, like, I'm just pushing my marriage to God.

Come back to those three things when they're challenged. I I'm, I'm, I'm happy to hear that. And it's been kind of a memorable kind of process for me to, to have that recognition as well, to realize that when I was pushed to my lowest point. You know, essentially rock bottom, these things that helped me are also relevant in, in different ways to others as well.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think leaders for them to understand it because everything starts with the leader. Right? And it, it goes right through an organization. So the leader can actually reflect and lead this way. And the people start to follow, and they start using the same toolkit. And so I think your message is so powerful.

Thank you, Sam, for doing that. Now, a couple of things, you know, you, you mentioned in the talk, PDSD, I know, you know, obviously you went through some incredible trauma, maybe not physically, but mentally. But then you mentioned something PTG, hadn't heard about it before. And I thought that also stuck with me a little.

Your post traumatic growth. You know, I've had some kind of mild episodes of PTSD since this, whether it's going to sleep at night or putting myself back in certain situations and, and, and thank God and thanks to a, a great support system of family and friends and been able to kind of address those. What I've also learned about, it's kinda relevant to the third point that that I mentioned, but there's this other medical term called PTG and, and PTG is, is post-traumatic growth, and I can.

I mean, like I can take the strength that I learned in captivity and give it to others today, for example. And I just feel as though when we're at, when we feel the most lost, we often have the best chance for a huge breakthrough. And, and really the, the, the rock bottom solitary confinement of a Middle Eastern prison cell is the foundation on which I've built this next chapter of my life.

And that is growth through this trauma as, as I've seen it. And I've really tried to kind of channel that opportunity that I think has, has come from it. So what's next for you? I mean, you're at John Hopkins. How many years do you have left to get the doctorate here? I'm in a doctorate program in DC studying international affairs, and I'm actually scheduled to defend my doctoral thesis just in a couple of weeks next month.

Still a bit of a hill to climb, but it's kind of light at the end of the tunnel. And I'm excited to be completing that journey. And that's been a real positive experience. Have you thought what comes after that?

What a an amazing way to sort of end right there sam on that. It's so true Listen, I I wanted to thank you again for one for coming to toronto to speaking our group to spending the time now on the podcast To those that are listening, I mean, I, I offer you this advice. I know I walked away with a lot of insights, some reflection, which I used today.

And I just think, Sam, your message and the way you put it together, I know it's tough for you, right? But I also think that ability to share with others and those on the receiving end, there's so much to learn from that. And not just you as an individual leader, but even coming within your organization.

It's a bit of an inspiring story as well. So thank you again, Sam for, for sharing and spending time with us. Really, it's my pleasure. Thanks, Leon. My experience with PEO has been just nothing but positive and really grateful for the opportunity. 

Thanks again for joining us, Sam. If you're interested in our The Way Forward live webcast, please visit us at peo-leadership.com. You'll find a number of our recorded past webcasts that have included Dr. Jason Selk, Professor Rosabeth Kanter, Professor Michael Beer, both from Harvard, Joe Jackman, Harry Kraemer, Dr. Greg Wells, Janice Stein, Professor Scott Anthony, Rob Chesnut, and the list goes on. We have two interesting events to consider coming up in the next couple of months.

First, these are both in person. The first one, ‘Compete on Culture, Unleash the Power of Your People fir Strategic Success.’ This is taking place on April 23rd at 9 a. m. to 2 p. m., and it's at 168 Hobson Lake Drive, Halifax. That's right, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Our second, called our Catalyst 360, a real meet and greet. ‘Give Us 15 Minutes to Solve Your Biggest Challenges & Opportunities.’ It's a way to get started. number of entrepreneurs together and leverage the collective wisdom around the table. This is taking place on April 18th at 5. 30 p. m. Terre Rouge, 162 Enterprise Boulevard, Unionville, Ontario. Both those events can be found on our website at www.peo-leadership. com and you can register there. Finally, if you'd like to learn more about PEO leadership and unable to join us at any one of these events, please email me at lgoren@peo-leadership. com and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. So until we meet again, I'd like to wish you all a fantastic rest of the day, rest of the week, and a wonderful rest of the month.

Spring is actually on the horizon. We'll see you all soon.

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