In this episode of The Business of Thinking, Richard Reid is joined by entrepreneur, coach and author Joel Steele for a conversation about resilience, self-belief and what it really means to switch your life “on”.
Joel’s story is not a neat, linear tale of success. It is one of setbacks, fear, reinvention and hard-won perspective. He speaks candidly about moments that could easily have derailed his life completely: near-bankruptcy, brushes with the law, guns pointed in his face, and the kind of instability that leaves you questioning not just what you are doing, but who you are becoming.
At the heart of Joel’s message is a simple but powerful distinction: you are either living your life “on” or “off.”
For Joel, living “off” meant coasting. It meant drifting through life without clarity, avoiding difficult truths, and not taking the kinds of deliberate actions needed to create the future he wanted. Living “on”, by contrast, is purposeful. It is engaged. It means being awake to what you want, what you fear, and what you need to do next.
One of the most interesting parts of Joel’s story is that he did not begin from failure. In fact, after a turbulent start, he built what he calls a “success streak.” He worked hard, got fit, achieved strong outcomes and proved to himself that he could set goals and hit them. That momentum built confidence, and confidence built belief.
Then came the setback that changed everything.
In his early twenties, Joel launched a small chain of healthy fast-food restaurants in Philadelphia. He was passionate about health and fitness, and he believed in the idea. But passion alone was not enough. The business failed, and by the age of 24 he was carrying close to half a million dollars in debt.
What followed could have become the defining story of his life. Instead, it became a turning point.
Joel describes this failure not as the end, but as the place where he realised that success is rarely about a single business, role or outcome. It is about the assets you carry within you — the qualities, habits and capabilities that can be redirected when one path closes. He took the same discipline, determination and drive that had helped him before and applied them in a different field: financial services. Within two years, he had dug himself out of debt and built a successful financial advisory business.
The deeper lesson here is one Richard highlights during the conversation: resilience is not just endurance. It is adaptability. It is the ability to learn from setbacks without being defined by them.
Joel returns repeatedly to the importance of vision. Long before he had the life he wanted, he could picture it. He talks about imagining a home, a family, a sense of peace and success — a future that felt meaningful even before he knew how to build it. That image became his internal compass.
Without that sense of direction, Joel argues, most people end up circling. They may work hard, but they do not know where they are going. He compares it to getting in a car without a destination. You may move, but movement is not the same as progress.
This is where his message becomes particularly relevant for anyone in business or leadership. Joel is not talking about motivation in the superficial sense. He is talking about the ability to stay connected to a bigger picture, especially when the present is painful. A compelling vision makes hardship easier to tolerate because it gives meaning to sacrifice.
He also offers a refreshing take on anxiety and so-called “negative” emotions. Rather than seeing them as things to suppress, he suggests they often contain information. Anxiety, fear and discomfort may be signals that something matters deeply — and that action is needed. In his own case, he learned to convert anxiety into activity. Instead of letting fear paralyse him, he used it as fuel.
That shift — from avoidance to engagement — runs all the way through the episode.
Joel also speaks powerfully about regret, describing it as an emotion that grows heavier over time. Better, he suggests, to face discomfort now than to spend years looking back and wondering what might have happened if you had acted differently. The hard path may not be the easy one, but it is often the path that leads to pride rather than regret.
Perhaps most compelling is Joel’s insistence that the answers are not primarily “out there”. We live in a world that encourages people to seek external solutions, external validation and external distraction. Joel’s challenge is to look inward. He believes most people already carry the raw material needed to create a meaningful life — but those internal strengths need to be recognised, activated and used.
That is the essence of living “on”.
The episode closes with a message that feels both urgent and encouraging: tune out some of the noise, tune into yourself, and trust that more is possible than you may currently believe.
It is not just a call to ambition. It is a call to awareness.
And for anyone sleepwalking through their own life, it may be exactly the wake-up call they need.
