Zander Sprague — TV host, award-winning author, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, and self-described “God of Enthusiasm” — has built his life’s mission around helping people make the EPIC choices that create an EPIC life. For Zander, EPIC isn’t just a buzzword: it stands for Every Pilgrimage Involves Commitment, and his own pilgrimage began in the most painful way imaginable — with the murder of his sister. Rather than letting that tragedy define his limits, he let it define his purpose. In this conversation, Zander unpacks why “someday” is sabotaging your career, how to stop fearing failure and start planning for it, and why the path to your most EPIC professional life begins with exactly one step forward. Whether you’re stuck at a crossroads, recovering from a setback, or just waiting for the “right time” to make your move — this episode is your permission slip to start.
According to Zander Sprague — award-winning author, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, and self-described “God of Enthusiasm” — it starts with exactly one step.
For Zander, EPIC is an acronym: Every Pilgrimage Involves Commitment. Whether you’re writing a book, changing careers, or recovering from loss, you’re on a pilgrimage — and commitment is what gets you there.
Someday is the career killer no one talks about. Like tomorrow, it never actually arrives. Zander sat on his first finished manuscript for five years out of fear before finally publishing — and was met with readers from around the world telling him it changed their lives. The thing you’re waiting to feel ready for? You’re already ready enough.
Don’t try to eat the whole pizza at once. Break your goal into slices — one chapter, one task, one step at a time. Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance (yes, that’s the British Army’s Seven P’s, and yes, it applies to your career too).
In baseball, a .300 batting average gets you into the Hall of Fame — that’s only a 30% success rate. Give yourself the same grace. Failure isn’t the opposite of progress; it’s how you build the neural superhighway to mastery.
Most days, 97% of what happens is good. We obsess over the 3% that isn’t. Shift your focus — not to ignore what’s hard, but to stop letting it drown out everything that’s working.
“No” is a stop sign. “Not yet” is momentum. Whatever your EPIC goal is — your book, your pivot, your big move — not yet means you’re working on it. And that makes all the difference.
Kelly Callahan-Poe: Today’s guest has built an entire movement around one simple truth. It all comes down to the courage to take a single step. I’m Kelly Callahan-Poe, host of the Marketing Moms podcast. Today’s episode is called Your EPIC Career Starts With One Step Forward with Zander Sprague.
Zander is an award-winning speaker, author, and licensed professional clinical counselor who helps people find the courage to take the first step towards an EPIC life. Drawing on 20 plus years in the corporate world, a background in mental health counseling, and deep personal loss, he provides both professional insight and lived experience in his work. He is the author of three books, including his number one Amazon bestseller, EPIC Begins With One Step Forward. Welcome, Zander.
Zander Sprague: Thank you so much, Kelly. It’s just such an honor to be here.
Kelly: I want to start with a difficult question, if that’s okay. You’ve spoken openly about a personal tragedy that really is a moment that changed your life in a significant way. How did that event shape your purpose and lead to the work that you do today?
Zander: Absolutely. What you’re referring to is 29 years ago my older sister Lucy was murdered. And you know, there were many things I thought I might deal with in my life, but to be honest, murder was not one of them. And obviously when it happened, it was devastating. But through that loss, I learned a couple of things. First and foremost, with any kind of loss that we have — be it someone dying, loss of a relationship, loss of a job or whatever — we have to find the strength within ourselves. It’s great to have support, but you have to figure out how you’re going to walk down this path of grief. And I’ve been doing that for 29 years. More importantly, I discovered that as a sibling survivor, meaning I lost a sibling, there’s not a lot of resources out there. So I’ve written two books about sibling loss — one for siblings and one for parents to understand their living child’s grief. Because my experience and that of lots of other sibling survivors is that parents don’t really understand what’s going on with us. I really am an advocate for raising awareness for sibling survivors and to help them.
Kelly: But beyond that, you made a career change, correct?
Zander: I did. I spent most of my time in the corporate world as a technical instructor — I taught people how to use software and I was actually kind of good at it. But I sort of had this moment where I was like, why am I learning and teaching someone else’s stuff when I know what I want to teach? And so I started really leaning into helping sibling survivors and working to create awareness for them. Like anyone’s career, stuff evolves. I have to say that it’s really rewarding to do good things in Lucy’s memory versus just focusing on the dot that was the end of her life.
Kelly: I appreciate you sharing that story. In your book, the word EPIC means more than the imagery that it conjures up. Can you talk to me about what that word actually means to you and how you’ve created it as an acronym?
Zander: Absolutely. I love the word epic — it just personifies so much fun and greatness and big things that are happening, even if they are what I call “epic unexpected,” those things that really sort of change how we’re going. But EPIC for me stands for Every Pilgrimage Involves Commitment. Any of our epic journeys that we want to go on — be it writing a book, running a marathon, traveling somewhere, changing your job — that is a pilgrimage. And in order to do that, it really does include commitment. You have to be committed to it. If we’ve taken on some new challenge, you know where you want to get to, but you really have to be committed to get there.
Kelly: You say that choosing the goal is often the hardest part. Why do so many people struggle to get clear on what they really want?
Zander: I think firstly, people think that they have to have everything figured out before they start. But I think that’s a fallacy. When you woke up this morning, did you have all the answers to all the questions that you’d get today? Did that stop you from getting up and starting your day? And yet when people want to do some big thing that they’ve dreamed of, it comes down to those things we’ve all said a gazillion times: “Someday I’d like to…” and fill in the blank. Well, it’s got to start somewhere. And sometimes where we think we want to go and where we end up are different places. But that doesn’t stop you from starting.
Kelly: You also talk about the difference between a goal, an intention, and a dream.
Zander: We all have intentions. “I’d like to lose some weight. I need to start making this change.” But you’re not committed to it. And psychologically speaking, if we’re not ready to commit to something, we’re simply not going to do it. Sometimes the pain point isn’t high enough for you to make the change. The intention to lose weight is great, but actually committing and going “now I’m going to do this” — that’s the difference. There are going to be detours along the way. Think about when you go on a vacation. You don’t know everything that’s going to happen. Maybe the rental car isn’t available. Maybe it rains some of the days. But that doesn’t stop your vacation from happening.
Kelly: Earlier you said that the word “someday” is a very challenging, kind of self-defeating word. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Zander: Someday is so indirect. It’s like tomorrow — tomorrow never comes, because when we get to tomorrow, it’s today. And so it comes down to committing to whatever change it is, whatever EPIC journey you want to go on. I had the idea for my first book, Making Lemonade: Choosing a Positive Pathway After Losing Your Sibling. I figured out that I needed to use my talking — I dictated it, got it transcribed, and then I had something to work with. But someday came in — I sat on that finished book for five years because I was afraid to put it out. I had feedback in school that my writing was okay but not great. And so I was telling people I was coming out with a book, but I was no more coming out with a book than I was flying to the moon. So I got brave, I swallowed hard, I put on my big boy pants and I released it. And people from around the world wrote to me telling me they found it helpful, that it changed their lives. That feeling of imposter syndrome? That will keep us at “someday.”
Kelly: So once you’ve chosen your goal — let’s say writing a book — how do you turn that dream into reality?
Zander: Structure is our friend. A lot of adults say “I don’t like structure,” but from a mental health standpoint, structure makes us feel comfortable. In my book I talk about the pizza analogy — when you eat a pizza, you could roll the whole thing up and try to eat it at once, but normally we eat it one slice at a time, one bite at a time. I wrote an outline for what I thought my chapters would be, then worked one chapter at a time. When we break it down into bite-sized pieces, it gets so much easier and it’s manageable. If you don’t know how to cook something, you follow a recipe. One step at a time.
Kelly: The other thing you talked about that was an easy way to remember this concept was the British Army’s Seven P’s.
Zander: Yes — Prior Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. If you look at people who do really complex things — a surgeon on a complex surgery has planned out exactly what they’re going to do. Yes, along the way things change, but they understand the plan. Think about what you want to do, but do not be rigid about it because things change. I needed 3,000 hours of internship to get my license. I finished in February of 2020, all excited to take the exam. About three weeks later, the pandemic hit and everything was shut down. But it was during that time that I came up with the idea for EPIC Begins With One Step Forward. I had time to think about my life — and I realized I’d done some pretty epic things I never expected to do. Write books, run a marathon, travel the world. How did that all begin? It literally begins with one step forward.
Kelly: Let’s talk about failure.
Zander: Failure is part of the journey. We try not to fail — no one wants to — but it is going to happen. In baseball, you make it into the Hall of Fame if you have a lifetime batting average over .300. That’s only about a 30% success rate. So let me apply it to everyday life. Let’s say there are nine hours between work, family, and personal stuff. For a Hall of Fame day, you only have to get three hours right. I don’t think that’s a particularly high bar for any of us to achieve. As an entrepreneur, I have tried stuff and failed. I don’t want to fail, but I do accept that it’s part of it. And I really believe in what Daniel Coyle says in The Talent Code — the greatest learning happens when we struggle the most. When you finally master something you’ve struggled through, you’ve truly mastered it. You’ve laid down the superhighway of how to do it.
Kelly: Back to the 97–3 rule — I really love that.
Zander: I love my 97–3 rule. Most days, 97% of our day is good, and up to 3% isn’t. Yes, obviously there are days where that 3% is much larger. But in general, 97% of your day is good — and yet when we talk about our day, we completely ignore that 97% and only talk about the 3%. When I was doing my internship, a lot of my clients had academic challenges. I wanted to come up with a solid way for them to focus more on what was going right. In high school, what was your least favorite subject?
Kelly: Math.
Zander: If you got a 97 on a math test, how would you have felt? You’d tell your friends, you’d tell your parents. Would you have been complaining about the three points you didn’t get?
Kelly: I’d be thrilled. No.
Zander: Exactly. You’d be focused on what you got right. So let’s focus on what is going right. Acknowledge what isn’t going right, but remember there’s so much more of your day that is going well. We were sort of talking about mortality earlier. You and I both woke up this morning — that’s a really great way to start the day. Focus on what is going right. Yes, we’ll talk about what isn’t going right, but it should not be the sole focus of our day.
Kelly: I think also when you’ve been through such a challenging personal tragedy — or anyone has — that mortality makes you think about the area in between the dates. Are you living the life that you really should be living? And I think it really reorients you to be braver and want to take that extra step. Because you know what? If you don’t, you’re going to regret it.
Zander: Absolutely. We got one time on this merry-go-round that is life. What are you going to do with that? We all have days where we’re tired, unmotivated, we don’t do everything we could have done. That’s okay. Coulda, woulda, shoulda will derail you. Acknowledge it, and then move on — how am I going to correct that? How am I going to change that tomorrow?
Kelly: Any other final EPIC tips for professionals to move forward in their careers?
Zander: Don’t be afraid. I’ve made career changes — quality assurance engineer, software engineer, technical instructor. I got hired by companies and had to learn their software before I could teach it. There were a lot of times I didn’t know because I just didn’t have the experience yet. But I wasn’t afraid of that. And I think there are two words that are really, really important when we’re on our EPIC journey: Not yet. Not yet is so important — there’s so much optimism in those two words. When people would ask, “Has your book come out?” I’d say “Not yet — it’s coming.” If I say “no,” there’s a final stop sign there. “Not yet” says I’m working on it. We are all works in progress. Whatever your EPIC journey is — your book, your pivot, your big move — not yet means you’re working on it. And that makes all the difference.
Kelly: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your personal story today, Zander, and your professional insights. I hope that we all can learn to focus on all of our EPIC strengths in the future. We will provide links to your website, your books, and your contact information in the transcript. Don’t forget to subscribe and share — and thanks for joining.
Zander: Thank you so much. And I’d just like to finish with: remember, EPIC choices lead to the EPIC life that you want.
Kelly: Excellent. Thanks.
