Scott Lackey’s Book Asked Questions I Couldn’t Ignore

Sometimes an interview ends when the recorder is turned off. Sometimes, that’s when it really begins.

When I picked up the phone to interview Newnan author Scott Lackey, I expected a conversation about a local writer whose first book had already climbed Amazon’s bestseller charts. Instead, we spent nearly an hour talking about business collapse, military service, faith, reinvention, and the uncomfortable truth that life’s hardest moments often become life’s greatest teachers.

When the interview was over, I bought the book.

Not because I needed it to write this story. The interview was already over. I wanted to know whether the authenticity I heard over the phone could survive the printed page.

It did.

In fact, I made it about 40% through Wake Up to Die Again: Breaking Who You Became So You Can Be Who You Were Meant to Be before I closed my Kindle and went back to work.

Not because I had lost interest.

Because the book had left me thinking about my own dreams, my own mission, and the difference I still hope to make. I’ll finish the rest another weekend. For now, Scott Lackey had already accomplished something many motivational books never do.

He got me moving.

Lackey, a Newnan resident whose wife, Michelle, teaches at Trinity Christian School, wears plenty of titles. He’s a U.S. Army combat veteran who served during Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Chief Sales Officer for Blickle USA, a patented inventor, an IRONMAN triathlete, a weekly newspaper columnist, and now the bestselling author of a book that asks readers to rethink failure, adversity, and who they become because of it.

The title alone invites questions.

“I write true stories about the moments in my life when life demanded an answer from me,” Lackey said. “Every meaningful event in my life eventually asked me a question. Who will you become now?”

He calls those defining moments “lightning strikes.”

“A lightning strike in your life doesn’t arrive politely,” he writes. “It rips through your plans, breaks your definitions, and rewrites what you thought mattered.”

One of those lightning strikes came after he and his wife invested everything they had into a patented invention. A private equity firm invested $3 million into the company, and for a brief moment, Lackey believed he had achieved the American dream.

Then everything unraveled.

The investors changed direction, removed the management team, and Lackey drove home to tell his pregnant wife that the future they thought they had built had disappeared.

Many people, he said, would write an entire book about that experience.

For him, it was only one chapter.

“There are 24 very unique chapters about lived experience in my life,” Lackey said. “Yes, they are about how you recover from those things, but it’s more about how they transform you and what are you going to become in life?”

That distinction became one of the biggest surprises for me.

This isn’t another book promising seven easy steps to success.

In fact, Lackey openly pushes back against that entire genre.

“There are a lot of people right now that know they’re not where they’re supposed to be,” he said. “They’re looking for the answer everywhere else. The answer that you’re looking for is inside you.”

Perhaps that’s why his stories don’t read like victories, even though they ultimately become them.

Failure appears often in his book. So do setbacks, disappointment, grief, uncertainty, and moments when it would have been easy to quit.

Yet I never came away thinking I was reading about a man who loses.

I came away thinking I was reading about someone who refuses to stay defeated.

Reading the book and talking with Lackey left me with one overwhelming impression.

His message isn’t that someone else is coming to rescue you.

It’s that you have to carry your own flag into your own battle.

He’s simply offering readers better equipment for the journey.

That message is already resonating with readers.

Two-time Olympian Vesna Shelnutt said she read Wake Up to Die Again after losing her mother and while launching Woodward Aquatics Club.

“The message of Wake Up to Die Again gave me the courage to step outside my comfort zone, trust the process, and move forward with faith,” Shelnutt wrote. “One idea from the book that stayed with me is that transformation begins when we stop holding on to what no longer serves us and embrace who we are becoming.”

Other readers appear to be responding. Released in May, Wake Up to Die Again quickly found a national audience. Within its first week, it reached No. 1 New Release in Amazon’s Christian Leadership category and climbed to No. 2 on the platform’s Christian Leadership Best Sellers list. While Amazon’s rankings fluctuate in real time as sales change, those early rankings helped establish the book as a breakout debut.

By the end of our conversation, I found myself thinking less about Scott’s story than my own.

Not because our paths have been the same, but because his willingness to openly discuss failure, scars, and rebuilding forced me to think about the dreams I still want to pursue and the difference I hope to make.

During our interview, our conversation drifted into authenticity, adversity, and the stories people carry with them.

Lackey shared one line that has stayed with me ever since.

“Don’t hide your scars anymore,” he said. “They’re a reminder of something that tried to kill me, but they’re proof that what tried to kill me couldn’t.”

That may explain why his first book has found an audience so quickly.

Readers today don’t seem to be looking for polished perfection nearly as much as they’re looking for honesty.

They want someone willing to admit the business failed, the dream collapsed, life got messy, faith was tested, and somehow there was still another chapter waiting to be written.

One conversation with Lackey had already left its mark before I ever downloaded his book.

By the time we ended our interview, I had invited him to speak at the September meeting of the Business Women of Fayette and Coweta. Reading Wake Up to Die Again didn’t change that decision. It confirmed it.

Not because he’s an Amazon bestselling author.

Not because he’s an engaging speaker.

But because I suspect there are plenty of people sitting in that room—and reading this story—who are standing somewhere in the aftermath of their own lightning strike.

Scott Lackey can’t fight that battle for them.

But after spending time with both the man and his words, I believe he knows how to help people find the courage to take the next step. 

Wake Up to Die Again is available through Amazon and can also be ordered through bookstores that use the IngramSpark distribution network, including Barnes & Noble.