Wake Up to Die Again

In Wake Up to Die Again, Scott Lackey delivers a lived account of identity, collapse, and the real work that begins after the performance ends.

After serving with the 1st Infantry Division in Desert Storm and returning home with the discipline of a soldier, Scott Lackey spent thirty years building businesses, earning a U.S. patent, and climbing every ladder the world told him mattered only to lose it all more than once. Investors took his inventions. Partners betrayed him. Lightning struck repeatedly, each time stripping away another layer of the identity he had constructed.

What remained was a choice: stay broken or rebuild from the inside out.

Wake Up to Die Again is the account of that rebuild. Structured across four parts, Lightning Strikes, The Middle Ground, Forgiveness and Becoming, Rebuilding and Redeeming, the book walks readers through the work most people spend a lifetime avoiding: confronting the identities built to feel safe, forgiving the version of yourself that never arrived, and learning what transformation actually costs.

Lackey's voice is direct, honest, and hard-earned. The book combines memoir with reflective practice, offering reflection prompts and challenges at the end of each chapter. It is written for readers in midlife transition, leaders confronting limits in their current identity, and anyone who has achieved by external measures and quietly recognizes that something underneath is no longer holding.

With a foreword by Mike Reilly, the Legendary Voice of Ironman.

A first book from an author whose work as a speaker and change agent helps leaders confront the limiting identities that keep them stuck.