Ep. 27: Blind At Age 21. Harvard Grad, Coder, Double Black Diamond Skier. How?

Chad E. Foster has accomplished more than 99% of humans. And, he did it BLIND. His story will motivate you to turn any obstacle into an advantage.  His book Blind Ambition will have you laughing, crying and wanting to make massive changes in your life all at the same time. While reading his book, and then while interviewing him in person, I felt convicted of just how many times I used excuses in my life instead of showing courage and persistence. I am grateful to call Chad a friend and his book is one of just a dozen that made it to my "read each year" pile in my library. Thanks, Chad.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

A lot of people think that happiness is this, like, oh, I'm going to get there. No, it's not a feeling. Yeah. And it's not an emotion. It's a perspective that you take. It's a decision that you make. Yeah. Every single day when you wake up. So that was transformative for me because I left that 26-day experience there at Leader Dogs for the Blind. with a newfound perspective on life. And it changed everything because it reshaped my attitude. And when my attitude shifted, doors started flying open for me. Professors were more prone to help me. Job interviews came easier. People could see that

SPEAKER_02 0:36

I

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was dealing with a difficult situation, but I had a great attitude about it. Like I just owned it.

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You're listening to The Jeff Opec Show, conversations with interesting humans.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

All right, folks, welcome back to another episode. I have a real treat for you here today. I've got Chad Foster sitting here and his dog. Wonderful, wonderful major. You're in the book. What a story this is, folks. And I'm going to highlight it by saying Chad went blind at 21. We're going to get into the details here. But if we stopped right there. And I said, I have a guest coming in today who's 50 and who lived all these years blind. That story in and of itself would be awesome. But I'm going to put three words in here that once Chad did lose his sight, they're absolutely, it's just incredible that next up was Harvard. And there was a story to that. This wasn't just going to Harvard. There is a significant story. He had a first, graduating from an accelerated program at Harvard Business School. Then a career that, of all careers to choose, I would think it would be one of the last careers you were a sought after and still are a sought after coder, typing, literally creating code. Right. So we'll get into that. And then the third one, which I just cannot wait to unpack. You put some details in your book about it. I can't wait to hear how you do this. Double black diamond skier. OK, so we got blind to 21 Harvard Business School coder, skier, Chad Foster skier. And your dog, Major. Thank you for being here. Appreciate you

SPEAKER_04 2:27

having me.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

We're going to have an awesome conversation. We're going to go through all these twists and turns in the book. But before we do, folks, I want to give you a real good feel about Chad, who I have sitting here. By a small paragraph in the book, it's on page 128, and it really, really speaks to who you are. Chad says, try doing the thing in your field that everyone says cannot be done. Maybe you succeed, maybe you fail, but you'll grow like crazy and there's no telling what might come of it. Dare to be great. If you have faith in your gifts, the rewards are out there. Choose a daunting challenge for yourself and then, to quote my high school wrestling coach, once again, just grab it. And growl. Coach V.

SPEAKER_03 3:19

What an incredible story. That's what Coach V said.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

So, Chad, all right. We're in the fall of 1996. You and I are about the exact same age. I know what I was doing that fall. I was in a similar place like you were. You were sitting in your dorm. You're working on a project. And then what you call is the last sunset moment. Walk me through that, what happened that day.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

I was studying, I think it was British literature, I'm pretty sure it was British lit, and I'm trying to read this simple little assignment. I'm in my office, my bedroom, got a little desk there, and I can't see the words on the page. They become more and more elusive. I have these things called floaters, and they, you know, these little dots that float around, they kept getting in my visual field, and I... I couldn't see around them. So I'm looking at the page and I'm looking the floaters away to try and scan a few lines of text and the floaters keep coming and getting in the way. And so I get up and I turn off the overhead light and I turn on my lamp because I want to create more contrast thinking that's going to help. And I sit there and I wrestle with this equation like, okay, more contrast, look away, look back. And this assignment probably should have taken me No more than 30 minutes. And here I am, I'm spending over two hours trying to do it, and I couldn't finish it. And I realized at that moment, everything that I'd been told my whole life, that you could go blind, that darkness could be imminent, all of that stuff started to flood my mind and flood my reality at that moment in time. That was when darkness was knocking on my door. You know, tears filled my eyes. I realized the life that I had known at that point was coming to an end. You know, everything I had known, everything I'd wanted to be when I grow up was now called into question because I wasn't sure what I could be when I grew up. You know, we ask kids all the time, what do you want to be when you grow up? Guess what? None of them say blind, like zero,

SPEAKER_01 5:40

none of them. None.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

Zero. I haven't heard that one time. And so I'm sitting there and I'm going to the kitchen table and I just remember for two, three hours, I'm just like reeling from this, reeling. Because I realized this is the beginning of the end of life as I had known it.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

Right.

SPEAKER_04 5:58

And I had to figure out how... how I was going to move forward, what I was going to do, what do I want to be when I grow up, how am I going to solve the practical reality of learning because I'm at university. It's kind of important to consume information. How do you do that when you can't see? All these doubts and fears and feelings of dependence and lowered expectations and everything is just suffocating. It was hard to move. It was hard to breathe.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Right. What university were you at? That was at University of Tennessee. So that takes place at University of Tennessee. Then I would imagine that night, were you 100% without vision? Were you 90%? No.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

No, at that point I was probably 90% without vision. I had some vision. In some ideal situations I could see, but that's when the fog really began to spread. To the point to where no longer did I have– I mean my acuity was okay, but I didn't have the visual field. To use my acuity. My acuity was maybe 2060 at that point. But I had all this, and the way I describe it is fog. It's like a fog creeping into your visual field where if the fog were removed, you would have enough visual acuity to read. Yeah. But there's so much fog, you just can't

SPEAKER_01 7:23

see through it. Right. Is it something genetic, something you're born with? Did you have an idea that this was going to happen? It's

SPEAKER_04 7:29

genetic. So I have what's called retinitis pigmentosa. It's inherited eye condition. And... My parents had me diagnosed at three and a half years old because they noticed I was having a problem seeing in really dimly lit rooms and environments. And so they took me to Duke University Medical Center where they diagnosed me at that point with retinitis pigmentosa. But they didn't know for sure because back then, you know, this is late 70s, early 80s, they didn't have genetic testing like we do now. Right. So they were speculating as best they could. And... The interesting thing was nobody in my family that we knew of had this eye disease. My parents could see fine. My brother could see fine. Oh, wow. So this was sort of the hidden family eye disease. Come to find out, after I was later genetically tested at University of Emory here in Atlanta, they found out that I have a mutated LRAT gene, which you do the analysis on it and have to have two bad copies of that gene to be symptomatic, which makes a lot of sense because neither of my parents were symptomatic. Sure. are obviously carriers. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to express the gene. My brother does not express the gene. I don't know if he's been tested, but there's a 50% chance he's a carrier. And a 25% chance he doesn't even carry the gene. And there's obviously a 25% chance that I would express the gene because I have both. And that's what happened to me. Got it. Okay. So, you know, you think you're protective when your kids start dating. Wait until you see me ask for a DNA sample from my kids, significant others. Yeah, I'm going to need to see a saliva sample, son. Sorry. Right. Oh, my goodness. Just to know what you're getting into, right? Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

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SPEAKER_04 9:58

What was that like? Well, you don't know what you can't see when you cannot see it. And that's true whether you're walking around or whether you're dealing with a blind spot in maybe your personality or the way that you show up and the way people receive you. Maybe it's your leadership style. All of us have those blind spots. And for me, I learned those physical blind spots by bumping into stuff. And sometimes it was a downspout. that would send me to the hospital. Another time, I'll never forget, I was running down the driveway out on the farm. My grandparents had a farm in Knoxville. And my brother and I, we'd done some work in the field. We're little kids, so doing what we can to contribute. And we're riding up. This tractor's pulling a wagon up the front of the driveway. And it's going up towards the barn. And my brother jumps off in front of me, takes off running down towards the farmhouse. And so I do the same thing. And it's at dusk. And what I did not see is this really big water truck that's parked right there in the driveway. And there's this... pipe off the back of the water truck and I hit it full speed, full speed. And it went right across my head. And I still to this day, and that's been 42 years, more or less. And I still remember looking across the road and seeing both my parents look up at me from across the street, like where they were coming up from the field that we've been working in and blood just, I mean, Oh, my goodness. Pouring all over me. They ended up having to rush me to the hospital. I had to get a police escort so I didn't lose too much blood. That one was a close one because I did lose so much blood. I was there so much that they started questioning me and my parents in separate rooms as to whether or not they were abusing me. Right. So we pretty much had our own parking spot there. Wow. In and out that many times. Yeah, there was a period, I don't know, six, seven times in two or three months.

UNKNOWN 11:53

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 11:54

Yeah, I was there a lot. I broke my leg when I was three or four, jumped out of a pickup truck and landed on it the wrong way. I think I broke my left femur, I think. I've busted my head open, countless stitches, broken fingers. Yeah. You know, wrestling things that when I wrestled in high school, you know, I just hit by a car when I was 15. Yeah. That wasn't because of my eyesight. That was because of a bad driver. But still, I've had some stuff happen. And so that, you know, honestly, my life has been one huge experiment of living outside of my comfort zone. Because my life has been uncomfortable. The physical discomfort of bumping into stuff, the social discomfort of not being able to do things at night that I wanted to do, the emotional discomfort of going blind. And then the discomfort of getting a guide dog and walking into university classrooms and boardrooms and job interviews and crisscrossing the country and flying over to Singapore, China, all over Europe without being able to see and going by myself, not being able to speak the language, read the signage. Or see to get around, but still yet getting up at 5 a.m. to get my morning workout in, finding the gym, figuring out where my piece of gym equipment is without being able to see, feeling my way around the gym and doing all that. And I think it's honestly something that's contributed a lot to my growth is my willingness. to be in the discomfort because my life has been so uncomfortable. And so now I seek discomfort. I want discomfort in my life because I know it forces me to grow in unexpected ways, which is why I do things like downhill ski or go train on the mat in Brazilian

SPEAKER_01 13:42

jiu-jitsu. Yeah, which is just incredible. So, all right, in my home office, I've got a giant bookshelf and between books I've read and, you know, keepsakes and things from the White House when I work there. But I have this little section. And this little section for me, Chad, is books that go on the quarterly reread or annual reread. So I only have about 10 books there. And I want to let you know that your books go in there. Wow. Thank you. And it's things like this. I want to read this next piece to the audience. How can you be sure... you're not staring at a gift disguised as an obstacle, but you're too distracted by the crummy wrapping paper to notice. That's a game changer. I want my kids. So I have four young kids, four young children, two, four, six, and eight. And I want so much of this book to become part of their DNA because at the end of the day, at the end of the day when you say excuses are for losers and i love that chapter and i love your attitude on that at the end of the day as i read this book and i have goosebumps right now again repeating this i have found in my own life deep conviction because of this book so many times where i make excuses and i i get to the end of the book chad and i'm like no more No more. What I've been doing is making excuses. Transparency, drinking, and a lot of things

SPEAKER_04 15:46

that you got into. And I ended up, my parents were really forceful and convinced me to stay in college. And thank God they did because I finally ended up getting my head out of my rear end and focusing on the path ahead as opposed to looking behind

SPEAKER_01 16:16

me. Yeah. And you had some pivotal stuff coming up, right? So you had your uncle, that conversation in the driveway is a game changer. That's a big pivotal piece for you. Tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_04 16:28

Well, so this is my cousin, actually. So my cousin, Mark, he was older. He was like, I think he was 26 at the time. I was 20, 21. He was 26, 27, several years older than me. I'd always looked up to him. Mm-hmm. Because he was older, he seemed to have his stuff together, had a good job, had graduated college. But also, he was a big dude. He was 6'4", 6'5", 260 pounds, pretty ripped up. Like, you know, he's a guy I looked up to because we'd grown up together. At that point, when we were kids, we all lived in Knoxville, and we did everything together. We'd go on vacations together. Every weekend, we were together. And there's a younger cousin and an older cousin. And so this was the older cousin. And me and the younger cousin, we're best buds. We're tight like this to this day. And we would always... you know being into mischief amongst ourselves so you know fighting amongst ourselves and fighting other kids and all kinds of stuff that you know little six and seven year olds do well he's coming back to visit the older cousin his name is Mark and he's there and we go out we go to a Tennessee football game which is kind of what you do when you're in Knoxville during football season so Saturday we went to a football game and caught a game and went back to this place I was living at I was there in Knoxville living with a few guys who were also in college and We lived in this house. It was kind of a party house. None of us really had our heads on straight at that point. I remember we're inside, and Mark's like, hey, Chad, come outside. I want to talk to you. So we go outside. Hey, what's going on, man? We're sitting there in the driveway, and he looks at me. I'll never forget. He looks at me. He's like, hey, man, you know those guys in there you live with? I'm like, yeah. He's like, they're all losers. You keep hanging around with them, you're going to be a loser too.

UNKNOWN 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:11

You need to get your stuff together. And my parents had told me that. My brother had told me that, other people. But it meant something different coming from Mark. And on the spot, I didn't go in and change my life, but those words echoed in my mind for years to come. And it was that straight talk that I needed to hear. And a lot of times... In today's environment, sometimes people have a hard time with straight talk. They get so caught up on the words that they lose the intent. Right. The intent from him was coming from a place of love, and the words sounded harsh, but they needed to be. They needed to be. They needed to be harsh to cut through the crap, right? Sure. And I think that's true for all of us. Hopefully, all of us has somebody in our lives who's willing to say the hard things to us that we need to hear, not what we want to hear, but what we need to hear. to cut through the crap because had it not been for that, I'm not sure I'd be where I'm at today.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

Yeah. So that was an awesome pivotal part. And I love how you told that story in the book. Then you don't immediately change. You don't walk in the house and then leave the guys. So there's a period of time. And then you sort of go off and it's time to go to school. And I believe in New York, right? To get your first dog. Tell us about that experience. What was that like? Something else happened there where you met two younger girls. Tell me about that whole experience.

SPEAKER_04 19:39

So I go to Leader Dogs for the Blind and I'm there. Yeah. I didn't sign up for this. I didn't want to be blind. None of my friends are blind. All of the people I associated with lived a quote-unquote normal life, and here I am dealing with this. I felt like it was unfair, and I felt like a victim. I get there, and I'm doing all the things that you do when you're training with a guide dog, meeting some really cool people, and getting to train with an amazing guide dog, and I met some people there that really put things in a different perspective for me. Some of the people I met there had mental impairments as well as blindness. Some of them were on dialysis because they had diabetes that had robbed them of their eyesight. Then there were these two girls that you mentioned. I'll never forget. These girls, they're literally deaf and blind. And these girls, like everyone else there... They were getting a guide dog so that they could travel independently without being able to see or hear. Wow. For me, witnessing the living courage that these two people had on impact immediately blew all the self-pity out of me because here I am. Yeah. I've been fortunate enough to see for 20 years, had all my hearing, all my mental, and all my kidney function.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

And

SPEAKER_04 21:24

so this literally changed the way that I looked at everything in life, like literally everything. It was an instant reframe for me because no longer did I look at what I didn't have. I started looking at how much worse off my situation could be. I didn't ask to have my hearing. I didn't ask to not have diabetes, to not have to deal with cognitive impairment. I'd been given all these blessings that I'd sort of taken for granted, even the fact that I was born in the US. I didn't... How many of us, we don't get to sign up where we're born or in what era we're born. I could have just as easily been born in the Medieval times, you know what I mean? Yeah. Where there's no opportunity. And so it hit me that happiness and a lot of people think that happiness is this like, oh, I'm going to get there. It's like, no, it's not a feeling.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:16

And it's not an emotion. It's a perspective that you take. It's a decision that you make every single day when you wake up. So that was transformative for me because I left that 26-day experience there at Leader Dogs for the Blind with a newfound perspective on life, and it changed everything because it reshaped my attitude. And when my attitude shifted, doors started flying open for me. professors were more prone to help me job interviews came easier people could see that

SPEAKER_02 22:47

yeah i

SPEAKER_04 22:47

was dealing with a difficult situation but i had a great attitude about it like it i just owned it

SPEAKER_02 22:52

yeah

SPEAKER_04 22:53

it uh it helped me not try and how do i say this it i wasn't I wasn't a victim, but I was actually like at peace with it. I had made peace with it. I was authentic. You know, you could tell that it was genuine, that I was genuinely good with the situation. And that really, that was a powerful thing. When I was working with people, they would see like, oh my gosh, he's got a great attitude. And I guess it was hard for them to even imagine how they would have that kind of an attitude dealing with the situation. So, you know, doors started flying open. And you

SPEAKER_01 23:26

started, I love how you say this in the book, you started turning disadvantages... into advantages. And I love that, just that phrase, how you've used that. I have it highlighted where you say, happiness isn't a feeling. This is how you have it written in the book. Happiness isn't a feeling. It's a choice we make. And that's just so cool how you got to live that and learn that. And that change happened at that period of life. And now you meet these two girls who just change your perspective. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 24:03

Well, a lot of people live their whole lives and they're looking for happiness and they're waiting on something outside of them to create that happiness for them. It's some external factor, whether it's a new job or a romantic relationship or kids or promotion or whatever. And they're waiting, oh, when this happens, I'll be happy.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:22

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. But you alone get to choose how you respond and how you play your cards in life. It's like playing poker. You don't get to control the hand that you're dealt. Yeah. But you've got to

SPEAKER_01 24:54

control how you play your cards. Sure. Literally, I could stop the interview right now, and this would be an incredible, incredible story. But we're really 2% there. Yeah. It starts getting incredible now. It just starts getting so, so good. So you come home. All right, you come home. You've got miles, right? You've got miles. You forget something very important when you get to your apartment, and then the best

SPEAKER_04 25:24

story. Oh, my gosh. Tell us about this story. Yeah, that was an oops. So I didn't have– they tell you when you get home, you've got to find these little tie-down– anchors and you screw them into the baseboard and I didn't have one of those I didn't have one I didn't have it screwed into the baseboard and I'm literally there I think it's day one I just walked in like okay I don't have that I need to take a shower where do I put the dog he doesn't know the house yet I gotta put the dog somewhere so I look around and I'm trying to find something to anchor his leash to

SPEAKER_03 25:56

and

SPEAKER_04 25:56

I can't find anything that looks sturdy so the sturdiest thing I can find is in the kitchen it's the oven door laughing And it's a pretty, you know, it's an oven. It's in the wall. It seems like a pretty sturdy object. So I go and take a shower and I shower and I shave. And so I got to shave my face and my head. And that takes a minute, maybe 15, 20 minutes. I get out. I'm like, okay, great. All right, let me go check on Miles. And I go in there and there's no dog. I'm like, where is the dog? How is the dog? And I'm feeling, you know, because I can't see. So I'm feeling around. I'm like, okay, not only is there no dog, there's no oven door.

UNKNOWN 26:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:33

Like, what the hell happened, right? And so I'm trying to find the dog, the oven door, and so I start feeling the prongs on the oven, and they're like that. He had bent them at a 45-degree angle and yanked the door off of the oven. And he's not making a peep either, so I'm trying to find him. And so finally... I find the dog. He's by the front door, sitting there, just kind of laying down with the leash attached to him and an oven door laying beside him.

UNKNOWN 27:10

I'm like,

SPEAKER_04 27:10

I didn't know they were going to give me a dog as hard-headed as me, but that's actually what they did. He was so hard-headed. And to this day, the smartest dog I've ever seen, but also the hardest-headed dog that I've ever had.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Yeah, rips the door off. So I would just be curious if anybody out there has a story that their dog ripped off their door in this kind of fashion. I mean, it's just incredible. It's just such a great piece of humor. And I've got big dogs. I Siberian Huskies and just can really relate to like just how far they'll go to see that front door. Yeah. Because that's what they were doing for you, right? I think so.

SPEAKER_04 27:52

I mean, German Shepherds are instinctively wired to monitor all the entrance and exits to a residence. I mean, they're trained to patrol. They're trained to protect. They're wired that way. It's instinctive. Every German Shepherd I've ever had, they want to sit at the vantage point that allows them to see as many exits as possible.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

And I think that's what he was doing. What was the story about? It was remarkable in the book. It was, I think, the first time you took Miles to like a mall, and then you gave him an instruction of like back to the car.

SPEAKER_04 28:30

Oh, yeah. Well, that wasn't the first time, but he knew he was being graded. So what was going on was Miles was at this point– see, that was in– Right when you moved to Dunwoody, I think it was. No, this was in Centerville. Okay, Centerville. We were living in Centerville because we were at– I remember we were at McLean's Tyson's Mall in northern Virginia. Yeah. This was in 2005, so it was– I don't know. He was probably six or seven years old. Okay. And so I never could get Miles to slow down. He was like one of those dogs. He was a two-handed dog. Yeah. And I'm not a small guy, but he was only 100, 110 pounds.

UNKNOWN 29:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:10

He was a beast. He would always pull, and I kept calling the school and trying new techniques to get him to slow down. I tried about faces. I tried different harnesses and different collars, all kinds of stuff. I just never could get him to slow down. I never could use him with just one hand. And so this was one of those instances that I had the school come, leader dogs that came and They're assessing the situation. They're like, all right, well, let's go to the mall and we'll take a look at it. So we go to the mall. It's the holiday season at the mall. And this is Tyson's Mall at McLean.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:43

It's a pretty busy mall. You've probably been there. I have. And, you know, it's swirling with people. I mean, it is... It's... It's chaos. People are everywhere. Sea of humanity, right? And the dog, he's so smart. I swear, I think he knew he was being graded. Oh, yeah. So he's working flawlessly. My wife, Evie, she is probably having more problems having people bump her than I am with me. He's just flawless. I'm not hitting anybody. And it's... Yeah, it's chaos there. And so I could tell it was going to be one of those days. So he's not pulling hard. He's not doing anything wrong. He's just literally flawless, which generally does not happen. Flawless doesn't happen. So I turned to the guy, the trainer, and I'm like, hey, he obviously knows that you're grading him. So let me show you what he can do when he wants to. And I turned to Miles. I'm like, all right, Miles, let's go to the car. That's all I said to him. And we're at Tyson's Mall, and he turns around, starts marching down the hallway. We go down the hallway. We make a right through another one of the big hallways and into the Hex Department Store. We go around the Hex Department Store, around the edge, past two doors, up to the next door, out that door, across the parking lot to the parking garage, down a flight of stairs, over two lanes, and up to the back of our Jeep. And all I said the whole time was, all right, Miles, let's go to the car. And I got there, and the guy looks at me. He's like, Chad, I don't know what to tell you. I mean, I can't get you a better dog than this. If I were you, I'd just hold on a little tighter.

UNKNOWN 31:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 31:18

And then I get my next dog after that, and I call, and I'm like, hey, I think there's something wrong with this dog. This is Romeo. He just takes me to any random car in a parking lot. They're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, he doesn't find my car. And they're like... They don't actually do that. That's not a thing. Well, Miles could, and they're like, well, yeah, you had a special one. They don't normally do that. That's not something that most dogs can do. And the only way that I can figure out that he did that, because Miles could also take me to my hotel room, and not just any room, literally my room. Among thousands.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

And the only way that I can figure that he did that is he just kind of instinctively knew how to send his way back to our car and to our room. I don't think he'd been trained on that. He just knew how to do it. He

SPEAKER_01 32:06

just knew how to do it. He

SPEAKER_04 32:06

was

SPEAKER_01 32:07

exceptional. Wow. Very exceptional. Okay. Then what comes on scene as you get this strong interest for coding is this acronym. that's going to play through a lot of your life, probably where you are today, is JAWS. So I want to start off by understanding, what is JAWS? How does that tie into technology and coding and your love for all that? How does that all start playing out?

SPEAKER_04 32:32

So I was at Leader Dogs for the Blind, and my roommate at the time, his name was Steve, and Steve, I'm sitting there talking to him, and at this point in my life, I'd never really been exposed to computers.

UNKNOWN 32:43

Right.

SPEAKER_04 32:43

And Steve comes up to me. He's like, I'm getting ready to leave. I'm going to go down to the library and check my email. It's like, what do you mean check your email? Has anybody told you you're blind? Like, what are you doing? And he's like, oh, no, no. There's a piece of software on the computer called JAWS. And I'm going to use that to check my email.

SPEAKER_02 33:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:02

I said, what, they make that? It can tell you how unprepared I was at the time, right? I had no clue about any of the tools that were out there. And maybe it's because I didn't look into it because I just didn't want to accept the fact that I was going blind, so I was kind of running from it. Right. So that sort of introduced the idea. Well, I came back from getting my first guide dog and started learning about JAWS. And so what JAWS is, it's a piece of software that you load on a Windows computer, and it converts text on the computer and textual representations of graphics into software. speech and braille output. Now, I don't know braille. I didn't have time to learn braille after I went blind in college, but it does work in braille, but it speaks as well. And so... on my computer it would speak out of the sound card or I use earbuds you know I pop in to the sound card and so I can hear what's going on with the computer and it does things like it attaches or takes advantage of keyboard shortcuts so obviously using a mouse is not an option when you can't see hand eye coordination is not that great so you use keyboard shortcuts to do a lot of things and for a lot of applications the keyboard shortcuts are built in and where they're not you can create keyboard shortcuts you Using a special software coding program that comes with JAWS. And so I came back and I started learning how to use JAWS and learning how to use Windows and getting familiar at a very, very rudimentary level with Word and Excel and wasn't anywhere close to proficient. But I was learning and then got my first job offer. out of college with Anderson Consulting, which is now known as Accenture. And literally, my job was technology. That's what we did, was write code and do things like marketing and finance reports and things like that for our clients. And so I was sort of thrown into the deep end pretty quickly. I went from, oh, here's a computer. Here's how you turn it on. And you actually turn it off by clicking start, which is kind of weird, and shut down, right? And so... I go from that to starting my job at Anderson, and literally the timesheet that I needed to use didn't work with JAWS. It was this custom-built application. It looked like a spreadsheet, but JAWS didn't get the data that it needed to process it in a way that worked for me. And so... For me to really be able to do my job, I discovered pretty quickly that in order for me to be as effective and as successful as I need to be, I needed to learn how to write code so that I can engineer JAWS to work with anything, starting with my timesheet application.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Right.

SPEAKER_04 36:01

So that I could assign my hours across different project codes that we have. And so that was the first thing. And so I downloaded a Word document that had a how-to write code. And I'd never written code before. I've gone into pre-med initially, did a lot of biology and chemistry and microbiology and those sorts of classes and ended up going into business, have a good financial mind, but it's not exactly the same as writing codes. I was not a computer science guy. But again, my livelihood and what I had to do if I wanted to be able to do my job, I needed to learn how to write code without being able to see my computer screen. And so that's what I did. I sat down and spent months and months and months writing the first program and figured out how to do that and got started getting pretty good at it right started getting pretty good at it very dedicated and my wife would come to me sometimes and she's like oh what are you doing like I'm learning how to write code and she's like why I need to be able to do this that and the other and oh by the way if I get really good at this I think I could make money doing it and she's like ah come on really so I ended up Getting to a point to where I'm building software for Oracle's software that they couldn't figure out how to do. And they start referring me business. And after I started getting these big checks in the mail, like we bought our first vacation home with it. And she's like, I'm sitting in there at the computer. She comes up. She's like, can I get you some coffee? Do you need anything? Kind of won her over at that point. This actually could be a thing. But I had done some things. A former colleague from Anderson came to me. And he said, you know, we've got this customer who has an employee who can't do his job because of a problem between jaws. Yeah. And this software application, and this software application in particular is called Siebel, High Interactivity Framework. It's a thin client CRM piece of software. That thin client just means it runs on a browser. And so it had an ActiveX control. It had a bunch of stuff going on with the HTML. Nobody could figure out how to make it work, including Oracle. Oracle, who owned the application, had been going around telling everybody that it wasn't possible, that it could not be done.

SPEAKER_02 38:20

And

SPEAKER_04 38:21

so I ended up– I did it for this client. I got the customer up and running. This guy had been using the software. I had another client pop up a few years later. They're like, can anybody make this work? I said, yeah, I can make it work. I've done it. And I'm sitting on the line with their Oracle technical account manager and a couple of other folks, and they're like– It cannot be done. We've already told them that it cannot be done. I had my client there whom I'd done it for, and they're like, actually, I've been using it for a year because of the code that Chad had written for me. Yeah. I ended up having to go testify in a court case, too, because of it in California. Incredible. Because it was an employee who was saying there needed to be an accommodation, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, it was one of those things where I just started learning how to write code just so that I could do my job and ended up spinning off into another area to where I was doing it for other people professionally.

UNKNOWN 39:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:25

That actually helped me out when– and I know we haven't gotten there yet, but I started constructing technology deals and commercial outsourcing and mission services that we sold to the U.S. federal government. Well, because my blindness forced me to be more technical, I can understand the technology deals that I was constructing in a better way. Right. Because I was so– familiar with the technology because i was so dependent on it i had to learn the back end of the technology just to do my job so i started constructing better deals automating a lot of the work that we were doing in microsoft excel because we had these very complex financial models that we would use picture picture like a five billion dollar deal yeah and you've got 50 partners and everybody's got sealed packages and all these complicated formulas and buildups and pricing allocations across. We call them CLINs. That's what they're called when you're selling to the government. But it's ways of segregating costs and price and submitting them to the client for a contract. It stands for contract line item number, I believe, is what CLIN stands for. But it's very complicated stuff. And so I ended up having to just to be able to use a lot of the models that we were building. This was when I was doing commercial outsourcing. I had to write code to connect JAWS to the back end of the Excel models. So I learned our document object model just so that I could connect JAWS to Excel. I wrote over 13,000 lines of code so that I could do my job more effectively with these very advanced spreadsheets. But that ended up helping me because when I needed to... to write a formula or build an architecture for a financial model on a$5 billion deal, It's pretty easy to do. If you're used to writing code for software and for spreadsheets, building a spreadsheet is pretty simple at that point. I got really good at it. In fact, I got so good that when Microsoft did not include a formula that I needed to do my job, I would just write my own formulas in Visual Basic and make it public and call it from my spreadsheet. I would automate a lot of what we were doing. Some people, they would have to do things manually, point and click and all that, and I would just write code to do it, and then I'd go get a So you were

SPEAKER_01 41:43

part of the pricing models behind so many incredible deals. You talk about all of them and a lot of them in the book. Do you have a favorite one? Favorite deal you worked on that came through and it was just more rewarding than any of the others or a great story about one of those big deals?

UNKNOWN 42:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:03

See, the one I would say that probably sticks out the most, probably because there's the most scar tissue with it. It's funny how it works like that, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, this was an Army NSCOM deal that we worked on.

SPEAKER_02 42:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 42:20

And I want to say this was in 2012 or 2013. Okay. And other competitors we had, they had... you know, three or four pricing folks working on the deal. They had the pricing strategists and they had three or four pricing people handling all the requirements because this was a$5 billion deal. And we had sealed package requirements, which means you had to, you know, 50 partners, you've got to coordinate. Each of those 50 partners sealed packages has to be unique to them. It's got to be linked to everything that you're doing. It's potentially a lot of hand jamming and spreadsheets.

UNKNOWN 43:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 43:01

In contrast, I was the one person who did this at SRA. I was our pricing strategist. I set the price to win. I set the labor rates. I set, you know, led all the pricing discussions, all the, you know, what are we going to do? Got all 50 partners on board with the pricing strategy, the allocation of hours, managed all the sealed packages. It was fantastic. The first time in my life, I think, that I'd ever worked a 22 or 23-hour day, got everything in. And it was the first time I've actually sat on a phone call with our business unit president, and he asked me, he's like, hey, are we going to get this across the line, Chad? And I'm I'm highly confident, right? I'm a highly confident guy. And it's the first time I was like, I don't know, Pat. I'm going to do what I can. But, you know, it's a heavy lift. And we ended up, we did get it in. We did get an award. We did get audited. I led the audit. Got audited by the DCAA, which is about as much fun as it sounds to get audited by the Defense Contract Audit Agency. Oh, my goodness. Had a successful audit outcome. Ended up getting a seat on the vehicle, and every year after that proposal, we won. The entire proposal team, and we're talking 50, 60, 70 people, would get together and send around photos and memories, and we even... talked about getting in the parking lot one year and burning all the papers just to exercise the demons. It was a rough one. It was a really, really heavy lift. It just exemplifies one of the points that I talk about, that if you're never dealing with adversity or you're never dealing with discomfort, then you're not going to grow. Some of the most rewarding things that we've had in our lives... are the most difficult moments. And so if you look back on your life, some of the most enriching things that you've done, let me ask you, were those easy things or were those really hard things that forced you to redefine your boundaries? And so I would hypothesize to you that if you were to live a life void of obstacles, no adversity, it wouldn't be that much fun. It wouldn't be very rewarding because you wouldn't be forced to grow in unexpected ways. And so I've learned that through the professional like this, like what we're talking about, having to learn how to write code without being able to see my computer screen, having to deal with 23-hour work days from time to time and stretch to get a goal accomplished, to get something across the finish line and do something meaningful. But those are the things that we look back on in our lives and go, wow, I did that. I didn't know if I could do that, and I did that. And I think it's a really important thing. I think instinctively we want to have a life that's a little easier.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

And

SPEAKER_04 46:02

that's normal. It's normal to want to have things a little bit easier. But gosh, if it's so

SPEAKER_01 46:07

easy, how enjoyable is it? That's it, right? The learning doesn't take place. So right around this time, I think a transition happens with you where– You, you make a quote in the book that says I could not correct my vision. So you've come to terms on this and you're now living it. That's the difference. So you're not only saying it or thinking it in your mind, this has become part of your heart and your DNA. I could not correct my vision, but I could control how I see the world.

SPEAKER_04 46:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

That's just so, so incredible. It's another one of those, like I want my kids to hear that language. Right.

SPEAKER_04 46:49

Yeah, it's really when I started thinking about what it takes to be more resilient. And how did I get to where I was? Because the reality of it is I started reflecting on, like, I don't know if we're at this point in the story yet, but I'll just riff a little bit on where I think we're going or where we're at. Please. I get to go to Harvard Business School. Not because, you know, I... was born into an Ivy League family or because we had a bunch of money. I didn't have any of that. What happened was I brought in over$45 billion in contracts for my employer. And they're like, Chad, you've done so much for us. What can we do for you? And for some crazy reason, I asked them to write a six-figure check and send me to Harvard. And for some crazier reason, they said, okay. They agreed. And they sent me there. And I started sitting there thinking, like, how does this happen?

UNKNOWN 47:48

Like...

SPEAKER_04 47:49

How did I get to where I'm at? Like, I'm a bit of an outlier. Okay, first of all, you know, I'm in the top 1% of my company. I'm senior leader at the company. They're sending me to Harvard. On top of that, I'm totally blind. Like, I'm way outside the bell curve in my mind. And I'm asking, you know, just out of genuine curiosity, how the hell did I end up here? What happened? And that's when I started unpacking initially what I now refer to as the anatomy of resilience, which is what I teach people through my keynote speaking and workshops and through the book and training course that I'm working on, is the anatomy of resilience. And that's when the first seeds were sown for that, is really trying to understand what did I do to get here? And the second pillar is, Mm-hmm. But then I started realizing when I'm at Harvard there is how did I get to where I'm at? I think it's had a lot to do with the stories that I told myself about my circumstances and my ability to navigate that. Now, I could have just sat around and chosen to tell myself that I went blind because I've got terrible luck. And that could be a technically true thing. Sure. But instead, I chose to tell myself that I went blind because I'm one of the very few people on the planet who has the strength and the toughness to overcome that and use it to help other people. Now, technically, both of those stories can be true. Right. Whereas one of those stories frames me up to be a victim. But the second story, the better story, is a Jedi mind trick. It transforms my disability into my strength. This happened to me because I'm mentally strong enough to deal with it, which means I'm mentally strong enough to deal with all of the other curveballs that life throws at me. And so if you can learn, and the technical term for this is called cognitive reframing. Okay. How do you take a basket of circumstances that doesn't feel favorable and internalize it and attach meaning to it that instead of keeping you trapped in the victim mindset, the poor me, I have bad luck mindset, flips the script... and reframes it into an asset. Blindness became an asset for me. It became an asset because I felt the reason it happened to me is because I have an unusual mental toughness and strength, and I have an ability to help other people with it, which became my purpose. That's now what I do for a living is I help other people with this. And I could learn how to reimagine how to take something like blindness and make it work for me instead of against me. I figured out in my mind's eye how to make blind look good. And I know that sounds funny and it's a little tongue in cheek, but it's so true whether you're dealing with blindness or whatever it is in your life. If you can't reimagine greatness in those unchangeable circumstances, how could you ever move towards acceptance?

SPEAKER_01 51:13

It is so powerful.

SPEAKER_04 51:15

You can't.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

It's so powerful. And you say, you ask the question, what story am I telling myself about myself today? What story am I telling myself about myself? I love that. I just love it.

SPEAKER_04 51:28

The victim mentality either starts or gets eliminated there.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:35

That's where it is.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

Yeah. There's a point in the back of the book, too, that I want to highlight while we're on this topic. So it's on 188. It's in the appendix. And you say, these advantages are just as true as my problems. And they cast my problems in a new light, which give me the tools to choose stories that supported my happiness on a daily basis. And then you ask two questions. So this is an interactive part where you're actually challenging the reader to write and journal. And the first question, there were the first question that you write is, write out a description of what's making you feel frustrated and hopeless in any of these four areas of your life. Work, relationships, personal growth, health, and fitness. Okay, so I sit back and I go, okay, I can think of one or two in each of those areas. And then the second question or statement that you make is, now, write out the story that you tell yourself About each of those situations. And it's one of those moments for me where it's like, wham, the book just jumped off the table, hit me straight in the face and was like, oh my goodness, I totally see it. It's the story that I'm telling myself that I made up. I made the story up. Yeah. And somehow in my experience and my life, I will play the victim. I have a tendency to play the victim in some of those areas.

SPEAKER_04 53:00

You're human. Welcome to the journey, right? Right. Welcome to the journey.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Yeah. So I just I wanted to highlight that part because I had made a note of it earlier. Then this guy, Ben, who becomes what I would say, at least according to the book, is like one of your major mentors in life. For sure. Started off as business, but then he became a staple and a major mentor. Tell us about him. Where did you meet him? What role did he play in your life?

SPEAKER_04 53:28

Ben played a huge role in my life. So I remember I was interviewing with Ben. I'd been contacted by a recruiter I was working at, a large Fed IT company. We sold to the government. At the time, we had the TSA contract, the original TSA contract. After it had been established, this was a$2 billion account, and that's what they'd hired me to help out with was this really large account. And I started talking to Ben, and I'd realized that I'd stepped off sort of at the wrong stop. Pricing wasn't really seen as strategic where I was, and there was a whole lot more to pricing than just buildups. Like, okay, give me the cost, and I'll tell you what the wrap rates are. Okay, here's your price. Here's the fringe rate. Here's the overhead rate. Here's the G&A. Here's the profit. There's your price. There's way more to pricing than that. Sure. There's understanding the budget, understanding the current spend level appetite for savings, volumetrics that you would use to size the environment, creative ways to structure, what's your pre-sale strategy, what's your point of sale strategy, what's your post-close execution strategy to improve gross margin over time, all these different things that Ben and I spoke a common language of.

UNKNOWN 54:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:49

They didn't speak that where I was at the time. And so we developed a relationship. And he said, look, I want you to come work for me, but I want you to stay where you're at for now. I want you to learn what you can while you're on this deal. Because he didn't have a deal that he could offer me that was as consequential as this TSA deal. It was a huge deal, huge account. He's like, you're going to learn a lot. Because I'd been in commercial up until that point. This was my first Fed deal. experience. Everything I'd done was commercial outsourcing. So think Bank of America and Boeing and these huge Sears and very large commercial deals. So this was my first experience with Fed deals and the FAR, the Federal Acquisition Regulations. And so I did that and we ended up going through the RFI process. We didn't even make the down select from the RFI Didn't even get to the point where we could submit a price. And so we'd been– the government was– they didn't like what we'd been doing in the preceding number of years before I had arrived there. We had the contract at that point. I think it was established in 2001. And so this was in 2007. So six years we'd had the contract. Okay. And they just– they wanted a change. That was basically what it boiled down to. So we didn't even get to the point of submitting the price. And so I start working for Ben. I'll never forget. I'm interviewing with Ben. First time I'm interviewing with Ben, funny story. He's looking at me. He's like, I'm telling him about my models and all these complicated spreadsheets and all these formulas and everything. He's like, Chad, some of these deals, they're so big that they can make or break our company. Are you sure you're really able to do all this stuff? And I told him, I was like, Ben– This stuff is so easy I could do with my eyes closed. And to this day, I can still remember the sound of him laughing. And it was cool because he got a sense for, look, it's a high-stakes environment. I get it. And I take my job very seriously. But I don't take my situation so seriously that I can't have fun. And I think he knew that the environments that I would be managing, leading our executives through these very consequential deals, would take some of that. It would take some good humor. It would take being on top of it. There's warmth and there's competence. That's why people follow people. Are you able to do the job? Do you have the competence? I had that. Do you have the warmth? Are you able to relate with people? Can you get people to laugh? Can you use humor to disarm the tension? And he saw that I had that too. And so I ended up Working for Ben, we got hired, and I got hired and started working for Ben, and we developed quite a relationship the time that we were together, you know, not long after being hired. My wife got pregnant with our first child, Juliana, and I didn't have enough bank time to take time off, and there was a program inside the company, and some people can donate paid time off, and I said, look, I don't need a bunch of time, but I'd like to spend some time And he's like, look, I don't think we have to make this too complicated. He's like, look, you stay at home. I want you to check email once a day, no more. But I want you to do some, quote, strategic thinking

SPEAKER_02 58:11

on

SPEAKER_04 58:12

this big treasury deal that we've had you working on, a$325 million deal. And we'll just call it a day. You do some strategic. And so he recognized that by him meeting me where I was in the moment... It would come back to him. Right. And honestly, I would have taken a bullet for that guy. Yeah. He was amazing. The best leader of men that I've had the opportunity to be around. My wife and I, we ended up getting separated for a period of time. And it's in the book. I talk about it there. We had some problems. Ben literally, and he's not the kind of person who would have done this without talking with his wife and his kids and everything, but he literally, and I didn't take him up on it, but he invited me to come stay at his house if I needed to for a period of time. Find me one leader in corporate America who's willing to help somebody at that level. And when somebody does that for you, they demonstrate to you that they care about you more than just the transactional nature of the

SPEAKER_01 59:14

work that you

SPEAKER_04 59:15

do. Yeah. you will take a bullet for them.

SPEAKER_01 59:18

Yeah. The humanness there is, is remarkable. His, just the story of, and it doesn't end there. Your story with Ben doesn't end there. It just continues on and he continues to pour into you and be such a strong mentor. And then you guys parted ways and we're going to, we're going to get into that. Um, so for, so for right now, tell us a little bit more about how you met your wife, that story, uh, It's great. I know there's more to it than what the book just says. The

SPEAKER_04 59:49

short version is that my friend was hitting on her. And he stepped away for a minute and I started talking to her. And at this point, I'm 26 years old. I'd had my first guide dog, Miles, for about three years. And look, I had my guide dog and it was very good for my social life, you know. women love the dog and I loved pretty women. It was a good deal, right? He became quite an icebreaker, as you can imagine. People would come up and they would oftentimes, you know, women don't want to appear too aggressive, right? Because they don't want to look like they're the one pursuing. But if you have a disarming German shepherd, it's a lot less intimidating for them. So a lot of times women would come and approach me and they would start talking to me about the dog. They would use that as a conversation piece. In fact, my friends wanted to rename Miles to Magnet because every... You did say that, yep. Everywhere we went, you know, the dog would attract females. And my buddies were like, they would get so mad, you know, they'd be like... Give me the dog. I want to walk. Give me the dog in your sunglasses. I want to walk around for a little while with Miles. Right, right. Look, man, he'll attract them over here, but you've got a mouth. You've got to use it. Use what you've been given. Well, I meet my wife, not my wife at the time, obviously, Evie. I meet this girl, and she doesn't say anything about the dog. My friend stepped off, and she and I start talking, and for an hour and a half, two hours, we talk, and she didn't say one word. about this dog at my feet. And I'm wondering to myself, genuinely, wait, is she blind too? Like, what's going on? Surely she sees this big German shepherd here at my feet. She didn't say one word about the dog. So I knew that this girl was different, right? She was able to stand on her own and not take the layup of, let me talk about the dog. The fact that she had moved here from Brazil by herself... Didn't really speak the language. Didn't have family, friends to support her. I knew that this girl was different. She had... some spunk, some courage to be able to do that, to move to another country where you don't speak the language and to not have a support system. I don't think everybody can do that. I think it's just a selected group of people who has the courage to do something like that. And from that aspect, I felt like we were cut from the same cloth because I moved to Atlanta by myself. Not as far. I spoke the language, but I was totally blind living on my own. And I felt like to do what I had to do took some courage as well. And so I thought there was some kindred spirits there. And the fact that, I don't know, she just seemed very energetic and charismatic and all those things. I was taken aback by that.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

Yeah. It's so special. And then the part in the book which just really opened my eyes was when you planned the travel to Brazil, and she was already down there. Yep. But then what you learned about the country, and it was like, whoa, they don't let dogs just go everywhere in restaurants. Tell me about that trip.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:59

Yeah, it was interesting. First of all, I decided that I wanted to make this girl my wife. And so I found an engagement ring. I smuggled it in my dog because I'd heard about all the corruption in Brazil. And if they catch you bringing that in, you're going to have to pay a huge, either a bribe or a fee to get it in the country.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:23

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:23

So I literally turned Miles into a jewel mule. I had him with a rock in his harness. And we get in the country and... I'd been told, you know, how dangerous it can be and all these other things. And, you know, getting the dog in the country was okay. But then we got there and it got the ring in and all that. And it was like everywhere we went. It was a fight. Getting into hotels. She worked for weeks in advance trying to find places who would take the dog. Going to restaurants. It was like a knife fight in a phone booth everywhere we went. Yeah. Just getting into a restaurant or getting into a taxi or whatever. One time, I remember we were at this churrascaria, which is a Brazilian steakhouse in Copacabana Beach in Rio.

UNKNOWN 1:04:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:14

And we're waiting there for lunch, trying to get in for lunch. And they won't take the dog. They won't take the dog. And finally, this guy behind us comes up and says, listen. And he's saying all this in Portuguese. He's like, I'm a police officer. You must take this dog. I've sat here and I've watched this for too long. You need to take this dog now. Otherwise, we're going to start getting involved. And the person at the front's like, okay, okay, we'll take him. We'll take him. And they get a seat and we turn to the guy like, oh, thank you, officer. Really appreciate it. He's like, shit, I'm not an officer. I'm not an officer. I just, I felt bad for you all sitting there that long. That is such a great story.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:48

Yeah. I was like,

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

that's awesome. Was that Miles? Yeah. That was Miles. I'm a visionary because I can't see, which is so, so, so awesome. And then when you had Romeo just a little bit later, which we'll get into Romeo, you make that phrase in the book, which is just so awesome. An event happened that I'll let you get into in a little bit, but where you say it's like the blind leading the blind, which is such a great, you know, you're just really good at that. It's so easy for me to, Just to get that sense how this has become part of your DNA and you truly have turned it around to be an advantage versus a disadvantage. So I just I wanted to bring that up. But, you know, we get into a tricky part now and it's. ah, it's so tough in the book. I actually started to tear up, but the, the same, the farewell, uh, the farewell to miles. It's just, let's touch on that a little bit. Cause I was just wondering ahead of time, like, well, you're so connected to the dog, not even like a police canine officer. Cause they come home, they can leave their dog in the house and then go out to dinner a couple hours. You're every single minute of every single day with these dogs. That bond has to be beyond anything that I can have them. So how, How was that? And tell us a little bit about miles saying goodbye and stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:23

Well, he started having issues and we would go out, he would start shaking, you know, and bear in mind at this point I'd had miles. I got him when I lived at one place in Knoxville and I moved, I don't know, two or three times in Knoxville and moved two times in Atlanta and And then moved to D.C., Metro, Northern Virginia, and moved two or three times there. He'd experienced a lot of different environments, a lot of different things. Sure. And all that change can take a toll on a dog as well as it does people. And he wanted to go work, and he was excited to go work, and I would get the harness out, and he's ready to go and love the work. Then we would get out. he would start shaking. His nerves were, they were shot. You know, his nerves were shot. He could still do the work, but he just, you know, emotionally, he just, he couldn't, he couldn't really deal with the pressure of it anymore. Was he 12 years old at this time? No, he's probably eight or nine.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:29

Okay, he was eight or

SPEAKER_04 1:07:29

nine. Yeah. And, you know, you always want to, you want to be with the dog, but at the end of the day, you want the dog to have some good, useful retirement time to where he's– if his heart's in it and his body and his mind are in it, great, let's keep going. His heart was in it and his mind was in it, but his body wasn't. His body had said enough. And it just didn't feel fair to keep pushing him even though I could tell he wasn't comfortable. And so made the hard decision. to retire him at a pretty early age. You know, eight and a half, nine's a little early. And that was really hard, you know, because you're with him all the time. Literally every meeting, every flight, every waking hour of every day, we had been together and had taken me from kind of the pits of despair when I had met Miles.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:35

To now, you know, successful career, upward trajectory, happily married, just life had completely flipped. And I think I owe a lot of that to him and what he was able to help me navigate. And we decided to retire him, and this is in February 2020. In D.C., you know D.C. well enough to know February is not a very warm time of year. My wife is Brazilian. She doesn't really love the cold. Sure. She's like, look, it's his last weekend with us. What do you want to do? I'm like, we're going to cook him a ribeye. That's what we're going to do. And she's like, you know, because you're not supposed to give them people food. Right, right. But I'm like, look, he's not working anymore, so we're going to do one last hoorah, and we're going to give him a ribeye. And she's like, okay, you know what, for him, I'll get out and cook him a Brazilian-style ribeye. And she looked at me and she meant it. She's like, I wouldn't be doing this for you, okay? Let's be very clear on that. Yeah, let me set some expectations moving forward. This is not happening for you. This is for him, okay? It's his last moment with us. It's February. It's really cold outside, you know, and I'm doing this for him. And so we did. She fixed him this ribeye and we took it and we put it in his bowl so that he could, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:59

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:59

Eat it out of his dish. And he looked at it for five minutes. He looked at it. He looked at us like, I'm not falling for this. This is a trap. Yeah, he knew. He was afraid he was going to get scolded for it. He's like, uh-uh. I'm not falling. We had to take the steak and kind of hand feed him. Like, no, we're serious. You can really have it this time. Yeah. And he was pretty happy we gave him that and then gave him to the family who adopted him, who had a 10-acre farm. Outside of DC area in Warrington, Virginia, where we got some updates from them. His job was to chase deer off the property and eat milk bones. And we told them, hey, if you were to give him... Yeah, right. would read to Miles while he laid there on the floor because they weren't intimidated reading to Miles, but they were intimidated reading to adults. So he was able to find a second career

SPEAKER_02 1:11:18

in

SPEAKER_04 1:11:19

making elementary school children comfortable in learning how to read to overcome their reading

SPEAKER_01 1:11:25

disabilities. Yeah, and right at that point, I couldn't read to pages because I had tears in my eyes. I'm with you. I mean, it was just... remarkable, but what a life it goes both ways. What a life, you know, you, you gave him as well. And it's just, it's so incredible. It's such a, such a cool, such a cool story. And I'll say in the book, there were several times I learned so much about, about these dogs and the training. And what fascinated me was when it said that they get desensitized so that if you walk in a steakhouse with them, they're not like looking for the meat.

UNKNOWN 1:12:04

Um,

SPEAKER_01 1:12:04

Or, you know, like smelling that steak and then chasing it and then leaving you. I'm just curious. Were you part of that process of desensitizing them or are they already desensitized when you meet them at the school? Or how does that work?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:20

Well, first of all, they're never given people food, ever. Okay. So there's an expect ever. Okay.

UNKNOWN 1:12:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:28

Yeah, for a number of reasons. Number one is manners. Number two is digestive system and predictability in the digestive system. Number three is it's just not good for them. It's not a healthy diet for a dog.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:43

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:43

And so they're never given that. The expectation's never created. And so from birth, they're always given a certain kind of dog food at a certain time in a certain amount. Right. And it's all very prescriptive because, I mean, these are$75,000 dogs. Yeah. Like, they're not the average dog. They literally, as an example, at the C&I, they've partnered with the University of Pennsylvania. They've identified the genetic marker for hip dysplasia in German Shepherds, and they've eliminated dogs with that genetic marker out of their breeding stock. A lot has gone in to developing these dogs. These aren't just two guys in a garage training a dog to find a curb. Right. There's a lot that goes into it. And so with so much that goes into it, you have to think through all the different dimensions of what the dog will be doing. And a big part of that's nutrition and making sure the dogs are healthy and not overweight and getting the right nutrition. And obviously having good table manners is really important too. It's up to the school to lay the foundation.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:53

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:53

But it's up to me as the handler to reinforce that and extend that and make sure that the dog continues to obey well. In fact, I've even done food refusal training with dogs. Wow. What is that? It's teaching the dog to ignore food that's either offered to them or is laying on the floor so that they don't go for it. And you do that. The way that you do that is with clicker and food reward and that sort of thing. But you kind of tempt them. Have somebody tempt them, and when they refuse it, you set them up to be successful, but then you reward them with food from the handler, and you condition them over time. So if you're, for example, walking through the mall, and you're in the food court, and there's a piece of chicken on the ground, you don't have to worry about your dog scraping one up and munching on it,

SPEAKER_02 1:14:41

because you don't want

SPEAKER_04 1:14:42

them doing that,

SPEAKER_02 1:14:43

because

SPEAKER_04 1:14:44

who knows what that chicken's going to do to them? Who knows if it's even sanitary? Who knows... you know, if it's chicken, right? I mean, you just, you don't want them taking food from anybody other than the handler. Right. That's, that's awesome. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:00

So we move in, we, we come into the Harvard story. So incredible. I want to, I want, I just want to have you go through it in your, in your own eyes. So, you know, you mentioned before that you, the company paid for your experience for your, for your education. Yep. You know, getting there day one. You told this, I love the story of how you were running late after class one day and the accommodations they made. Take me through the whole thing and then sort of right into the speech, how they chose you to do the speech and all that.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:34

Yeah, it was next level for sure. So I had some accommodations when I went to the University of Tennessee. And don't get me wrong, I'm a big University of Tennessee guy. But when I went to Harvard Business School, it was It was pretty next level. It's what I guess you would expect in some ways. And the fact that I was on the executive ed campus too probably helped a little bit too. But yeah, I was running late for class one day. I was getting my 5 a.m. workout, and I was running late getting back to change and everything. I needed to get food, and I'd been given as a– As a courtesy for me, my situation, if you ever need anything, literally anything, you call this person and they'll make it happen. I thought, you know what? I don't want to phone that in too often, but here I am. I wanted to get some food. It's like, okay, I'm going to pull the card today and see what happens. So I called in breakfast. Is there any way at all possible? I could get breakfast delivered to my room. I'm on my way back from the gym. I don't think I'll have time to find my way down to the food hall where I can get some food. Well, I get back to my room and there's a full spread of breakfast laid out, like, you know, coffee. omelet, fruit, whatever, like really nice, really well laid out. And so they're just super accommodating. Let me come in early to learn the facility, you know, before class started. And, you know, I had a person on call if I ever needed it to help me with whether it's the food or it's getting around or whatever, just extremely accommodating. And, you know, you think you go to Harvard and you're going to learn A lot of case studies, which we did, and that was very important. And the case study method and the debate in class was fun and it was important. But I think one of the more meaningful things that I learned that changed the trajectory of my career was when I was studying with Bill George. And Bill George, for those who don't know, he was the CEO, president and chairman of for Medtronic, which is one of the world's largest medical supply companies. And he was in that role for 10 years and took their market cap from$1 billion to$60 billion in 10 years. Not a bad 10 years of work, right, to multiply value by 60. Yeah. So then he decides he wants to give somebody else an opportunity to lead. He goes off and comes back and decides, you know what, I'm going to go teach at Harvard Business School. So that's where he is, and he's teaching authentic leadership, and I'm learning with Bill in his True North Leadership Framework. And the book that we're reading, his book, Discover Your True North, and we're going through this, and it teaches you how to mine your life's experiences for moments that shaped you in a particular way. And a lot of it has to do with the difficult moments, the emotionally challenging moments at times in your life that really were consequential in how you developed as a person. And a lot of my fellow classmates, they're wrestling with, oh, what's mine and what do I do? And mine just sort of reached up and smacked me in the face. I'd realized that I'd never really done anything with the fact that I went blind. I just sort of moved on and kept moving towards my goals, but I never tried as Bill suggests, to take the difficult moments and link that to my purpose and my passion and my profession. Because if you can find the intersectionality between what you do as a profession to what affected you on an emotional level to an area where you've got some talents, that's the recipe for purpose and passion. And as this is going on, I had this feeling that I'm in class. I had this feeling because people there in class would tell me how impressed they were that I was leading a lot of the discussions in our debates the way that I was and consuming the information and really contributing in a meaningful way to discussions without being able to see. They were really blown away by this. So I had this sort of gravitational pull that I was going to be elected as our graduating speaker. And so being the type A person that I am– I go to my wife. I'm like, hey, honey, I think I'm going to be our graduating speaker, so I think I need to find somebody to help me. And I found this guy. I was listening to a podcast. I found this guy in Texas and worked it out. I was going to fly to Texas and drop a lot of money to have him help me write a 12-minute talk about For a graduation that I had not even been nominated or elected to give. And she looks at me and she's like, you really think we need to spend that many thousand dollars on something that you don't even know for sure is going to happen? Right. You just had a feeling it might happen. I just had a feeling. Which is incredible. I felt it. I paid attention to it. Right. And I was like, I don't know why, but this is supposed to happen. I wish I could explain it. And so... Being as supportive as she was, she said, okay, it sounds a little crazy, but go ahead. And so I did. I flew to Texas. I met with Garrison. We sat down. In the course of one day, we ironed out a 12-minute talk. Two weeks later, I go back to Boston. Actually, I go to Boston. I think it was right after that. Anyway, I go to Boston. We wrap up. I do get nominated. I do get elected as a graduating speaker. I was prepared because I'd been preparing. I'd been learning my content. As soon as I got it from Garrison, I started learning what am I going to say and how am I going to say it. So obviously I was prepared because I had done the work. And I'll never forget. I had a few people, a lot of, I mean, standing ovation, and there's a terrible quality video of it out there on the internet somewhere. But I'll never forget this one particular guy who comes up to me afterwards, and he's like, he's literally, he's bawling in my arms, crying like a baby. I can't figure out what's going on. And I later found out that this guy had lost a daughter the year before to cancer. And something I'd said had helped this guy. And I'm not really, you know, a soft and fuzzy person. That's not really been how I've been wired or brought up or anything. Sure. But I'm sitting there like this guy is just– when you have a moment like that, it changes you.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:03

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:04

You know, and it changed me. It inspired me. to move beyond myself and start thinking about how I could do a lot of good in the world if I could just move beyond me and focus on other people. And it's not just about how I see my situation, it's about how other people see my situation. And so that's the moment I decided to put some real effort into writing a book, into building a keynote speaking business, and then to try doing something beyond Myself, right? Doing something to open up and give back to others with the experiences that I've had and what I've learned along the way.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:47

Yeah. There's another great story within that story that I got out of the book. And it was just the sheer fact that you reached out to that guy on LinkedIn. Like, just that step that you took, and I believe your approach on that was, wow, is this guy even going to write me back? Because he's a big, well-known, famous kind of author, speaker, coach, consultant himself. Yeah. Just the fact that you took that step is an incredible learning lesson in this story. You never know if the answer is going to be yes if you don't try. And he writes you back, I think you said, the very next day. Yeah. And there's a story there that I love.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:27

Well, it's very interesting to me how all this fits together. It all makes sense now. But in the moment, it's these seemingly coincidental things. So I'd started off, I'd called the University of Tennessee.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:43

And

SPEAKER_04 1:23:44

I said, look, my mom literally read every single college business book to audio cassette for me. Something needs to be done for her. Like, I doubt I had any classmates who read all of the books as carefully as my mom. And because she did that, I made straight A's in business school.

UNKNOWN 1:24:04

Jeez.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:04

And I wanted her to get recognized for that. I was trying to do something for her. So what did they do? They turn around and they give me the Accomplished Alumni Award in 2014. They give her an Honorary Accomplished Alumni Award in 2014. That became the impetus for my employer going, you've got a big story here. We should do something for you. Send me to Harvard. They sent me to Harvard. I go to Harvard. I have this feeling. Then the... The intro that I sent on LinkedIn to Garrison, I sent a link to the article that the University of Tennessee had written about me, about my accomplished alumni award, that showed him this isn't some fly-by-night whatever. There's actually a story here. Yeah. Would he have responded if I didn't have that? I don't know. The odds are lower.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:51

Yeah,

SPEAKER_04 1:24:51

for sure. But in life, like with anything, to your point, the odds, if you don't try, are zero. They are zero. Zero. So there's a non-zero chance if I try. It might not be 90%, but it's higher than zero. And that's been my approach to whether it's going to Harvard, becoming a speaker, writing a book, learning how to ski, jumping out of an airplane, you name it. The odds are zero if you don't try. So the only thing you have to lose is a little bit of pride. What's pride matter at the end of the day? Do you want to know what was possible in your life? The only way that you'll know what's possible in your life is if you try to redefine your boundaries to push your edges and redefine what's possible. And the only way to do that is to put yourself out there and try. Sure. If you'd asked me when I was 23 if I'd be where I'm at, there's zero chance I'd tell you I'd be where I'm at right

SPEAKER_01 1:25:44

now. It doesn't make sense. The words together don't make sense. I would have never imagined it. Blind 21, Harvard, coder, skier. That's what I go back to. Yeah. And if you pulled out the blind part and just said Harvard, coder, skier, you got a story there. Yeah. But you do this all with no vision, which is incredible. It doesn't

SPEAKER_04 1:26:08

seem believable. I don't know. I've had a tendency to swing for the fences because I know I only have one life to live as far as I know. As far as I know, you do too. You only have one life to live. So the only thing you have to lose is not knowing. So would you rather fail in pursuit of your goals and know where your boundaries are and push your edges? Or would you rather fail by not taking action? Either way, you're going to fail. Yeah. So what would you rather do? Know what's possible and have lived your best life? Or never know just how wildly successful your life could have been? Right. I can't live with the regrets. The future Chad... thinks about, okay, there are two fears. There's the fear of failing and the fear of not knowing. The fear of not knowing is scarier for me. What did I miss out on? Because I just didn't have the guts to try. That

SPEAKER_01 1:27:05

makes so much sense. On the University Tennessee, on that award that you got, I love how you say in the book that you surprised your mom. You basically framed it up as mom come Come and see me get this award, right? You didn't tell her, Mom, come because you're getting an award too. So it was a surprise. And what I want to know from you is what did that feel like when you were there? I

SPEAKER_04 1:27:33

just felt so good to be able to give something back to somebody who had poured so much into me.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:38

You said, My mom. This is a sentence you wrote in the book. My mom was my eyes. And that is just incredible.

SPEAKER_04 1:27:48

How could you let someone down who has sacrificed that much? When she sat down and read every single one of these business books, my dad would go to work, she'd be reading. He'd come home, she'd be reading. Around the clock. She had no voice. She's reading constantly. Wow. When someone sacrifices like that so that you can get an education, so that you've got a shot at making it,

SPEAKER_02 1:28:15

How

SPEAKER_04 1:28:16

can you let them down? And that's– you don't have to be a parent. Maybe you're a leader at an organization and you've got team members. When you go beyond yourself and you sacrifice and commit to helping them, it's going to inspire them to reach their full potential.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:35

Because they don't want to let you down.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:37

Right. And that's how I felt. Yeah. Chad, something that fell off throughout the story, and I want to– shine some light on this in the beginning, you mentioned drinking and you, you called it out

SPEAKER_02 1:28:51

and

SPEAKER_01 1:28:52

you know, you named it and you were drinking too much and you knew that as the, as your story continued to go, that seemed to fall. Did it actually fall out of your life or did it just become less or I didn't see it towards the end of the book as much. Has there been a change in relationship with, with alcohol?

SPEAKER_04 1:29:10

Yeah, there definitely. So I think, During that time, it was a way of medicating.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:15

And

SPEAKER_04 1:29:17

later on, I still drank, but not to medicate, just as a social thing. And I'd say now, even I don't drink that much now. I drink some, but very rarely. And that's a lot of Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I train every day in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu was just not that fun after you've been drinking. So I would rather– I made the mistake one time of going and rolling a little hungover. And I will never do that again. It was awful. And I just– I enjoy rolling more than I enjoy drinking. Right. And I just– they don't mix well. They don't mix well at all. So I'll occasionally have something, but it's kind of rare at this point because I love rolling a whole lot more than I appreciate a good drink. I still like a drink every now and then.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:09

Sure, yeah. It was just neat in the book to watch as like, things started taking off and you started going through your career and you started, you mentioned exercise and all these things. And then it was right at that point where it just, yeah, it fell off. We got to have

SPEAKER_04 1:30:22

priorities. I mean, when I was in college, it was a priority to not feel the way that I felt and I medicated in that way. And as I got more comfortable in my situation, medicating wasn't really a thing anymore. I didn't need that. Sometimes I would do it for enjoyment, relaxation or whatever. But even that now, like for me, relaxing, as ironic as it sounds, is going on the mat and having 250 pound men try and Choke me out. That's trying to armbar one another. It's very cathartic because it's hard to be thinking about stress or having stressful thoughts or whatever when you're on the mat. When you're training, you got to be in the moment because if you're not,

SPEAKER_01 1:31:02

it's going to be pretty quick. You're tapped out. You're in trouble. Where's the school at that you train?

SPEAKER_04 1:31:06

It's in Marietta. It's called Borges BJJ. It's up here. The Marietta PD, all the recruits train there. I roll with a lot of the guys up there, Marietta PD. In fact, my good training partner is the deputy chief of police up there. Oh, cool. Yeah, there's a lot of good people in there, man. Coach Beto up there, Humberto Borges, has developed quite a curriculum for law enforcement. It's great to watch how he's taken– Yeah. Anxiety flares, adrenaline spikes, people aren't calm. But when you train in it every day, it's just another fight. Like it's okay. Your head doesn't even really have to get in the way because your body knows what to do. You've been in the situations so much that the training takes over. And it's very cool to be able to empower police officers. Many of them, when they first come in as recruits, how many fights have they been in? I don't know. A lot of them haven't been in very many fights. Well, when you train in jiu-jitsu every day, you're in fights every day. Right. We're not trying to kill each other, but your body's learning what to do and how to put yourself in the right position. And you don't panic when it happens on the street. Officers know what to do. Right. They can disarm the situation without using deadly force and just use their training in jiu-jitsu. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:42

That's awesome. All right, Chad. Two questions. Two questions here as we wrap up. Sort of a disappointing time for me, I've got to say, because I have a thousand questions, and I can see now literally how Joe Rogan does these three-hour interviews, because I could talk all day. I mean, we didn't even get into your new dog that's not in the book, Major. But I do want to hit two very important key items that I got through the book. So the first one is, as you look back on your life, Is there anything that stands out that you would do differently?

SPEAKER_04 1:33:27

I think there are always things that you think about that you would do differently. I can think of things, but I'm not sure that I would want to do them differently. Yes, I would want to do some things differently, but I'm not sure I should do them differently because I wouldn't be who I am today If it weren't for those things, like, you know, for example, the nonsense I did, you know, messing around in college when I was trying to process going blind, I wasted some time there.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:34:00

But maybe I needed to waste some time, maybe, you know? And so, yeah, would I like to do that differently? Yeah. If it allowed me to get to where I'm at, I mean, the risk there would be, Maybe I needed to get it out of my system, and I got it out of my system then versus jumping straight into the next thing. And then those feelings or those mental thought patterns lingering and still being here today. Maybe that's exactly what I needed to do to get it. I don't know. I'd love to tell you that Yeah, these things I would absolutely do differently. I'm not going to pretend to have the wisdom to know whether or not things would have been better. I know there are things that in the moment and in reflection I think did not serve me,

SPEAKER_02 1:34:49

but

SPEAKER_04 1:34:50

I also realize that I don't have all the answers. And I'm at where I'm at. I'm in a pretty good spot mentally, emotionally, relationally, all those things.

UNKNOWN 1:35:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:03

It's easy to find things that I wish I hadn't done that, but who knows how that would have changed the trajectory of my life if I had

SPEAKER_01 1:35:10

done that. A funny little note in the book. I like the little story where you talk about you got two numbers on both sides, like on the opposite side of the napkin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to let you know that. I didn't read past that. Like, that is funny.

SPEAKER_04 1:35:26

Yeah, that was funny, right? My friends were pretty mad at me. Like, come on, man. Really? I know. I know. A girl's number on each side of the same napkin? What is going

SPEAKER_01 1:35:36

on there? It's just funny. Take advantage of your disadvantages, man. Yeah, right, right, which is so awesome. All right, so to end, you have undoubtedly the most unique perspective on diversity in the workforce that I've personally seen because when you– towards the end of the– actually, at the end of the book– You start with diversity and my mind just goes to like, okay, the whole book was great. Now we got a thing on diversity and it's going to be diversity in the workforce. You have a different perspective on diversity and I want to hear, I want to hear a little deeper on it, but what I ascertain from it is diversity in thought, not diversity in appearance and that was a light bulb moment for me so we're not saying fill your board of directors or your board of advisors with people who look or act differently it's people who think differently because i think you use the number six where you go just imagine having six people who all think the same how are you going to possibly get the best outcome for a problem elaborate on that

SPEAKER_04 1:36:57

When most people talk about diversity, they tend to talk about the way that people look. Being blind, I'm obviously not the most qualified person to talk about the way people look. And the way people look doesn't always reflect how they show up and how they contribute. I think people use it as a proxy. for diversity of thought. Maybe it's one of the best proxies that people can come up with, but I think what we're really after is diversity of thought and creating cultures inside organizations to where that diversity of thought is facilitated, it's encouraged, and it's allowed to be expressed so that It's not the highest paid person or the loudest voice in the room who controls the narrative. It's an opportunity to where you invite people from different walks of life, different cultural experiences, different ways of thinking to contribute to solving a problem. And maybe it's a hidden something like introverts. Let's take introverts as an example. I'm extroverted. You give me a problem, you and I show up, you can explain to me the problem on the fly, and I can have a debate with you about it. Okay. Maybe you're wired that way, maybe you're not. Introverts, they're not wired that way. They need information ahead of time, they need to process it, they need to reflect, and then they need to show up, and then... They may not be comfortable debating on the fly and fighting for airtime to be able to take the floor and speak their minds. Right. Well, if you're leading a team, how do you make sure that you get the best ideas? The best idea may be in the head of that person who's an introvert. But you're just not... You're just not getting it. So you may have tons of ideas that are slipping through the cracks that could improve your organization every day. And so if you have a person who's an introvert, how much would it affect your business if you were to say, all right, here's the meeting we're going to have in a week. Here's what we're going to discuss. I want each of you to come prepared with your thoughts. And then as the team leader, instead of letting everybody to debate free flow, you actually control the narrative. You give everybody equal airtime to present their thoughts. So it's not just the highest paid person or the person with the loudest voice who dominates the airwaves. Everybody gets a chance to voice their ideas. And I think that is really where when I hear diversity, it's about you're trying to get to the best possible ideas because that's what's going to end up driving the most progress, the most value, the most innovation. And it shouldn't be dependent on the way people look or Or the way you think of diversity, whether it's– a lot of people don't think of it being hidden. Diversity can be hidden. It can be introverts versus extroverts. Lots of different ways that diversity shows up. But I think at the end of the day, what we're trying to get– in the business world is that diversity of thought to create value, to create innovation, and to move us forward. And the only way to do that, I think, is to be more intentional about how we think about it and how we facilitate it and kind of moderate it in a way.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:18

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's just say it's a small business,$10 million or under in

SPEAKER_02 1:40:25

revenue,

SPEAKER_01 1:40:26

and the you don't have a board of advisors or you don't have this diversity thing that you're talking about, put that together for us. How would you go out and solve that? Who would you look for to put on a little board?

SPEAKER_04 1:40:42

Well, what I would probably do is if I was in that situation, I might join an organization where I could get different ideas from different people. I would find a board of advisors through an organization like Entrepreneur's Organization or YPO or maybe alumni forums. There has to be some way that... Yeah. Yeah. A lot of it is, oh, I'm in this industry, or I'm in this role. Functionally, I did this, or I'm a CEO of that. Everything from private equity to roofing to captive insurance to technology. Sure. Just lots of different industries and lots of different roles, and how does that manifest? Warehouse automation is another one. It's just you want people who have different experiences, right? And so you have to surround yourself with people. And you don't have to have it organically inside the walls of the organization. That's ideal. But if you're leading your organization, you have to have it one way or the other, whether that's through the organization or outside of the organization. And there are groups and organizations that you can belong to that may not be inside the walls of your company but can still provide you that sounding board.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:15

Yeah. Special. What a, what an awesome time here. I can't say thanks enough for joining us. I appreciate it. Coming in. Thank you. And you too, major. My goodness. Just hung out. Yeah. Staring at me. Look at these eyes. Yeah. He's so adorable. All right. Give, give, give a, give a last send off to everybody out there. If there's, if there, if they watch this show or listen to this show and they go, man, I, I now understand that I've been making excuses. Give them a little encouragement here with what to do.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:55

Where's the camera? Is it at you or over there?

SPEAKER_01 1:42:57

Right here. Sorry, to my right. Over here. Over here? Where I'm at over here. Yeah, right here. Like right here. To Jeff's right. Yeah,

SPEAKER_04 1:43:06

sort of like. I see

SPEAKER_01 1:43:07

sort of. You hear me talking? Yeah. It's right behind me. Okay. So talk, just talk to me. All right. And it'll be right there.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:13

The single most important factor in your life in determining your outcome are the stories that you choose to tell yourself about your ability to overcome the challenges that are presented to you. You will become your stories. So you have to make sure you choose your stories wisely. And so anytime you find yourself in a situation to where you think it's too hard, guess what? If that's what you're thinking, that's true. But if instead you think that you can handle it, whatever it happens to be, you can navigate it, you can deal with it, you can own it, and you can make it work for you instead of against you, then that's what you can be. So if you get your mind right, if you create the right mental model of recognizing the power of choice that you have, choosing the response, telling yourself the right stories, reimagining greatness, even in unfavorable circumstances, and getting comfortable with the discomfort of doing the hard work, then you can unlock your full potential as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:23

Incredible. All right, folks, thanks for joining us here today. Major, thanks for coming in. Chad, again, cannot say thank you enough. On my show, and my guests know this, I don't sell and promote books unless they truly bring change to my life or they make it in that direction. little tiny spot that I talked about in my library where it's like, this is a continued read. This is not one you read today and put down. So I do want to just, I'm holding up your book now. Um, it's, it's blind ambition. Um, we, we went through a lot of the book today. Um, your, your stories, it's incredible. First off, it's incredible. I mean, again, if we said blind and then Nothing after that, and I sat you in the chair 35 years later. It'd still be incredible. It'd still be incredible. But blind, Harvard, coder, skier, and fit, and jujitsu, and all these things. It's just incredible. It's so inspirational. So I do want to say a heartfelt thank you to you. Thanks for doing this book. This book's encouraging. It's inspiring. It's so helpful. I already see application to have you on for another episode in our next season. So thanks for taking the time here. Of course. Best to you guys as you travel. You said you have a very busy work schedule. Speaking in Madrid, Italy, other countries. All

SPEAKER_04 1:45:54

over the place. I think I've got 50 year 60 events coming up.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:58

Gosh, that is so awesome. Well, thanks again for being here. My pleasure. Folks, thanks for joining the show today. Thank

SPEAKER_00 1:46:04

you. Thanks for watching The Jeff Obeck Show. Be sure to subscribe and follow us on all socials.