Speaker 3: (00:47) Hi everybody. This is Sam Taggart, your host with the D2D podcast and I’m here with Chad. Hi Miss. One of our speakers at D2DCon this year and he is one of the very few or he is actually the youngest that ever was inducted in the hall of fame for the Speakers Association.
Speaker 4: (01:06) Okay.
Speaker 3: (01:06) He’s an influencer today, but what makes him so unique is he’s one of the few and only quadriplegics that travels around the world by himself. So stuck in a wheelchair. He’s still married to his high school sweetheart and lives a great family life, travels all over the world and the country and does it by himself speaking hundreds of times a year and has been deemed one of the best speakers in the world. So super excited to welcome our guests. Chad. Hi Miss. Thanks for being on the show today.
Speaker 5: (01:34) Thanks. Now I’m really an elaborate over-the-top introduction, but thank you nonetheless and it’s wonderful to be able to spend time with your people looking forward to it this Friday.
Speaker 3: (01:44) Yeah, so let’s dive into this. Tell us kind of in a nutshell, you know, obviously you’re probably going to dive a little bit more when you speak, but kind of give us the rundown. You weren’t always a quadriplegic, you weren’t, you know what I mean? Like Evans lived a normal life and it’s funny, I was talking to ty Bennett the other day. I’m one of your friends or speaks also in whatever. And it was, it hit me when it’s like going from a normal life to a quadro could put quadriplegic life that’s got to be harder than being born into quadriplegic gives them or whatever you’d call that. Um, so I’m sure that’s been difficult and I want to jam on that. So to get, yeah. Kind of fill us in. Tell us kind of the, the backstory.
Speaker 4: (02:25) Okay.
“I wanted to create this vision in my mind. So I got into sales.”
Speaker 5: (02:26) No, I think you’re right. So, so my dream, whenever it was obviously to be a speaker, I think people need to know that I, uh, I don’t know too many people grow up thinking, you know what? I want to go up on a stage and speak in front of thousands of people or 500 people or 50 people, people, you know, that’s, that’s been known to be one of the most common fears of monks. People is to speak in front of their peers or colleagues or what have you. Um, that sad. My dream has always been to, to be a rancher and a farmer. And when I had that vision of owning all that ground, I could not fork out the dough as a 21 year old kid pay for all this ground that I wanted to create this vision in my mind. So I got into sales.
Speaker 5: (03:11) Uh, my dad was a sales insurance agent and I, uh, started off the company in the landscape development world, um, and, and sold, um, landscaping plans and also produce the product and grew that company from one to 52 employees, um, from the 41 to 27. And during that course of time I was building the dream. So the d the sales was the backbone or the final are to my actual dream of farming because a bank didn’t want to lend me money to raise elk on a ranch that they thought that was a Jurassic Park vision. Maybe they didn’t like it, but I knew I could make that thing work. So I got into sales real quick. I, I learned from my dad had a sale and let’s just cut right to the chase without going too deep into this because I don’t think that’s the purpose of our call.
Speaker 5: (04:02) I break my neck to get to know you can resonate with the sales crowd. Hello. I mean that, that’s right up my alley sales. I love sales and that’s what I do today. I mean, everybody, you know, you’re, you’re your own best. People buy you. They don’t buy, they don’t buy your product. They buy you. And so did I, you know, I sell, I sell myself as a, as a speaker and an influencer and an author and, and, and so the list goes on. But that said, I broke my neck one night after coming home from the sales world while building my dream at night. So you could say contract or by day. So sales by day, farmer by night broke my neck at night while working out and building the dream and uh, broke all the bones in my neck and I won’t go into the details.
Speaker 5: (04:43) I’ll just go right to the results. I was able to live through that and I woke up three and a half weeks later at night, was pronounced by my father, a quadriplegic, excuse me. So I’m not sad about that. I every time I still think about that I think about my dad and what he challenged me to do with my prognosis. I think it’s admirable that my father did not allow anybody else to give me my news or my prognosis other than him. So he gave me the prognosis of no arms and no legs. And then he gave me some challenges to that. They were, I’ll, I’ll call them calls to action to make me be even better than I was before. I’ll go into that deeper in, uh, in Friday’s event. But with that said, it’s now been an 18 year journey and you and I are talking on the phone today.
Speaker 5: (05:32) I’ll be flying to Houston tonight. I’ll be in Tokyo after our event on Friday. It’s been 83 countries on all seven pieces of ground that God made in the last 18 years. And, uh, my farm has grown from what I thought it was going to be, two 83 countries. And so part of our talk on Friday is going to be about thinking a little small and not doing that. And how do we away from that and look at the grand scheme of things. Um, I, uh, I’m going to dive deep into that, uh, with our audience on Friday. And so I am not one of, but, but, and I, and I say this with a little bit of pride, but I am the only quadriplegic that’s known of in the world that, um, that travels alone. So I don’t travel. I don’t travel with a nurse. I don’t travel with my wife. I don’t travel with one of my children. I, um, I, and people always say, how in the heck does that work? A guy that doesn’t have dick know. So how’s that? We’re so we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about that. How does a guy with no arms and no legs stay that busy? You know, and, and, and, and, and I, and I say that with gratitude, not with arrogance. I say that with most, I’m very grateful that we’re busy. So anyway,
Speaker 3: (06:40) We can get into the habit. So Jason Hewlett, I was telling him that you were speaking as well and he was like one of the most interesting things about Chad is his ability to leverage people and let them serve. So tell us kind of your philosophy because I don’t think people fathom having no arms, no legs, and being able to travel the 83 countries. I don’t think people fathom how that works. Getting on a plane, getting off a plane, security. I mean it like, I don’t think people could even fathom that.
“I’ll give you the principle. The principle is we all take pride.”
Speaker 5: (07:14) So I’ve got a good staff that kind of lightens things out for me, but, but nothing’s really planned as an in depth as my meetings with the airport or somebody picking me up or how does that work? So the truth is this, here’s the principle. I’ll give you the principle. The principle is we all take pride. Being Independent, I have found the opposite. True. The more I depend on other people’s strengths, okay, strong or my weakness was become. Now you can physically, because I physically can’t. I have the biceps, I don’t have the stomach muscle. So when I depend on somebody to actually physically, I mean when you picked me up at the airport, it’s not just a general pickup, you pick up, I mean it’s a physical pickup picked Jana, was that depending. So, so what underlying principles, the founding principle of, of allowing yourself to be successful as a salesman is too.
Speaker 5: (08:02) That’s what right about this event is. Rather than coming here and seeing how well others are doing and comparing yourself to their successes, find out what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, and see what you can do to serve them better and take their strengths and intertwine them into your weaknesses. And that’s what I’ve done is I’ve taken other people’s strengths and I’ve intertwine them into my weaknesses. And I have a lot of them. Speaking was one of them. And I’ve just taken that and I’ve, and I’ve applied that in my, in my speaking arena, I have my own style of speaking. I don’t use, uh, uh, you know, my, my speeches on Cam, they’re not memorized. I have, uh, an entourage of about 200 stories that I picked from that. I will share two or three stories to share the principles that the meeting wants me to cover and we just hit those.
Speaker 5: (08:50) And so I’m not your normal, let me put it this way. Normal is the wrong word to use. I’m not your, your, uh, your average or your, uh, I hate using the word normal. Your syndicated speaker where they have, where they, they’re an expert on sales or they’re an expert. I consider myself an expert and a lot of topics because I study everybody’s materials. I spent, I read them so people write books for us to read and share with other people. So I just read them and share with other people. That’s what I do and tie tied into my, my store. So I don’t, you know, and then we have our own materials and, and, and our own company and curriculum as well. So hopefully that gets people.
Speaker 3: (09:28) That’s awesome. I kind of want to dive into, you sent me a couple of your books and when I hired you to speak, but the, the one that was really intriguing was actually the smaller one. I mean, I didn’t, I haven’t read
Speaker 5: (09:40) okay.
Speaker 3: (09:40) At either one. I’ve just kind of skim through the store on your own wings. It’s six principals to give your vision flight. And I kind of, one of the questions that I really have is just at what point did you have this turning attitude from? I’m Al Quadriplegic, my life is over too. I’m going to be a motivational speaker and go to 83 countries. You know what I mean? Like it, like how did you craft your own vision? And then I kind of want to dive into the principles that you’ve kind of,
Speaker 5: (10:10) I’m going to answer that question. You’re still with me, right? You’re sweating. So I’m going to answer that question. Um, it’s, it’s a, it’s a long store. We’re going to make it short. So think about this for a second. Two months before my dad, before I had my accident, my dad goes to his sales meeting. That’s why I just think it’s so cool that you’re having a sales meeting. Very similar to what we’re doing here. A bunch of different industries, but my dad starts talking to other people and there’s a speaker that speaks that at the end, which is held in Dallas for, for a bunch of different insurance agents. They all recruit against each other. They all fight for different, those same clients and different clients. I mean, this is the grand poobah of insurance conventions. And my dad goes, because he’s in one of the elite groups of his insurance company back in that time frame back in that day, and a speaker gets up there and speaks, and my dad was so impressed that he did something very uncanny of him.
Speaker 5: (11:09) He bought his VHS tape and his book. Now for my dad to do something like that and spend 40 bucks to get a tape means he wants to share that with somebody. That was us. It was, it was when I say, oh, so it was me and my three brothers and my spouse and our spouses, and we never made that happen. It was just, we were all too busy. Uh, I, I can’t give a good reasonably, we just, we never, we never watched, we never watched that VHS. Two months later, my dad’s all the sun would break his neck on a farm and when you’re paralyzed in a hospital and you wake up from a coma, you really don’t have any say about what they put in the Ba cr for you to watch me. You just don’t have any say. And my dad puts that tape in and I watch it.
“He was successful. I wanted to commit suicide.”
Speaker 5: (11:50) And that was my drug. I’m just telling you, I, I, not that I wanted to be a speaker. When I say drug, there was something different about him than me and some similarities. The similarities where we have the same circumstance now he was just like me, our hands look the same. Our bodies work the same. Uh, those were a couple physical commonalities that I notice. But there’s also some things that I noticed that were different. He was happy and I wasn’t. He was, he was happily married. I didn’t want to be married. He was successful. I wanted to commit suicide. Those are some differences. Okay. And so I needed more of that drug. I needed more of art. Burke was his name, so my dad just called up his office, ordered everything that art had for sale. I’m being straight up. My Dad ordered all the drugs he could get to make me better, all the different tapes, different books, and here’s the, here’s the key factor and then we’re going to stop.
Speaker 5: (12:43) The key factor is they were not delivered to us by mail. Art brought him in person. There’s a, there’s a principle we’re going to talk about on Friday is this guy took time out of his day. That was an unpaid visit. Does that make sense? So this guy did something completely out of his contract, completely out of his sails, selling the products that you normally doesn’t sell. And he was selling me hope and he gave me those materials. And then he actually showed me a couple of things that he did to get himself dressed with no hands. And I’ll never forget how I felt watching that. In other words, he was a sales mentor for me without even without even charging me or wanting to charge me. He just saw potential in somebody he’d never met. And that guy would pass away unexpectedly and his sleep nine months later.
Speaker 5: (13:35) And I thought it in for nine months and we became friends and he kept coaching me. And not, not, not to be a better person, just how to get dressed, brush my teeth, how to, you know, be, be a decent husband to my wife if they get these suicidal thoughts out. I mean, and he’s not even a psychiatrist or, anyway, I made this guy does not, is not in a degree. It doesn’t have a degree to teach people about mental health. And that’s probably what most would have suggested for me. All I needed was art Burke and he would pass away due to an allergic reaction to medication. And when he passed away, there was a void in this world that needed to be filled. And I jumped in with both of them feet just saying, I jumped in because I felt, uh, I felt the drive that I couldn’t stop.
Speaker 5: (14:20) And that drive was to fulfill arts shoes. And I had been speaking ever since. That’s awesome. So kind of give us your principles about what creates a vision like that. I mean, obviously that’s a really powerful moment that I don’t, yeah, I don’t, I don’t think that everybody creates their own vision. I think sometimes people are giving ideas. The problem is they don’t act on them. Two impossible, which I, you know, let’s, let’s, let’s not even talk about that vision of speaking cause cause that was a vision that I’d never had. Remember I told you it came to me saying, can I do, a lot of times we have things that come, we have impressions that come to us. We have thoughts, we have instincts. We have a thought of maybe taking the wife out for a date when it’s not Valentine’s or her birthday or an anniversary.
Speaker 5: (15:05) Or maybe it’s a vision about going and sit down with one of the kids are doing homework even though we have no clue about the geometry and we don’t act on those instincts. Um, I, I think sometimes it’s, um, it’s, it’s allowing other people’s vision to, to enhance yours. Never. My vision was just to be a farmer. Well now I’ve realized that I don’t need to wear cowboy boots or be secluded to the 600 acres I live on. It’d be a farmer today. I wear warm clothing, hoodies, shoes that slip on and hoodies that I can get on real easy with my teeth and my, my tongue and a slide techniques. And at my farm is the whole world. I mean, I’m just, I’m just, I never dreamed it would be that be that way. So I, I think sometimes we need to not think outside the box.
Speaker 5: (15:50) That’s a way over used term. I think sometimes when it comes to that visions, a grading visions, we need to throw the box out the window and be willing to just optimize on strategy and be very, very innovative. Just because most people in wheelchairs and my circumstance using an electric wheelchair doesn’t mean I have to. Just because most are in group homes, it doesn’t mean I have to, just because most people am I circumstance do not have children or get married doesn’t mean I have to. I’m going to throw the box out the window. I do something that is completely some of the greatest influencers in the world. Of fact, most of the greatest influencers, and you can name a few, I’ll name a couple, uh, Princess Diana. There’s one a Nelson Mandela, or they liked what he did or what he did and he influenced the world.
Speaker 5: (16:38) Jesus, the Christ, whether you believe them in or not, he influenced the world. They threw the box out the window. Um, yeah, I mean, I could go mother Theresa. There was another, she had no accent. I’m not even Catholic. And I just loved that lady. I mean, think about the access to Facebook she had, or wait, she didn’t have access to face, but I’m sorry. I think about her Instagram followers. Oh, wait, I’m sorry. I just realized she didn’t have Instagram. Yeah. Yes, she influenced and had millions of lives, millions because she went out and did what artburgs yet she found a place to serve without being asked. And that is an underlying foundational principle that must be executed with people that are in the sales profession. You must go serve people without being asked and don’t go sell them your product. Make that be your second objective or your third. I love that. And I,
“come from a perspective of I’m here to serve”
Speaker 3: (17:30) You know, speaking of this whole mission of my calling, you know, I actually was on a meditation retreat, um, and this is when it kind of, the void hit me much like when art passed away and it was really to bring honor and integrity and up uplevel the selling industry. And you know, one of those pieces and principles is just service. I mean, I look at it and I go, what grade or industry do you have the opportunities to really serve so many people talk to so many people lighten somebody’s mood, you know, make somebody’s life easier. Whatever it is you’re pushing. But I just think if you come from a perspective of I’m here to serve, you know, one of my favorite sales books is the go giver gives more. And you know, it’s all about that. So I love that. So let me ask you this, when, what was the friction? I mean, when you, when you throw out the box, this is what I have noticed. When you throw away the box and you say, I’m just going to get, go against the green 100%. What are some of the frictions that you’ve had along this 18 year journey? Um, that have really been a struggle for you?
Speaker 5: (18:39) So the first thing is you have to be willing to fail. I mean, I can’t tell how many pills stay years I’ve had my life, especially if you have to be, you have to look for opportunities to fail and then be willing to fail. Um, look how many multimillionaires and have lost their money or lost everything. They pat, you can’t begin to realize the power of what you can gain until you’ve lost almost everything. And I think I’ve lost almost everything a couple times in my lifetime. So it’s okay to fail. It’s not those that fail, that get ahead in life. It’s those that fail faster. So when you fail, you get back on your feet or get back to your chair. I can’t tell you how many times I fall out of my wheelchair at that. I fell out again on Saturday. It was probably one of my hardest falls.
Speaker 5: (19:17) It was slippery out there. I had people around me, but I still fell out of my chair, hit my head not once, not twice, but on three different stairs while going downstairs because the person behind me had a loose grip and not their fault. I done it much safer. I just did. But I fell. And so there’s a lesson to be learned from that. Get back up as soon as you can, if you’re able and, and, and you learn from that. So number one is to be willing to fail. Number two, uh, you know what? I’m not going to share on the host because I’m sharing them on Friday. I want people to want more. Teasing a little bit. It must be wanting to fail. And I, so I can’t tell him at times I’ve failed a brushing my teeth. How many times I’ve choked on a carrot.
Speaker 5: (19:57) Uh, I’ve had it how many times this is, this one’s this one’s toss. How many accidents I’ve had to learn what I can and cannot eat. And then to learn to train my bowels or my bladder when to react based on stimulation because I’m also a quadriplegic that’s not hooked up to any tubes. Does that? So there’s nothing hooked to me at all. No matter what when I fly. So I have to have my body regimented. Today’s a Friday. Today if I had a Texas, I can tell you my stomach is empty. It’s empty. It doesn’t mean the intestines, UFT, but the stuff, because I do not want a problem on a plane.
Speaker 3: (20:34) Yeah. When you poop your pants on a plane. And that’s embarrassing. Well
Speaker 5: (20:37) Then that never happened. But I’ve seen it happen. I smelled it with other kids, you know, diapers being changed. So that taught me something. Right. Real quick. Hey, I don’t want people, I want my seatmate smell map. So now, but, but, but to say that I haven’t had an accident like that would be a lie and those are very humbling experiences for me. So I’ve learned a little bit about what my body can and cannot take and I need to be cost. Another thing is gaining weight for me, very easy for people to gain weight. I need to keep my weight under one 70 I believe this is just chat. Hi Miss. It’s not some philosophy so the other people can lift me up and do a suburban or a truck. Yeah. Right. So my wife can help me out and my wife is, my wife is tiny but so let’s got arms is still so she can help get me up. So anyway, those are some underlying
Speaker 3: (21:26) Let’s jam on failure a lot because in, in door to door sales, it’s one of the most failing jobs out there. I mean you deal with one, probably one of the highest turnover rates to you deal with no way more than you deal with you. Yes. Yeah. Rejection is, is is just like a car.
Speaker 5: (21:43) It’d be everybody’s motivator. So when somebody says no to you or someone says you can’t do it, all you say is who’s next? Who’s next? When somebody says, no, they’re not going to hire me. I said, you know, I’m not arrogant. All right, let’s move on. Who’s next? I don’t want to waste time. I don’t have the time to waste on somebody’s w. What’s the saying goes? You can lead a horse. Come on. You know this theater horse lead a horse to water. You can’t make the horse drink. So I’m not going to talk about that as it pertains to the clientele that we sell to. My biggest fear is we’re going to have a thousand plus people on Friday sound and people are going to come there and they’re going to hear some, some things will change their life, and my theory is that they’re going to be the horse. It doesn’t drink, and they’re going to go back and keep doing what they’ve been doing. What a waste of a few days in Salt Lake City, Utah. No, that’s, that’s my, my biggest fear. My biggest fear of not speaking, I don’t get the butterflies because my stomach is numb. My biggest fear is that we’re going to have horses out there and an audience that won’t drink. And I’m asking them not to be that horse.
Speaker 3: (22:48) That’s huge because, you know, you said it best earlier on in this is, it was, you know, I, I felt the void, but it’s a matter of whether you take action or not. And I think a lot of people are afraid to find a mentor, invest in themselves, do something different, go great. You know, like, I just think it’s, it’s sad and me included. I’m not, I’m, I’m in that, there’s a lot of times where it’s like, why didn’t I just act on that? Because I felt it, you know, and, and I watch it over and over and over again. I think that that’s what creates, you know, mediocrity and, um, you know, people that don’t succeed, it’s just simply they don’t do anything about it. It’s like they have all the water right in front of him and they just look at it.
Speaker 5: (23:33) Yeah. Wait for somebody to get the, cover them to do it for them or wait for the phone to ring. Anybody can sell the phone rings. What about going out and actually sell them? But that’s our verb did. And we think about this, his legacy, he’s been passed away now for 18 years and his legacy still lives on through me. So I take a lot of pride that he, it. He was selling something without even knowing that it was going to need to be done. That’s what happens. So, so I think that a good way to end this and this pod on without giving away too much, is this, is that when we all leave this life and we all will one day, what are you going to take with you? Well, the answer is nothing that you sold. You’re not going to our, all of our pockets are going to be empty for sure.
“the legacy that you left behind. I think deeply about that.”
Speaker 5: (24:16) But the one thing you will take with you is the legacy that you left behind. I think deeply about that. It’s not the amount of money you let your kids, it’s not an inheritance. It’s where people better when they’re around you. Did they become that? They reach their potential? That my kids realized that I loved them and that I spent time with him. I used to say it. Did I tell my wife to those thank you often enough for all of the service that she rendered me. Did I, did I give back in a way to give back? Even if I don’t have the finances to give back, that I find a way to give back. How much money did Mother Teresa have? None. And she gave to me. It’s, I’m just saying, uh, we’re not going to be judged on our titles and we’re not going to be judged on what church you went to. And I come from Salt Lake just like you do. Or most of us go to the same church. What does that mean anyway? It’s not, I’m not going to be asked that question. I am going to be asked, you know? So did you, did you teach those kids? Uh, what did you do? Learn. You get our darkest hours. Did you find someone to serve and what did you do? I’ll be asked those questions. I just have to everybody else of time do it.
Speaker 3: (25:32) That is, that is a great way to really look at life too. I think so much we caught, we get caught up in this, you know, the worldly things as I say it, and it’s, what is it really relevant in the grand scheme of things. And I love that. I love that dude. Honestly, Chad, this has been inspiring for me. Like I, I enjoy doing podcasts just because I get to meet awesome and amazing people like yourself. Um, and I look forward to meeting you in person on Friday. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time, chat and, um, appreciate it. Appreciate you and all the inspiration and give everybody, so thanks man.
Speaker 6: (26:10) Thanks a lot for your time, Steph.
