April 16, 2024 • 57 mins
This is an encore episode while I focus on my teaching.
This week's guest is Chris Ruden.
I was drawn to Chris as a guest because I knew that we would get along well. You see, we both understand the male ego, we draw from our time as athletes (his being current and mine from my past), and we both accept failing but not failure.
Take a look at THIS video; it's the one that I refer to in the opening. This is a great example of accepting failing but not failure. It's a human condition that truly is within all of us.
If you want more detail, pick up Chris' book, The Upper Hand, HERE.
Chris is considered a 'Motivational Speaker'. But that's just a categorization in order to set us up for what's to come. I found him to be open and honest and with no labels attached.
While listening to our discussion, take special note of Chris' greatest fear then bop over to his WEBSITE and check out the photo of Chris in the header to witness what may be his greatest accomplishment by openly exposing what he hid for so many years. A 600-pound deadlift was nothing compared to this.
Note: Oftentimes, links are not available on platforms such as Apple, iHeart, etc.. They are available within this episode on our website at https://lifesaroadtrip.podbean.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Being disabled or having a chronic illness can feel like you're moving forward in reverse.
(00:21):
I'm your host Scott Martin.
Join me and my new friends in this underrepresented community as we talk about disrupting the
status quo and creating change within the world and within ourselves.
A life's a road trip.
Hop in.
Let's turn on some tunes and go.
(00:56):
With me in the passenger seat and managing the radio is Chris Rudin.
Chris is an elite power lifter, entrepreneur, model and motivational speaker despite his
congenital birth defect having left him with only two fingers on his left hand and a shorter
left arm.
19 years into battling his physical situation, Chris was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes,
(01:17):
but losing is not an option for him.
He uses his struggles to inspire people to overcome any and all adversity they may face
in their lives through molding mindsets and the resilient fortresses of self belief.
Chris has a bachelor's degree in exercise, science and health promotion as well as a
laundry list of certifications and specializations in fitness therapy and life coaching.
(01:40):
He is an advocate for fitness, managing diabetes and the power of positive mindset in overcoming
any limitations.
I have one last thing he can deadlift over 600 pounds despite the fact of only having
one hand.
Hi, Chris.
How are you doing?
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I've been looking forward to this after I came across you because we have a lot of
(02:02):
similarities and we'll guess we'll find that out as we get into things.
I want to start the show by asking people to actually stop listening and I want them to
go to the Life's of Road Trip website and click on the Bionic Arm Chopping Fail.
I think that will give people a good opener better than we can do some talking.
(02:25):
So let's hold ourselves for a couple of seconds.
Okay, now everybody should be back.
I'm sure everybody got a nice chuck a lot of that to start it, but that actually tells
a lot about struggles that you've had to deal with in learning new things, especially
prosthetics.
And you came across that later in life.
(02:48):
We'll get to that and dealing with plenty of talk about failure later.
But I have to ask you because I'm a bilateral amputee and I use two myoelectric hands.
I want to add what's the brand of the hand that you're using?
I think currently I'm wearing Covi, but I think for that video I was wearing a touch
(03:10):
bionics.
Okay.
How proficient are you with that now?
First of all, let me ask you, how long you been using it?
I've been using a myoelectric for four years now.
Okay, how proficient are you to become?
Not the most proficient, to be honest.
I don't use it as much as I would like to and I had a lot of issues with finding the
(03:31):
best fitting sockets.
So it's one of those is definitely not a fairytale Disney moment where it's like, oh, I'm still
going to sound, still need to grow, still need to learn more, but I'm definitely a lot
better than I used to be.
That's for sure.
Okay.
It's just one of the things because that's, again, where we have similarities and I found
I wanted to get into the male ego for a second and finding out I learned how to use my myoelectric
(03:59):
hands.
I just, first of all, I accepted failure and I started learning them by understanding that
failure is acceptable and I use the same sort of format.
I put my brain in the same format as when I grew up as a soccer player and making a ball
do funky things, just try it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it and look like everything I've
(04:23):
read from you, that's where we have a big similarity with just understanding.
Talk about the male ego from what you've learned maybe from some of this, especially with the
prosthetics.
I think all ego is pretty similar and then there's the stereotypes of what males should
be and that whole should shouldn't conversation is a problem in itself.
(04:46):
Ego is a lie.
Ego is an intrusive thought in my mind where you can assess it for what it's worth, but
at the end of the day, you don't make your entire life based on impulsive thoughts.
Not all feelings are facts and it's really important to know that if you mess up, if
you fail, if you don't get it right the first time, it's not a reflection of who you are,
(05:11):
it's a reflection of the attempt and the attempt has no emotion aside from the emotion you
add to it.
Why make it worse than it already is, which technically it's nothing.
A lot of people are quick to say easier said than done, but you got to follow that up with
better done than said.
Where do you think you came up with that?
I mean, where do you think that piece of you coming to that conclusion?
(05:33):
Where do you think that came from?
I think I fought it for so long that fighting it exhausted me.
Fighting the simplicity of if you can't do anything about it, don't do anything about
it.
I felt like I was a backseat driver my whole life and that's exhausting to try and control
trajectory of something you have no power over.
(05:55):
And people are afraid to say they have no power over things and I changed my thought
on that because I have very little power over most things in life.
I can't control what my dog does.
I can't control what anyone else to do.
I can't control those things, but what I can control is my reactions and my thoughts.
So I misplaced my focus.
(06:17):
I misplaced my effort in other people and external things when I realized, wow, I'm exhausted,
but I didn't do anything.
I don't want to be exhausted anymore.
I want to be effective.
And I started looking inwardly and I was like, okay, maybe I can change how I think.
Maybe I can change how I feel.
And then I was like, okay, let's make it real.
Let's not just talk psychology and all the fancy stuff.
(06:39):
First thing you do when you get a flat tire is what?
Set your car on fire, right?
No.
That's what you do, but we do that as adults.
We do that.
You know, as men, we do that.
We say, because we can't do this, I'm going to ruin everything else.
How in what world does that make sense?
And in what way have you ever said, making this worse made it better?
Well, talking about an adult male, go back to when you were a kid because you were born
(07:05):
with this.
How did, you know, I can't help but think that that planted one hell of a seed in you
that you use to your benefit, but talk about what it was like as a kid.
I think there's benefit and detriment, but it's all perspective because at the end of
the day, I was born with the condition I currently have and that there is no more no less to
the story except for what I created.
(07:27):
So I'm big on not taking fault, but taking responsibility for what I chose to do and
how I chose to react and how I chose to react now.
So I attempted to normalize myself.
I thought different was the enemy of normal, you know, and normal was the epitome of good.
(07:49):
So I just swore that I had to, I had to like let people know I was the same as them.
I hid my hand for almost 20 years, you know, in my pocket, in a glove, in long sleeves.
I hid every single way I could up until five years ago.
You know, I hid my hand because I did not want to be different.
Everyone knew it was different, but I created this false persona of confidence and I always
(08:13):
found myself in leadership roles, but I was still hiding who I was.
No one had the audacity to ask me about my hand or why I hid it because I had this fake
persona of confidence when in reality, I hated the idea of looking at myself, you know, so
a lot has changed, a lot has changed since becoming that scared kid who hid his fear
(08:38):
through confidence that was never even real.
Do you think that powerlifting is such a male thing, but I think that there probably was
something more to it.
What do you think got you into powerlifting that those seeds that were planted earlier
was that you were just pissed off and that was a way to get out some aggression?
(09:01):
What took you into getting into powerlifting?
So surprisingly, there are quite a lot of females entering powerlifting over the last
10 years, but especially now it's insane.
A lot of the female powerlifters that still maintain their femininity outlift the majority
of the guys at any gym any day, you know, part of it was competition.
I've always been extremely competitive and I feel like in the beginning, I was competitive
(09:26):
for not optimal reasons.
I was competitive because I wanted people to see me as normal.
I wanted people to see me as equal.
I wanted people to see me in a way that I couldn't see myself.
So I used competition as a way to fuel that.
So whether I was walking next to an old lady and she didn't know we're racing and I'm
winning, like I didn't care, I will compete and I will win, you know, I wanted to body
(09:50):
build originally.
Originally, I wanted to be a bodybuilder because I saw the magazines.
I was like, look at those bodies, those are insane, but I knew I couldn't do that because
it's all about symmetry and I definitely don't have symmetry.
So I spent time doing that.
I got stronger.
I did my first powerlifting event and I did really well, but once I did well, I knew that
was not with maximal effort.
(10:12):
What could I do with maximal effort?
See you, it seems like you found your art when you got into powerlifting.
When I lost both of my hands, I lost my man.
I was still playing at a high level and all of a sudden, boom, I'm gone, but I'm attracted
to your story because it seems that you found yours and I applaud that.
(10:37):
I was competitive as hell too.
I was coaching college, soccer, red, national ranked programs and stuff.
And I actually did things a little bit differently and I ended up becoming depressed because I
kept pushing and thinking that this is what I have to push.
I have to push.
And I took myself into deep depression and that's where that's burned on.
So what about, you mentioned five years ago, so is it, how were you able to build anything
(11:04):
without having the prosthetic?
I mean, because you're talking about symmetry, you're not going to have it on your left-hand
side.
So I always wore a glove to cover my residual limb.
I just didn't want anyone to see and to me, if I hit it, no one could see.
I clearly, you know, but it was that fake, false sense of security, you know?
(11:25):
So I still kept the glove on, but I ended up finding ways to lift and just putting my
residual limb against things and pushing and I was like, oh, I can kind of do this, you
know?
It got to the point where I needed an apparatus to lift weights because it would fall off.
I found a lifting hook and I was like, this works, this is great.
But I realized it was shorter than what I needed because my left arm is about four inches shorter
(11:48):
than my right arm.
I got fascinated with adaptation.
I was like, man, there has to be a way.
And people are like, well, nothing really exists.
I'm like, just because something doesn't exist doesn't mean it can't exist.
Nothing means you're going to do it, exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, there has to be a way just because no one's created it.
Maybe I can.
So at the same time, I switched my degree to exercise science and I was fascinated with
(12:09):
biomechanics.
And I was like, if I could make this hook a little bit longer, I can do all of the lifts
that I need to do.
I reached out to the company.
I was like, hey, do you guys think you can just lengthen this little?
They're like, yeah, no problem.
Was it really?
Like, we won't even charge you.
I'm like, that's crazy.
I could have just asked for this the whole time, you know, and it's a $30 hook.
That was a game changer for me.
(12:31):
I could start doing back and any sort of pulling motions and pull ups and everything get lifts.
And I started developing 135 pounds.
Oh, this is amazing.
225, 315, 405, 585, getting up there like crazy because I was willing to adapt.
And I realized I'm a one handed guy living in a two handed world.
I can't expect people to give me something that they never had a reason to create in the
(12:54):
first place.
Yeah.
I've seen your body in on the videos and I was drawn right away to shit.
I know this guy, he's he's unable to get it symmetrical.
So he must have overcome something because your body is symmetrical with your muscle mass.
So then I saw a video of that extension.
(13:16):
Okay.
All it is the human body is just levers and pulleys at times.
And then we use different things in order to build different muscles and you build different
muscles than I did as a soccer player, but they're still the same basic concepts there.
And you overcome that because you overcame it because of a simple extension.
(13:37):
I did the same sort of thing when I first got out of the hospital.
It's like, shit, how am I going to be able to drive?
Well, you've seen a spinner knob.
It's just a knob, but I tried that and my hand would come off it with the prosthetic.
So it's okay.
How about if you guys do this?
And again, going to someone that gets up with a problem for you mechanically, just make
it into a U shape.
Yeah.
(13:58):
Exactly.
So I can actually drive better whether I'm turning right or if I'm turning left because
there's pressure applied on the inside and the outside.
And pressure is how I do everything, pressure is how I move everything.
I'm actually currently looking for an adaptation to do with maybe some sort of archery or
(14:19):
even firearms.
Oh, you can do that.
Most people have a bipod on a rail system for a gun, but if it had that U shape that
you're talking about, I could go my left hand and it would be a lot better.
So little stuff like that, just adaptations that we can make around the situation.
And that was a very simple fix that enabled me to eventually lift 675 pounds.
(14:42):
Oh, yeah.
And going to, I always like shooting pool while you could see behind me there, there's
a bumper pool.
Yeah.
I could do that just because I figured out the angles.
Yep.
Because without a wrist, they have to apply angle, changing angles from the elbow on the
shoulder and then all these.
So again, there's a lot of similarity between us because we're not going to quit.
(15:05):
We're just going to figure it out from a different perspective.
So talking about the prosthetic, I want to, and again, folks are going to be able to see
a link for this on the Life's Road Trip website is go watch the video titled Getting My
Prosthetic Hand Week One of Life with a New Hand, which had over 4 million views.
(15:28):
I have to tell you, because when I was watching it and I went back and I started it again,
because I noticed something about you, when you guys were on your way to pick it up.
And I watched this about three times, he's scared shitless.
I think it seemed to me because I've been there, man, you seem like you were scared
shitless that what if this doesn't work?
(15:51):
That's what was run through my mind.
But then once you were more engaged at the prosthetist by solving problems, you become
comfortable.
Like I could see everything's melting away and the confidence is now coming in and you
didn't seem to want to quit playing around with it.
Because right there in the office, you were testing things and you wanted to be tested
(16:16):
again and again and again to try to solve problems and then let you go.
So how do you get into that and how do you make it, you have sensors on the inside and
outside of your arm?
I have sensors on the inside, but I do want to list, well, specifically mentioned, the
fear was not about it not working.
(16:39):
Honestly, the fear was my partner at the time seeing my hand.
No shit, she hadn't in four years.
My God, I was terrified.
That's what it was.
I was terrified.
I knew that was she had made that video for me, the coming out video, but she had never
(17:01):
seen it in person.
She only saw the edit.
That was her.
I knew the whole ride there.
I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to have to take off my glove in front of her.
That's what it was.
Yeah, man.
I've been there with I actually had the hand fall off once while I was giving us a talk
at parents day for my college.
(17:24):
It's like it just frees.
Everything opened up for you then.
It was.
Yeah, that was that was a freeing moment because when I saw that the prosthetic was going to
work, I'm like, Oh my God, this is going to give me freedom.
And I knew that the prosthetic arm was my main goal of that was to get comfortable with
(17:46):
myself.
I knew that having the prosthetic arm was going to enable me to take my glove off and
be okay with that.
At first it became okay, I just put the prosthetic arm on it.
Then I was like, maybe I can also exist with it off.
And then I learned to like build the value of myself, whether I have my prosthetic arm
or not, I'm of equal value.
(18:07):
So the fear, that's what I felt so guilty getting a prosthetic arm and a lot of people
don't know this.
I wasn't disabled enough.
That's what you had to fight over?
Because I wasn't disabled enough.
That's crazy.
I don't think I deserved it.
I thought that you were comfortable with them.
I thought I should have been comfortable.
(18:31):
I told myself all these stories and surprisingly people in the industry that I won't name that
are well known called me out for not being comfortable and being a bad example.
The mental health point, aesthetics were so important to me.
And I felt like a lot of people didn't understand that.
Aren't you excited for the functionality?
(18:53):
Yeah, that's great and all, but that wasn't my issue.
My issue wasn't function.
My issue was mental health.
I was not okay.
And this enabled me to be okay.
So when people talk about prosthetic limbs or any sort of additional things, you don't
understand it's way past the function.
The function is basic.
The humanness of it is what makes us appreciate everything.
(19:18):
So here's my mind, I've got notes over here and I'll refer to them, but talking with you,
I just want to say screw the notes.
But it made me think when I was in the hospital, I was in a month and woke up from a coma and
found out, oh, you're missing hands, by the way, and parts of your feet.
And then being transferred, my biggest thing was to get over to be transferred to rehab.
(19:39):
And if I got into rehab, though, I had to face something.
They were first going to bring in a prosthetist to set me up for hooks.
And I tried them on and I used them, but then we ended up getting me the myos and hooks.
Boom, I just couldn't see myself in that.
(20:03):
So once the myos came, it was like you.
It was now I feel better about myself.
It changed immediately because I saw myself as being more normal.
I don't miss it.
And I do use the term, you know, it's not like the original equipment at times to folks.
And they say, oh, it looks so real.
I didn't even realize.
(20:25):
Yeah, there's another similarity between us again.
I found a video on you.
I do a lot of digging, I guess.
And you open with I've come to learn the difference between failing and failure.
Go into that, will you?
That's a big one for me.
Failing is a verb.
It's like stubbing your toe.
You know, it happens.
(20:47):
It doesn't define who you are.
No one's ever stubbed their toe and be like, oh my God, I suck, you know?
But failure is a noun.
It's like an identity.
And it's a place of being.
It's just who you become.
And that's what I find.
And it might be a little semantic, but semantic saved my life.
Being specific with how I talk to myself about myself and to other people is so important.
(21:10):
So I've given myself permission to fail.
I'm just never given myself permission to be a failure because that's not who you are.
It's what you do.
But once you accept that you're a failure, you embody that presence.
You embody that identity, you know?
And then it's almost like cherry picking and confirmation bias to confirm that you are
(21:35):
a failure and you're looking for things to support this notion.
And I see it happen with people all the time.
They get an idea, feelings are not facts, but they do everything in their power to make
it a fact.
I don't get that.
It is sabotage.
It's self-sabotage because in my book, we talk about that, putting your hand on a hot
(21:56):
stove.
People are more comfortable with the pain they're familiar with than the fear of the
unknown, even if it could be 10 times better.
It's why we stay in bad relationships.
It's why we stay at jobs that are unfulfilling.
That's why we never do anything because the fear of something changing is more scary than
the pain we know sucks, but we've learned to cope.
(22:18):
And that's shit.
That's just shit.
And I lived that for way too long to accept that just because you're used to the pain
doesn't mean you deserve it.
Let me play off of that.
Makes me, again, when you talk, ideas come to mind and experiences.
So I use that exact same thing.
So before a match, I coach still.
(22:41):
I'm coaching a state select boys team, for example, now.
And I go up to the opposing coach before the match.
And they probably don't because I wear long sleeve shirts because I'm afraid about losing
a battery falling out.
And they probably don't know of my amputations unless they've heard of me before.
And I'll go over and shake their hand.
And then they realize something's weird.
(23:02):
And I can tell right away so much about that person.
Are they thinking that they're better than me?
Do they see and kind of their stance might change?
Or they either fake, they seem fake, more aggressive over me, or I can tell I believe
that they're weak.
(23:23):
So I walk back over to my bench with a better understanding about what the hell I'm getting
into in that match.
So you come across, I mean, you must have seen people look at your gloved hand, your left
before the, okay?
So and you probably wanted to just put it behind your back or something.
But now you're doing videos and everything where you're speaking in front of all these
(23:46):
people and you're wearing the prosthetic.
And I've even seen you take the thing off and hold it up with your right hand.
So then you might go out and rub elbows with people.
How do you, can you compare rubbing elbows with people before you give a speech and after
the speech?
What's it like?
See, this is, I've done hundreds of podcasts and interviews.
(24:11):
And it kind of all blurs together.
But when someone gets it and asks these kinds of questions that are deeper than just, oh,
what was it like?
Did you overcome?
This is what I'm talking about because I've done these little social experiments with myself
all the time.
The first time I got my prosthetic arm, I went into Walmart without my arm on and people
avoided me like the plague.
(24:34):
They see me coming and literally this.
They're, they're turning.
No, not, they're trying to be like nice, but like they don't know how to react.
I have my prosthetic arm on people like, Oh my God, are you military?
Wow, that's so badass.
That's so cool.
I think that's amazing.
Is that carbon fiber?
Wow.
That's so awesome.
I'm like, Oh, so I can only look cool with the arm because it fulfills this fantasy of
(24:55):
like muscle tattoos.
Maybe you thought I was blown up or something like, you know, I've always been treated differently
because of how I present.
Either I'm overly like hyped up and people like, wow, that's incredible.
Or people ignore it and like, Hey, I like your, your hair.
I'm like, you know what you're, you know what you mean.
(25:16):
You know what you mean.
Just say it like, I know I'm disabled.
You don't have to pretend like we're in this elevator and you're like, nice tattoo when
your eyes are fixated, you know, like I know what you're trying to say.
But on stage, I do notice that when people see me, they're like, they give me that look
like, Oh, another speaker who has a disability to inspire us.
(25:38):
You know, another like, Ra Ra go you speaker.
Yeah.
And when I speak, my story is not my message.
You know, people confuse that.
I'm not a speaker who shares my story.
I use my story to facilitate the message, which is applicable for people.
That's a huge differentiation.
If anyone wants to be a speaker, just know your story is not the message.
It's not because no one else identifies with you.
(26:01):
That's why I wanted you on here, man, because I saw through you.
Your story that you're real.
Your story is not the message, you know.
So after I speak, the eye contact is incredible.
The respect, the rapport, the feeling seen when I walk off stage, people are like, you
get me like you just spoke for 60 minutes, but I feel more understood by you than my partner
(26:24):
or then my boss.
Because when I speak about topics that are passionate to me, my goal is not to just be
heard.
It's to help.
You know, I want to help people.
I don't want them to listen to my story.
That doesn't benefit them.
No one cares about my story.
And guess what, you have the same story as me and I talk about this all the time.
Everyone listening has the same story as us.
(26:45):
The person who works at 7-Eleven and CVS and Walmart has the same story as us too.
You went through some shit, you got over some shit and there's more shit coming.
Everyone has the same story.
There you go.
But how do you tell it in a way that helps other people?
That's my job.
So I wonder if, all right, let me ask you, man, because I just saw it in a photo on your
(27:07):
website.
Is there a point in every one of your speeches where you take the arm off?
Good damn question.
So many good questions.
I love this.
Easily become my favorite podcast.
Every single talk I take my arm off within three minutes of being on stage.
Why so early?
That is a promise to my former self.
(27:29):
And no one knows this.
You're the only person to ask and only person to catch this.
I take my arm off within three minutes of stage because for 45 to 90 minutes, I let
people see me, someone I hid for 20 years.
And that's where you're, I'm wondering if you were, and I was going to ask you this
earlier about when you were a kid, if you ever went back to a high school reunion and
(27:50):
wanted to flip off some people.
I definitely did.
That's what you're doing then.
Yeah, it really is.
But it's not to, I've had to make fun of me and then literally reached out to me for
workout programs.
It would be the perfect, perfect point to be like, no, but I helped because at the end
of the day, that's the biggest win is to not do it out of spite.
But because of who I am now, you had, you had a role in who I am now.
(28:15):
You know, and every day you live your life, you think like, if I would have been that
guy's friend, everyone at my table eats, you know, so I don't hold any animosity towards
people.
I hold myself more accountable for, I wish I would have, of course, we wish we could
go back and change a bunch of things.
I wish I could have changed things in a more positive light for myself and sped up, but
(28:40):
that's, that's a reality that doesn't exist.
I had to go through my timeline exactly how I moved.
In order to get here.
Yeah.
Okay.
I want to shift into some deeper shit now, but we're going to take two seconds in case
somebody wants to drop an ad here.
So.
Okay, let's dig.
I found an interview in which you describe yourself as the monster.
(29:05):
Let's go, baby.
Yeah.
So it's probably one time in my life where I acknowledged it out loud to myself.
And I was made fun of like drastically.
And I talk about these two stories and the majority of my signature keynote talks where
I talk about being made fun of this kid named Patrick, but that was so many, so many kids
(29:26):
made fun of me, but he stuck out in my mind because he was very adamant every single day,
elementary school to middle school.
And then there was a girl named Crystal who I wanted to ask out on a date.
And she was in my middle school and I had walked up to her desk and I turned around.
My friends started laughing and I looked back around and the girl is making fun of my hand
(29:50):
with a staple and calling me Clawboy in front of everyone.
So that moment, I remember the humiliation, but I went numb like apathetic, just numb
and cursed at her.
You know, I pretended like it didn't hurt, but that killed me.
That wrecked me.
And I remember going home and like seeing myself in the mirror and like literally saying physically
(30:12):
that you're a monster.
And I felt like I felt like the guy who was broken and everyone pointed at.
And I validated that like we talked about earlier, how we look for confirmation bias.
I've played the monster before when I was a kid in elementary school and I remember my
dad even saying like make sure you're not always the monster.
(30:33):
And I didn't really understand what he meant by that.
He knew.
I realized like, oh my God, people are shit.
People can be shit.
But I didn't understand that people could be shit.
I understood that I was a monster.
It wasn't until years later that I realized I was victim blaming in a sense, you know,
(30:57):
really.
But it's hard, man.
It's hard when you're going through that and you're vulnerable in that sense.
You don't always have that mental clarity to make the right decision.
So I'm very fortunate that I made it out the way I did.
Yeah, you did.
And now, you know, my mind is going back to how I saw myself coming out of the hospital
and thought, Oh shit, no one's ever going to look at me the same way or whatever.
(31:19):
And you know, there's something I did with my kids.
I had five adopted kids, two from Romania and three from Ethiopia and the three Ethiopians.
Well, they're African Americans, you know, and as they got older in that middle school
age, they started being, you know, one time when my African American son was kindergarten,
he got in a car and said, Tata, which is Romanian for father, what am I going to turn white?
(31:46):
First thing I thought of our society still is yet to change.
But then I came up with that's when it first started and I would talk to the kids about,
you know, other people will pick on you in order to drag you down to their level because
they really don't believe in themselves enough.
So I started using that on the kids and hopefully well, I'm sure that they still had, you know,
(32:09):
an American society crying out love.
They still had issues to get over.
But let me let me take into into something that talking about confidence here.
This is where really was, Oh, I'm contacting this guy.
In that scene in a new interview, you described a fake confidence.
Is that what you were just talking about?
(32:30):
But that was middle school.
It's not about was that fake confidence still there as an adult.
That fake confidence was there until four or five years ago.
Shit, man.
That fake confidence, I had to go through lots of lots of self development, but also therapy.
And I remember I get chills thinking about it because my therapist like wrecked me in
(32:51):
the best way possible.
I told her I was like,
listen, everyone like I go into a room and everyone loves me.
Like it's insane.
I was still hiding my hand at the time.
I was like, everyone loves me.
They're there to hear me speak.
Like they, they're so excited to talk to me.
They messaged me all the time.
People follow me.
She's like, I was like, everyone loves me.
And she said, that's bullshit.
And I was like, Oh, what do you mean?
(33:14):
She's like, that's bullshit.
No one loves you.
They just love the fake image you're putting out of yourself.
Wow.
And she was like, how can anyone know you enough to like you when you don't know you
enough to like you?
And I was just that moment.
What's my job?
Instant like, damn, she's like, have you ever actually been yourself or are you constantly
(33:39):
trying to be what you think people want you to be?
Very insightful.
She's like, you're hiding your hand, you're hiding your arm.
You're hiding your, you're being this thing that is incredible.
You've accomplished amazing things, but your accomplishments are not who you are.
And I was like, damn.
Right.
(34:00):
She's like, who are you actually?
Who, who is that?
You know, and that really made me think, you know, I was this fake confidence thing because
I was literally speaking to people.
Yes, I wanted to help people, but I wasn't helping myself.
And people saw that as confidence.
People saw my desire to help other people as confidence.
(34:21):
They completely skipped over the part that maybe I wasn't confident at all.
Maybe I was coping by avoiding my issues and helping other people.
We went through the same thing.
Here's another thing you and I both went through.
We called it different things, but you described it as a numbness.
I described it as the fog.
So describe your numbness that you went through.
(34:43):
Man, it is so crazy to look back and think of all the years that I just felt numb.
And I thought maybe I was a sociopath, you know, I thought maybe like I just, and I really
thought I was just completely emotionless.
And I had to, I didn't understand when people felt happy or when people felt sad, like why
I didn't feel those things.
(35:05):
Yeah.
And it's because I was numbing it out constantly because any potential emotion would give rise
to what I was hiding and putting under the rug, you know, and I was just sweeping everything
under the rug constantly.
I felt numb, apathetic towards most things.
Was it just depression?
They think it was a combination of depression and avoidance, actively constantly.
(35:30):
Like to the point where when you go out the door, I would plan how I would turn so my
arm wouldn't be seen.
Every moment of every day was calculated.
You know, I knew the path I needed to take in college and where people usually sit and
when I would pretend to be looking for something in my backpack with my left hand.
So no one would see people have no clue how exhausting it was.
(35:53):
And I pretended like I was fine.
How could I not be numb?
Because I spent all my emotional energy on hiding.
Man, I wish we would have had some beers together back.
Right.
I talked about all this shit.
But that's the scary part is people see me and even at the time in college and getting
out of college, people saw my growth on social media and stuff and they're like, you're so
(36:17):
awesome.
All this, all this stuff, you know.
And I was like, it's almost worse to hear all that stuff people hyping you up when you're
struggling, you know?
People see like they see the comb over, they see the tattoos, they see the tight shirts
and like, you just had it good.
Like, you don't know what most people go through, you know, let alone mentally or where they're
(36:39):
brought up.
Like, we assume and we tell ourselves story about other people and we think those stories
are facts about other people too.
The same way we do with our feelings, we do with seeing someone like that guy looks like
a shady person.
What about him is a shady person?
Because he has a dangly earring, because he has a tattoo on his neck.
What story are you creating of the bias you have and creating that as a fact in your
(37:02):
head?
I don't know.
The older I get, the more I just shake my head at humans, humans can just suck.
They really, that is the perfect.
Humans can suck.
That should be the title of the podcast.
Well, we'll put a positive spin on it by calling it Life's a Road Trip because really
(37:23):
it's a road trip that has potholes and everything.
And so I guess, okay, let's shift, man.
Let's talk about this Titan games thing.
You know, I see on there every time it's mentioned about NBC Titan games is with the
rock.
You guys, you don't have to put that on there anymore.
But I understand him being on there as, oh, it gets people attracted to it.
(37:46):
You're on there.
So I asked the question, what's he like?
He's honestly so cool.
He was so down to earth.
It was a crazy, like it was awesome experience.
And he was definitely one of my favorite.
I was super into wrestling as a kid.
So he was like my favorite wrestler.
And that's cool.
It was really cool to see that.
It was definitely something I never intended on doing.
It just happened to happen.
(38:08):
And I didn't apply for the show.
It just, yeah, it was crazy.
What are those things in life?
Like it, yeah, it was one of those situations that everything happened in such a great way.
And even though I lost, I was able to share a message that got out to hundreds of thousands
of millions of people.
And I got such amazing feedback.
(38:30):
Like, oh, the Titan games must really propel your career.
My career at that time, I was already at like 50 some thousand followers on social media.
I was still building my speaking business.
It helped, I guess, a little bit, but I had already done the work, you know?
So it's not like that was my claim to fame.
I had already been doing the work for years.
It's just that moment was a validation that everything I was already doing.
(38:53):
I'm on the right path.
So let me ask you.
Did you have an agent at the time?
No.
How the hell did you get over that hurdle to get on to something like that?
To just.
They reached out to me.
Two hundred thousand people applied to the show, but I was building up until maybe two
(39:14):
years ago, I was a very one man show.
I was so, I was like screw everyone.
I'll do this myself, you know?
And I built everything from the ground up to the point where I built my and that's why
I mean like it's not like the show catapulted me to this huge level of success.
I got there and the show recognized that and reached out to me because of it.
(39:36):
So yeah, it was one of those like amazing situations, but it was more so a reminder.
I'm like, damn, I'm doing this, you know, I'm getting this done.
So did you go into that with the thought of I look at this as two ways.
And this is going to help my career or and this seems sounds like fun.
(39:57):
It's going to meet your competitive desire.
Which one was it?
So it was more career focused, but it was more along the lines of regardless of whether
I win or lose, I know I'll be able to share a message that will impact the community I'm
trying to reach.
Very cool.
So that I knew I'm going into it winning regardless.
Yeah.
You know, and I got very lucky because I was the only message.
(40:21):
I was only person who lost and got to share a message.
They gave me a platform to share and the rock ended up coming down and like hugging me
and stuff and like that interview went viral and it went viral for all the right reasons.
It wasn't social media virality.
It was impact virality and that was my favorite part, to be honest.
(40:43):
That's fascinating, man.
How that works.
Okay, let's shift.
NRG foods.
I got to read this for people.
They're going to look it up.
Oh, a tagline.
This is so good.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Bunts.
Like big bunts.
So what is NRG foods?
What are you guys making?
(41:04):
Yeah.
So I was speaking, you know, I'm a professional keynote speaker if you didn't get that by
now.
No, I got that, man.
That's my main career.
But I did a co-talk with another type one diabetic who is a yacht chef and the talk
went incredible for a diabetes organization and we were like, hey, you want to meet up,
hang out?
I'm like, yeah, let's do it.
He's like, I got this little company thing.
(41:26):
I'm not sure.
I want to get your advice on it.
I went over.
I was like, wow, these are terrible.
You're honest.
Yeah.
He was like, I want to hire you to consult.
I'm like, great.
I did marketing consulting because I built my whole brand through marketing.
Okay.
And he was like, man, I can't afford you.
So I want to hire you, but I also want to potentially give you a percentage of the company.
(41:47):
Sounds like a shark tank episode.
Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah.
And then from there, he's like, man, there's not enough I can give you.
So I'm just going to make you co-owner.
You're going to rebrand the whole company and we're going to run with it.
Can I do foods?
So it's a low to moderate carb snack that has quality protein, all natural ingredients.
Okay.
And it's made by two type one diabetics to help people enjoy the snacks.
(42:10):
Our goal is to not sacrifice taste for health and vice versa.
So we have protein bars.
So we're coming out with new line of products as well, but they just taste good.
And they don't have any guilt.
That was a good tagline you used right there about taste.
Yeah.
We don't have to have a taste for health or vice versa.
So you got to use that throw it on the t-shirt.
Yeah.
(42:31):
Yeah.
All right.
Let's jump into something else you've been doing.
The upper hand and a link for this to the book is going to be on the life's a road trip
website.
I want to read your elevator pitch.
Reading the upper hand means to gain an advantage or control over a person or situation.
The purpose of this book is not to put you in a winning position over other people.
(42:56):
It's to give you the upper hand over yourself.
I think that that probably summarizes everything we've heard from you during the entire show
and you must mean it.
So talk about the book a little bit and maybe what spurred you to do that or was that something
somebody gave you an idea for or asked you to do or I could think of so many different
ways how you got to doing it.
So tell about a little bit about the book and how you got into it.
(43:19):
I think I exhausted myself because any entrepreneur has probably told them a story you have to
write a book and you could write a book.
You have a great story.
You could write a book.
Write a book.
It's always, you know, but it's there's more to writing a book than just having an idea
of writing a book.
Exactly.
It's not about what you want to write.
It's about will this impact the people that would read this?
(43:40):
The book is for the readers, not for you because you're the author, not the reader, you know.
So that I apply that across all walks of life to make sure that the end result is for the
people who will be getting it, you know.
I love communication.
I'm fascinated by communication.
But I've always heard the phrase communication is key and it never made sense to me because
(44:04):
that's step two because self communication is key.
How can you expect other people to communicate with you if you can't communicate with yourself?
If you don't know who you are, if you can't have those internal dialogues to work out
your problems, then communicating with other people will never be successful.
So this book, I wanted to focus on self communication and it took me five years to decide to write
(44:28):
this and a year and a half to actually write it.
And I realized that I am not a writer.
I'm a speaker, so I spoke the book into existence, recorded it and transcribed it to a book
because I am a speaker and I tried to force myself to be something I wasn't and it wasn't
working.
So this book is truly spoken from my mouth to pages.
(44:50):
I've never heard of anyone doing that.
Did you have an editor at least?
I mean, some of it.
I did, yeah.
They had to clean it up.
Because I thought I could do it by myself and I had my friend check it and she was like,
did you even spell check this?
I'm like, I thought I did.
Don't proofread yourself.
Yeah.
No, no.
Yeah.
(45:11):
You miss a majority of things.
So luckily I don't need spell check when I'm speaking.
Okay.
Now you're very proficient in speaking.
Hey, let's get into it.
I'm going to do this.
Just open up your website, ChrisRudin.com.
And again, the link will be on the Life's A Road Trip website.
What can a guy with 1.5 arms teach you about diversity, inclusion, adversity, everything?
(45:35):
Start the conversation here.
So that's a good hook.
And you've got the photo of, there you are, your right hand is holding your left prosthetic.
I think it's very dynamic.
And I came down and you've got a couple of videos on here that like, man, this guy, I
would love to be at one of his speaking engagements.
And I look in here for crying out loud, man.
(45:58):
You've been with, you've spoken for Facebook, Nike and Zappos.
I mean, that's just three out of a bunch.
Tell me, tell me about your first one.
How did it go?
Were you sweating a lot?
I mean, you seem so comfortable doing it now.
How have you progressed?
My first ever, my first ever keynote.
(46:20):
Yeah.
You're talking about you up on a stage, you know, in front of people sitting in real
chairs.
What started my speaking career was a buddy of mine was hosting a diabetes nonprofit.
And he was like, we want to have a speaker.
Would you be down to do it?
I'm like, yeah, I've never done that before, but I'll try it, you know?
At that point, I just wanted to be a physical therapist.
(46:41):
You know, that's what I wanted to be.
There's a little difference here, Chris.
A big difference there.
My mom still doesn't understand what I do for a living.
So I spoke on that stage.
And I thought I was like, I could definitely do better than that.
That was not people loved it.
They were like, wow, this is great.
Did you practice this?
Like, this is so good.
And I'm like, same thing with powerlifting.
(47:04):
I was like, man, if I did good, like this, imagine what would happen if I trained this,
you know?
Good.
So I went to classes.
I went to like a Toastmasters.
I studied communication.
I was like obsessed with how to tell a story better and why storytelling can be effective
or ineffective.
And I was like, okay, if I identify a message and I can communicate it in a way that makes
(47:26):
people listen, maybe I can actually help people.
I started speaking and I did like 30 talks for free, you know?
Because I didn't realize that I didn't think I was worth the money until someone offered
me money.
And I was like, no way.
And now it's to the point where I'm definitely on the higher end of speakers and it is my
full time career.
(47:47):
And I absolutely love what I do.
How long is, uh, are your typical gigs?
And what are you up there for 45, 60?
Anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes, it ranges.
And if I'm doing like a workshop on top of a keynote or not.
And you're not like a stand up comic that has everything memorized or you have something
on the floor that you're reading off of, you're just off the cuff.
(48:08):
I have three main talks.
Yeah, I see.
Three topics.
All right.
What are they?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So each one can be kind of tweaked for depending on what the company or organization needs.
But the majority is, uh, it's definitely not memorized.
Okay.
So you're winging it.
Well, no, you're not winging it.
(48:29):
I, I, I didn't mean it like that.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
You're talking from the heart.
Yes.
That's the best way to put it is because, uh, people would be like, wow, this was incredible.
Like it, I get in the moment and I'm very in the moment when I do my craft.
I love speaking and communicating.
I am, I think one of my skills, maybe naturally is improv.
(48:50):
So being able to accommodate the current situation of the room, uh, the climate we're
in, I just love communicating because I can see what hits with people.
And it's so nice to see when someone gets it.
So you are comfortable enough.
It's like through competition, you're comfortable enough to, to read everything that's going
on.
Even though you're leading it, you're also reading what you're getting back.
(49:13):
Yeah.
You could be a stand up comic, uh, and be able to get by it.
So, uh, people can reach out to you and, and, uh, contact you regarding this.
Do you have an agent now?
Are you still doing this by yourself?
I have a few bureaus that represent me, but non-exclusively the majority, I would say this
is crazy.
(49:34):
95% of my business is inbound.
Real.
Well, you've got so many hits.
The people are going to be picking up.
I focused a lot on creating myself as like a delist celebrity, uh, in the diabetes space
and then in the disability space and then I went kind of small to wide.
So the majority of my, my income is inbound and then now I create bigger partnerships
(49:58):
with certain companies that I work with repeatedly.
And my goal starting this year is working with other speakers to build, you know, actual
real speaking, uh, careers where a lot of people make a little bit of money here and
they're speaking, but it is very possible to be a, I hate the cheesiness of saying six
(50:20):
figure speaker, but like to actually make money in keynote speaking.
So I was going to ask to wrap this up.
I was going to ask you this straight forward question.
What's next?
Well, you just kind of answered it unless you got more.
Crapes.
There's always more.
There's always more.
Yeah.
But also you working on though.
So not just floating around in your head.
Senior coaching and a speaker mentorship is the main like lifelong goal for, if I could
(50:44):
create speakers in marginalized communities that I can't penetrate to become kind of like
what I do, but how they would do it.
That would mean to me, this is the most fulfilling life.
I want to speak for the rest of my life.
I'll always dabble in certain businesses because I love seeing a solution to people's problems
come to life.
But the main goal in life is speaking and communication.
(51:07):
So it seems to me, while you're talking about that, that little kid with the weird left hand
that didn't like himself, that all of this stuff seemed pent up over so many years and
it didn't just come out, it blew up.
And I think that's really cool because I get that from you and it seems like this has always
(51:30):
been you, but it wasn't always you.
It couldn't have been because that kid wasn't like this.
And same thing, like pre and post, whether you had an accident and lost limbs or like
just something changed in your life.
We've all had the potential, you know, sometimes you have to face something to realize like,
this is not how I want my life to be.
And before my life, before accepting myself is not there was no good life that could have
(51:56):
come from that.
That's so wild.
And how sometimes we get to certain places.
It's a road trip.
All right, so speaking of road trips, we are going to do the road trip roundup.
I've got five questions for you, Chris.
Just be yourself on responding to these.
I'm not trying to trip you up, but if I do, what the heck?
(52:19):
When road tripping, do you tend to do fast food or local diners?
Fast food, but I always enjoy local diners too.
Waffle House is a weakness of mine.
Yeah, you're down in the south.
I love Waffle House.
All right, so when you're at Waffle House, do you sit at the counter or at a table or
at a table?
Table.
Table.
At a table.
Yeah.
(52:40):
Okay.
Find dining only.
We've got a thing up in Wisconsin here called George Webb.
It's the same as Waffle House because I've been the Waffle House, but it's the same exact
thing.
But I've always find sitting at the counter because I'm a talker and I want to talk to
the person as they're serving.
And if they handle everything, you know, cooking and cleaning and giving drinks to folks and
(53:01):
taking them their meals and stuff, just to lighten up their day if I can make them
chill.
That's great.
Yeah.
I love that.
All right.
So what's your dream car for a road trip?
That can be something you grew up with, like a big station wagon you guys had or something
you've got now or something that if you're on a road trip, say you were going up the
coast, you would probably want to rent.
Well, I can tell you now, my car now, I treated myself and I got a Porsche Taycan, which is
(53:27):
a car.
Yeah.
But I tried to take a road trip, the range anxiety on that is so real.
It is so real.
So never again, I dream car would be like doing some sort of RV trip.
I would love to do an extended road trip, like RV trip around the country.
That would be cool.
I always wanted to do maybe route 66 for whatever is there and maybe stop at some places.
(53:51):
You are definitely not the first person that has said an RV from all my guests.
That comes up more than I ever would have thought.
That's awesome.
That's a real road trip in that.
Okay.
So you're kind of a young guy, but this might still hit you.
Last cassette or CD that played while you're on a road trip.
CD was probably on a road trip, a CD, the Eminem show.
(54:15):
The hell is that?
Eminem, the rapper.
Oh, I was thinking.
The Eminem.
Not you're thinking like some commercial for chocolate.
Listen, I love snacks, but not that much.
Chris, real the kids in this.
Chris really loves the sexy green one that you get into.
(54:36):
Yes.
Okay.
That's my weird.
Yes.
Someone's mind is that, you know, don't take me there.
You started it, man.
All right.
Let's get ourselves pulled together.
Cocoa Pepsi.
I'm a Pepsi person, but I'm a diet because of diabetes, but I love Pepsi.
(54:57):
I prefer Pepsi over Coke.
I challenge you to try new Coke Zero.
I was drinking.
I didn't try it.
And it's good.
It's definitely better than diet for sure, but I don't know why I like diet Pepsi.
It just does it.
Pepsi has a different, you know, Coke has, yeah, a little bit more, not as sweet as Pepsi.
Yeah.
Last one.
(55:18):
And you take this wherever you want.
I just love asking this question to my guests.
Favorite road trip memory.
Favorite road trip memory.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Let's see.
Favorite road trip memory.
I'd probably say going up to New Orleans with my mom and my brother.
(55:41):
And it was the first time I had a beignet.
And I was like powdered sugar on anything, let alone.
Oh, but it's-
Hillewee Heavenly Go.
Like I can taste, smell, and remember everything about that memory.
So like that was a really cool trip.
Wow.
Did you guys take in any of the music?
(56:02):
Do we what?
Did you guys take in any of the music?
Not that I can recall.
I'm definitely more of a food person if you can't tell by the Eminem lady and like everything
else.
So I am very food driven and my ultimate goal is just traveling around the world more as
I'm doing now, but like more and trying foods.
I think food is such a good representation of culture.
(56:23):
It's such a good community builder.
It's a bonder whether it's with friends, family, business.
I love food in that sense.
So that's a big motivator for me.
Very cool.
Hey, we're done and I want you and I to stay on for a couple minutes and pick each other's
brains a little bit, maybe be even a little bit more casual than we were even with this.
So I will just say, chow and chillax everybody and keep listening to Life's A Road Trip.
(56:54):
Thanks for listening.
Check out previous episodes with new ones dropping each Tuesday.
If you don't see a synopsis of this show where you're listening, visit our website at
lifestroedtrip.podbean.com for more information on this week's guest.
This is your host Scott Martin reminding you that Life's A Road Trip.
Being disabled or having a chronic illness can feel like you're moving forward in reverse.
(00:21):
I'm your host Scott Martin.
Join me and my new friends in this underrepresented community as we talk about disrupting the
status quo and creating change within the world and within ourselves.
A life's a road trip.
Hop in.
Let's turn on some tunes and go.
(00:56):
With me in the passenger seat and managing the radio is Chris Rudin.
Chris is an elite power lifter, entrepreneur, model and motivational speaker despite his
congenital birth defect having left him with only two fingers on his left hand and a shorter
left arm.
19 years into battling his physical situation, Chris was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes,
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but losing is not an option for him.
He uses his struggles to inspire people to overcome any and all adversity they may face
in their lives through molding mindsets and the resilient fortresses of self belief.
Chris has a bachelor's degree in exercise, science and health promotion as well as a
laundry list of certifications and specializations in fitness therapy and life coaching.
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He is an advocate for fitness, managing diabetes and the power of positive mindset in overcoming
any limitations.
I have one last thing he can deadlift over 600 pounds despite the fact of only having
one hand.
Hi, Chris.
How are you doing?
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I've been looking forward to this after I came across you because we have a lot of
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similarities and we'll guess we'll find that out as we get into things.
I want to start the show by asking people to actually stop listening and I want them to
go to the Life's of Road Trip website and click on the Bionic Arm Chopping Fail.
I think that will give people a good opener better than we can do some talking.
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So let's hold ourselves for a couple of seconds.
Okay, now everybody should be back.
I'm sure everybody got a nice chuck a lot of that to start it, but that actually tells
a lot about struggles that you've had to deal with in learning new things, especially
prosthetics.
And you came across that later in life.
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We'll get to that and dealing with plenty of talk about failure later.
But I have to ask you because I'm a bilateral amputee and I use two myoelectric hands.
I want to add what's the brand of the hand that you're using?
I think currently I'm wearing Covi, but I think for that video I was wearing a touch
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bionics.
Okay.
How proficient are you with that now?
First of all, let me ask you, how long you been using it?
I've been using a myoelectric for four years now.
Okay, how proficient are you to become?
Not the most proficient, to be honest.
I don't use it as much as I would like to and I had a lot of issues with finding the
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best fitting sockets.
So it's one of those is definitely not a fairytale Disney moment where it's like, oh, I'm still
going to sound, still need to grow, still need to learn more, but I'm definitely a lot
better than I used to be.
That's for sure.
Okay.
It's just one of the things because that's, again, where we have similarities and I found
I wanted to get into the male ego for a second and finding out I learned how to use my myoelectric
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hands.
I just, first of all, I accepted failure and I started learning them by understanding that
failure is acceptable and I use the same sort of format.
I put my brain in the same format as when I grew up as a soccer player and making a ball
do funky things, just try it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it and look like everything I've
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read from you, that's where we have a big similarity with just understanding.
Talk about the male ego from what you've learned maybe from some of this, especially with the
prosthetics.
I think all ego is pretty similar and then there's the stereotypes of what males should
be and that whole should shouldn't conversation is a problem in itself.
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Ego is a lie.
Ego is an intrusive thought in my mind where you can assess it for what it's worth, but
at the end of the day, you don't make your entire life based on impulsive thoughts.
Not all feelings are facts and it's really important to know that if you mess up, if
you fail, if you don't get it right the first time, it's not a reflection of who you are,
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it's a reflection of the attempt and the attempt has no emotion aside from the emotion you
add to it.
Why make it worse than it already is, which technically it's nothing.
A lot of people are quick to say easier said than done, but you got to follow that up with
better done than said.
Where do you think you came up with that?
I mean, where do you think that piece of you coming to that conclusion?
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Where do you think that came from?
I think I fought it for so long that fighting it exhausted me.
Fighting the simplicity of if you can't do anything about it, don't do anything about
it.
I felt like I was a backseat driver my whole life and that's exhausting to try and control
trajectory of something you have no power over.
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And people are afraid to say they have no power over things and I changed my thought
on that because I have very little power over most things in life.
I can't control what my dog does.
I can't control what anyone else to do.
I can't control those things, but what I can control is my reactions and my thoughts.
So I misplaced my focus.
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I misplaced my effort in other people and external things when I realized, wow, I'm exhausted,
but I didn't do anything.
I don't want to be exhausted anymore.
I want to be effective.
And I started looking inwardly and I was like, okay, maybe I can change how I think.
Maybe I can change how I feel.
And then I was like, okay, let's make it real.
Let's not just talk psychology and all the fancy stuff.
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First thing you do when you get a flat tire is what?
Set your car on fire, right?
No.
That's what you do, but we do that as adults.
We do that.
You know, as men, we do that.
We say, because we can't do this, I'm going to ruin everything else.
How in what world does that make sense?
And in what way have you ever said, making this worse made it better?
Well, talking about an adult male, go back to when you were a kid because you were born
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with this.
How did, you know, I can't help but think that that planted one hell of a seed in you
that you use to your benefit, but talk about what it was like as a kid.
I think there's benefit and detriment, but it's all perspective because at the end of
the day, I was born with the condition I currently have and that there is no more no less to
the story except for what I created.
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So I'm big on not taking fault, but taking responsibility for what I chose to do and
how I chose to react and how I chose to react now.
So I attempted to normalize myself.
I thought different was the enemy of normal, you know, and normal was the epitome of good.
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So I just swore that I had to, I had to like let people know I was the same as them.
I hid my hand for almost 20 years, you know, in my pocket, in a glove, in long sleeves.
I hid every single way I could up until five years ago.
You know, I hid my hand because I did not want to be different.
Everyone knew it was different, but I created this false persona of confidence and I always
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found myself in leadership roles, but I was still hiding who I was.
No one had the audacity to ask me about my hand or why I hid it because I had this fake
persona of confidence when in reality, I hated the idea of looking at myself, you know, so
a lot has changed, a lot has changed since becoming that scared kid who hid his fear
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through confidence that was never even real.
Do you think that powerlifting is such a male thing, but I think that there probably was
something more to it.
What do you think got you into powerlifting that those seeds that were planted earlier
was that you were just pissed off and that was a way to get out some aggression?
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What took you into getting into powerlifting?
So surprisingly, there are quite a lot of females entering powerlifting over the last
10 years, but especially now it's insane.
A lot of the female powerlifters that still maintain their femininity outlift the majority
of the guys at any gym any day, you know, part of it was competition.
I've always been extremely competitive and I feel like in the beginning, I was competitive
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for not optimal reasons.
I was competitive because I wanted people to see me as normal.
I wanted people to see me as equal.
I wanted people to see me in a way that I couldn't see myself.
So I used competition as a way to fuel that.
So whether I was walking next to an old lady and she didn't know we're racing and I'm
winning, like I didn't care, I will compete and I will win, you know, I wanted to body
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build originally.
Originally, I wanted to be a bodybuilder because I saw the magazines.
I was like, look at those bodies, those are insane, but I knew I couldn't do that because
it's all about symmetry and I definitely don't have symmetry.
So I spent time doing that.
I got stronger.
I did my first powerlifting event and I did really well, but once I did well, I knew that
was not with maximal effort.
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What could I do with maximal effort?
See you, it seems like you found your art when you got into powerlifting.
When I lost both of my hands, I lost my man.
I was still playing at a high level and all of a sudden, boom, I'm gone, but I'm attracted
to your story because it seems that you found yours and I applaud that.
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I was competitive as hell too.
I was coaching college, soccer, red, national ranked programs and stuff.
And I actually did things a little bit differently and I ended up becoming depressed because I
kept pushing and thinking that this is what I have to push.
I have to push.
And I took myself into deep depression and that's where that's burned on.
So what about, you mentioned five years ago, so is it, how were you able to build anything
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without having the prosthetic?
I mean, because you're talking about symmetry, you're not going to have it on your left-hand
side.
So I always wore a glove to cover my residual limb.
I just didn't want anyone to see and to me, if I hit it, no one could see.
I clearly, you know, but it was that fake, false sense of security, you know?
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So I still kept the glove on, but I ended up finding ways to lift and just putting my
residual limb against things and pushing and I was like, oh, I can kind of do this, you
know?
It got to the point where I needed an apparatus to lift weights because it would fall off.
I found a lifting hook and I was like, this works, this is great.
But I realized it was shorter than what I needed because my left arm is about four inches shorter
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than my right arm.
I got fascinated with adaptation.
I was like, man, there has to be a way.
And people are like, well, nothing really exists.
I'm like, just because something doesn't exist doesn't mean it can't exist.
Nothing means you're going to do it, exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, there has to be a way just because no one's created it.
Maybe I can.
So at the same time, I switched my degree to exercise science and I was fascinated with
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biomechanics.
And I was like, if I could make this hook a little bit longer, I can do all of the lifts
that I need to do.
I reached out to the company.
I was like, hey, do you guys think you can just lengthen this little?
They're like, yeah, no problem.
Was it really?
Like, we won't even charge you.
I'm like, that's crazy.
I could have just asked for this the whole time, you know, and it's a $30 hook.
That was a game changer for me.
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I could start doing back and any sort of pulling motions and pull ups and everything get lifts.
And I started developing 135 pounds.
Oh, this is amazing.
225, 315, 405, 585, getting up there like crazy because I was willing to adapt.
And I realized I'm a one handed guy living in a two handed world.
I can't expect people to give me something that they never had a reason to create in the
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first place.
Yeah.
I've seen your body in on the videos and I was drawn right away to shit.
I know this guy, he's he's unable to get it symmetrical.
So he must have overcome something because your body is symmetrical with your muscle mass.
So then I saw a video of that extension.
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Okay.
All it is the human body is just levers and pulleys at times.
And then we use different things in order to build different muscles and you build different
muscles than I did as a soccer player, but they're still the same basic concepts there.
And you overcome that because you overcame it because of a simple extension.
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I did the same sort of thing when I first got out of the hospital.
It's like, shit, how am I going to be able to drive?
Well, you've seen a spinner knob.
It's just a knob, but I tried that and my hand would come off it with the prosthetic.
So it's okay.
How about if you guys do this?
And again, going to someone that gets up with a problem for you mechanically, just make
it into a U shape.
Yeah.
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Exactly.
So I can actually drive better whether I'm turning right or if I'm turning left because
there's pressure applied on the inside and the outside.
And pressure is how I do everything, pressure is how I move everything.
I'm actually currently looking for an adaptation to do with maybe some sort of archery or
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even firearms.
Oh, you can do that.
Most people have a bipod on a rail system for a gun, but if it had that U shape that
you're talking about, I could go my left hand and it would be a lot better.
So little stuff like that, just adaptations that we can make around the situation.
And that was a very simple fix that enabled me to eventually lift 675 pounds.
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Oh, yeah.
And going to, I always like shooting pool while you could see behind me there, there's
a bumper pool.
Yeah.
I could do that just because I figured out the angles.
Yep.
Because without a wrist, they have to apply angle, changing angles from the elbow on the
shoulder and then all these.
So again, there's a lot of similarity between us because we're not going to quit.
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We're just going to figure it out from a different perspective.
So talking about the prosthetic, I want to, and again, folks are going to be able to see
a link for this on the Life's Road Trip website is go watch the video titled Getting My
Prosthetic Hand Week One of Life with a New Hand, which had over 4 million views.
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I have to tell you, because when I was watching it and I went back and I started it again,
because I noticed something about you, when you guys were on your way to pick it up.
And I watched this about three times, he's scared shitless.
I think it seemed to me because I've been there, man, you seem like you were scared
shitless that what if this doesn't work?
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That's what was run through my mind.
But then once you were more engaged at the prosthetist by solving problems, you become
comfortable.
Like I could see everything's melting away and the confidence is now coming in and you
didn't seem to want to quit playing around with it.
Because right there in the office, you were testing things and you wanted to be tested
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again and again and again to try to solve problems and then let you go.
So how do you get into that and how do you make it, you have sensors on the inside and
outside of your arm?
I have sensors on the inside, but I do want to list, well, specifically mentioned, the
fear was not about it not working.
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Honestly, the fear was my partner at the time seeing my hand.
No shit, she hadn't in four years.
My God, I was terrified.
That's what it was.
I was terrified.
I knew that was she had made that video for me, the coming out video, but she had never
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seen it in person.
She only saw the edit.
That was her.
I knew the whole ride there.
I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to have to take off my glove in front of her.
That's what it was.
Yeah, man.
I've been there with I actually had the hand fall off once while I was giving us a talk
at parents day for my college.
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It's like it just frees.
Everything opened up for you then.
It was.
Yeah, that was that was a freeing moment because when I saw that the prosthetic was going to
work, I'm like, Oh my God, this is going to give me freedom.
And I knew that the prosthetic arm was my main goal of that was to get comfortable with
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myself.
I knew that having the prosthetic arm was going to enable me to take my glove off and
be okay with that.
At first it became okay, I just put the prosthetic arm on it.
Then I was like, maybe I can also exist with it off.
And then I learned to like build the value of myself, whether I have my prosthetic arm
or not, I'm of equal value.
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So the fear, that's what I felt so guilty getting a prosthetic arm and a lot of people
don't know this.
I wasn't disabled enough.
That's what you had to fight over?
Because I wasn't disabled enough.
That's crazy.
I don't think I deserved it.
I thought that you were comfortable with them.
I thought I should have been comfortable.
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I told myself all these stories and surprisingly people in the industry that I won't name that
are well known called me out for not being comfortable and being a bad example.
The mental health point, aesthetics were so important to me.
And I felt like a lot of people didn't understand that.
Aren't you excited for the functionality?
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Yeah, that's great and all, but that wasn't my issue.
My issue wasn't function.
My issue was mental health.
I was not okay.
And this enabled me to be okay.
So when people talk about prosthetic limbs or any sort of additional things, you don't
understand it's way past the function.
The function is basic.
The humanness of it is what makes us appreciate everything.
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So here's my mind, I've got notes over here and I'll refer to them, but talking with you,
I just want to say screw the notes.
But it made me think when I was in the hospital, I was in a month and woke up from a coma and
found out, oh, you're missing hands, by the way, and parts of your feet.
And then being transferred, my biggest thing was to get over to be transferred to rehab.
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And if I got into rehab, though, I had to face something.
They were first going to bring in a prosthetist to set me up for hooks.
And I tried them on and I used them, but then we ended up getting me the myos and hooks.
Boom, I just couldn't see myself in that.
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So once the myos came, it was like you.
It was now I feel better about myself.
It changed immediately because I saw myself as being more normal.
I don't miss it.
And I do use the term, you know, it's not like the original equipment at times to folks.
And they say, oh, it looks so real.
I didn't even realize.
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Yeah, there's another similarity between us again.
I found a video on you.
I do a lot of digging, I guess.
And you open with I've come to learn the difference between failing and failure.
Go into that, will you?
That's a big one for me.
Failing is a verb.
It's like stubbing your toe.
You know, it happens.
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It doesn't define who you are.
No one's ever stubbed their toe and be like, oh my God, I suck, you know?
But failure is a noun.
It's like an identity.
And it's a place of being.
It's just who you become.
And that's what I find.
And it might be a little semantic, but semantic saved my life.
Being specific with how I talk to myself about myself and to other people is so important.
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So I've given myself permission to fail.
I'm just never given myself permission to be a failure because that's not who you are.
It's what you do.
But once you accept that you're a failure, you embody that presence.
You embody that identity, you know?
And then it's almost like cherry picking and confirmation bias to confirm that you are
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a failure and you're looking for things to support this notion.
And I see it happen with people all the time.
They get an idea, feelings are not facts, but they do everything in their power to make
it a fact.
I don't get that.
It is sabotage.
It's self-sabotage because in my book, we talk about that, putting your hand on a hot
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stove.
People are more comfortable with the pain they're familiar with than the fear of the
unknown, even if it could be 10 times better.
It's why we stay in bad relationships.
It's why we stay at jobs that are unfulfilling.
That's why we never do anything because the fear of something changing is more scary than
the pain we know sucks, but we've learned to cope.
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And that's shit.
That's just shit.
And I lived that for way too long to accept that just because you're used to the pain
doesn't mean you deserve it.
Let me play off of that.
Makes me, again, when you talk, ideas come to mind and experiences.
So I use that exact same thing.
So before a match, I coach still.
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I'm coaching a state select boys team, for example, now.
And I go up to the opposing coach before the match.
And they probably don't because I wear long sleeve shirts because I'm afraid about losing
a battery falling out.
And they probably don't know of my amputations unless they've heard of me before.
And I'll go over and shake their hand.
And then they realize something's weird.
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And I can tell right away so much about that person.
Are they thinking that they're better than me?
Do they see and kind of their stance might change?
Or they either fake, they seem fake, more aggressive over me, or I can tell I believe
that they're weak.
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So I walk back over to my bench with a better understanding about what the hell I'm getting
into in that match.
So you come across, I mean, you must have seen people look at your gloved hand, your left
before the, okay?
So and you probably wanted to just put it behind your back or something.
But now you're doing videos and everything where you're speaking in front of all these
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people and you're wearing the prosthetic.
And I've even seen you take the thing off and hold it up with your right hand.
So then you might go out and rub elbows with people.
How do you, can you compare rubbing elbows with people before you give a speech and after
the speech?
What's it like?
See, this is, I've done hundreds of podcasts and interviews.
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And it kind of all blurs together.
But when someone gets it and asks these kinds of questions that are deeper than just, oh,
what was it like?
Did you overcome?
This is what I'm talking about because I've done these little social experiments with myself
all the time.
The first time I got my prosthetic arm, I went into Walmart without my arm on and people
avoided me like the plague.
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They see me coming and literally this.
They're, they're turning.
No, not, they're trying to be like nice, but like they don't know how to react.
I have my prosthetic arm on people like, Oh my God, are you military?
Wow, that's so badass.
That's so cool.
I think that's amazing.
Is that carbon fiber?
Wow.
That's so awesome.
I'm like, Oh, so I can only look cool with the arm because it fulfills this fantasy of
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like muscle tattoos.
Maybe you thought I was blown up or something like, you know, I've always been treated differently
because of how I present.
Either I'm overly like hyped up and people like, wow, that's incredible.
Or people ignore it and like, Hey, I like your, your hair.
I'm like, you know what you're, you know what you mean.
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You know what you mean.
Just say it like, I know I'm disabled.
You don't have to pretend like we're in this elevator and you're like, nice tattoo when
your eyes are fixated, you know, like I know what you're trying to say.
But on stage, I do notice that when people see me, they're like, they give me that look
like, Oh, another speaker who has a disability to inspire us.
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You know, another like, Ra Ra go you speaker.
Yeah.
And when I speak, my story is not my message.
You know, people confuse that.
I'm not a speaker who shares my story.
I use my story to facilitate the message, which is applicable for people.
That's a huge differentiation.
If anyone wants to be a speaker, just know your story is not the message.
It's not because no one else identifies with you.
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That's why I wanted you on here, man, because I saw through you.
Your story that you're real.
Your story is not the message, you know.
So after I speak, the eye contact is incredible.
The respect, the rapport, the feeling seen when I walk off stage, people are like, you
get me like you just spoke for 60 minutes, but I feel more understood by you than my partner
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or then my boss.
Because when I speak about topics that are passionate to me, my goal is not to just be
heard.
It's to help.
You know, I want to help people.
I don't want them to listen to my story.
That doesn't benefit them.
No one cares about my story.
And guess what, you have the same story as me and I talk about this all the time.
Everyone listening has the same story as us.
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The person who works at 7-Eleven and CVS and Walmart has the same story as us too.
You went through some shit, you got over some shit and there's more shit coming.
Everyone has the same story.
There you go.
But how do you tell it in a way that helps other people?
That's my job.
So I wonder if, all right, let me ask you, man, because I just saw it in a photo on your
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website.
Is there a point in every one of your speeches where you take the arm off?
Good damn question.
So many good questions.
I love this.
Easily become my favorite podcast.
Every single talk I take my arm off within three minutes of being on stage.
Why so early?
That is a promise to my former self.
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And no one knows this.
You're the only person to ask and only person to catch this.
I take my arm off within three minutes of stage because for 45 to 90 minutes, I let
people see me, someone I hid for 20 years.
And that's where you're, I'm wondering if you were, and I was going to ask you this
earlier about when you were a kid, if you ever went back to a high school reunion and
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wanted to flip off some people.
I definitely did.
That's what you're doing then.
Yeah, it really is.
But it's not to, I've had to make fun of me and then literally reached out to me for
workout programs.
It would be the perfect, perfect point to be like, no, but I helped because at the end
of the day, that's the biggest win is to not do it out of spite.
But because of who I am now, you had, you had a role in who I am now.
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You know, and every day you live your life, you think like, if I would have been that
guy's friend, everyone at my table eats, you know, so I don't hold any animosity towards
people.
I hold myself more accountable for, I wish I would have, of course, we wish we could
go back and change a bunch of things.
I wish I could have changed things in a more positive light for myself and sped up, but
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that's, that's a reality that doesn't exist.
I had to go through my timeline exactly how I moved.
In order to get here.
Yeah.
Okay.
I want to shift into some deeper shit now, but we're going to take two seconds in case
somebody wants to drop an ad here.
So.
Okay, let's dig.
I found an interview in which you describe yourself as the monster.
(29:05):
Let's go, baby.
Yeah.
So it's probably one time in my life where I acknowledged it out loud to myself.
And I was made fun of like drastically.
And I talk about these two stories and the majority of my signature keynote talks where
I talk about being made fun of this kid named Patrick, but that was so many, so many kids
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made fun of me, but he stuck out in my mind because he was very adamant every single day,
elementary school to middle school.
And then there was a girl named Crystal who I wanted to ask out on a date.
And she was in my middle school and I had walked up to her desk and I turned around.
My friends started laughing and I looked back around and the girl is making fun of my hand
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with a staple and calling me Clawboy in front of everyone.
So that moment, I remember the humiliation, but I went numb like apathetic, just numb
and cursed at her.
You know, I pretended like it didn't hurt, but that killed me.
That wrecked me.
And I remember going home and like seeing myself in the mirror and like literally saying physically
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that you're a monster.
And I felt like I felt like the guy who was broken and everyone pointed at.
And I validated that like we talked about earlier, how we look for confirmation bias.
I've played the monster before when I was a kid in elementary school and I remember my
dad even saying like make sure you're not always the monster.
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And I didn't really understand what he meant by that.
He knew.
I realized like, oh my God, people are shit.
People can be shit.
But I didn't understand that people could be shit.
I understood that I was a monster.
It wasn't until years later that I realized I was victim blaming in a sense, you know,
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really.
But it's hard, man.
It's hard when you're going through that and you're vulnerable in that sense.
You don't always have that mental clarity to make the right decision.
So I'm very fortunate that I made it out the way I did.
Yeah, you did.
And now, you know, my mind is going back to how I saw myself coming out of the hospital
and thought, Oh shit, no one's ever going to look at me the same way or whatever.
(31:19):
And you know, there's something I did with my kids.
I had five adopted kids, two from Romania and three from Ethiopia and the three Ethiopians.
Well, they're African Americans, you know, and as they got older in that middle school
age, they started being, you know, one time when my African American son was kindergarten,
he got in a car and said, Tata, which is Romanian for father, what am I going to turn white?
(31:46):
First thing I thought of our society still is yet to change.
But then I came up with that's when it first started and I would talk to the kids about,
you know, other people will pick on you in order to drag you down to their level because
they really don't believe in themselves enough.
So I started using that on the kids and hopefully well, I'm sure that they still had, you know,
(32:09):
an American society crying out love.
They still had issues to get over.
But let me let me take into into something that talking about confidence here.
This is where really was, Oh, I'm contacting this guy.
In that scene in a new interview, you described a fake confidence.
Is that what you were just talking about?
(32:30):
But that was middle school.
It's not about was that fake confidence still there as an adult.
That fake confidence was there until four or five years ago.
Shit, man.
That fake confidence, I had to go through lots of lots of self development, but also therapy.
And I remember I get chills thinking about it because my therapist like wrecked me in
(32:51):
the best way possible.
I told her I was like,
listen, everyone like I go into a room and everyone loves me.
Like it's insane.
I was still hiding my hand at the time.
I was like, everyone loves me.
They're there to hear me speak.
Like they, they're so excited to talk to me.
They messaged me all the time.
People follow me.
She's like, I was like, everyone loves me.
And she said, that's bullshit.
And I was like, Oh, what do you mean?
(33:14):
She's like, that's bullshit.
No one loves you.
They just love the fake image you're putting out of yourself.
Wow.
And she was like, how can anyone know you enough to like you when you don't know you
enough to like you?
And I was just that moment.
What's my job?
Instant like, damn, she's like, have you ever actually been yourself or are you constantly
(33:39):
trying to be what you think people want you to be?
Very insightful.
She's like, you're hiding your hand, you're hiding your arm.
You're hiding your, you're being this thing that is incredible.
You've accomplished amazing things, but your accomplishments are not who you are.
And I was like, damn.
Right.
(34:00):
She's like, who are you actually?
Who, who is that?
You know, and that really made me think, you know, I was this fake confidence thing because
I was literally speaking to people.
Yes, I wanted to help people, but I wasn't helping myself.
And people saw that as confidence.
People saw my desire to help other people as confidence.
(34:21):
They completely skipped over the part that maybe I wasn't confident at all.
Maybe I was coping by avoiding my issues and helping other people.
We went through the same thing.
Here's another thing you and I both went through.
We called it different things, but you described it as a numbness.
I described it as the fog.
So describe your numbness that you went through.
(34:43):
Man, it is so crazy to look back and think of all the years that I just felt numb.
And I thought maybe I was a sociopath, you know, I thought maybe like I just, and I really
thought I was just completely emotionless.
And I had to, I didn't understand when people felt happy or when people felt sad, like why
I didn't feel those things.
(35:05):
Yeah.
And it's because I was numbing it out constantly because any potential emotion would give rise
to what I was hiding and putting under the rug, you know, and I was just sweeping everything
under the rug constantly.
I felt numb, apathetic towards most things.
Was it just depression?
They think it was a combination of depression and avoidance, actively constantly.
(35:30):
Like to the point where when you go out the door, I would plan how I would turn so my
arm wouldn't be seen.
Every moment of every day was calculated.
You know, I knew the path I needed to take in college and where people usually sit and
when I would pretend to be looking for something in my backpack with my left hand.
So no one would see people have no clue how exhausting it was.
(35:53):
And I pretended like I was fine.
How could I not be numb?
Because I spent all my emotional energy on hiding.
Man, I wish we would have had some beers together back.
Right.
I talked about all this shit.
But that's the scary part is people see me and even at the time in college and getting
out of college, people saw my growth on social media and stuff and they're like, you're so
(36:17):
awesome.
All this, all this stuff, you know.
And I was like, it's almost worse to hear all that stuff people hyping you up when you're
struggling, you know?
People see like they see the comb over, they see the tattoos, they see the tight shirts
and like, you just had it good.
Like, you don't know what most people go through, you know, let alone mentally or where they're
(36:39):
brought up.
Like, we assume and we tell ourselves story about other people and we think those stories
are facts about other people too.
The same way we do with our feelings, we do with seeing someone like that guy looks like
a shady person.
What about him is a shady person?
Because he has a dangly earring, because he has a tattoo on his neck.
What story are you creating of the bias you have and creating that as a fact in your
(37:02):
head?
I don't know.
The older I get, the more I just shake my head at humans, humans can just suck.
They really, that is the perfect.
Humans can suck.
That should be the title of the podcast.
Well, we'll put a positive spin on it by calling it Life's a Road Trip because really
(37:23):
it's a road trip that has potholes and everything.
And so I guess, okay, let's shift, man.
Let's talk about this Titan games thing.
You know, I see on there every time it's mentioned about NBC Titan games is with the
rock.
You guys, you don't have to put that on there anymore.
But I understand him being on there as, oh, it gets people attracted to it.
(37:46):
You're on there.
So I asked the question, what's he like?
He's honestly so cool.
He was so down to earth.
It was a crazy, like it was awesome experience.
And he was definitely one of my favorite.
I was super into wrestling as a kid.
So he was like my favorite wrestler.
And that's cool.
It was really cool to see that.
It was definitely something I never intended on doing.
It just happened to happen.
(38:08):
And I didn't apply for the show.
It just, yeah, it was crazy.
What are those things in life?
Like it, yeah, it was one of those situations that everything happened in such a great way.
And even though I lost, I was able to share a message that got out to hundreds of thousands
of millions of people.
And I got such amazing feedback.
(38:30):
Like, oh, the Titan games must really propel your career.
My career at that time, I was already at like 50 some thousand followers on social media.
I was still building my speaking business.
It helped, I guess, a little bit, but I had already done the work, you know?
So it's not like that was my claim to fame.
I had already been doing the work for years.
It's just that moment was a validation that everything I was already doing.
(38:53):
I'm on the right path.
So let me ask you.
Did you have an agent at the time?
No.
How the hell did you get over that hurdle to get on to something like that?
To just.
They reached out to me.
Two hundred thousand people applied to the show, but I was building up until maybe two
(39:14):
years ago, I was a very one man show.
I was so, I was like screw everyone.
I'll do this myself, you know?
And I built everything from the ground up to the point where I built my and that's why
I mean like it's not like the show catapulted me to this huge level of success.
I got there and the show recognized that and reached out to me because of it.
(39:36):
So yeah, it was one of those like amazing situations, but it was more so a reminder.
I'm like, damn, I'm doing this, you know, I'm getting this done.
So did you go into that with the thought of I look at this as two ways.
And this is going to help my career or and this seems sounds like fun.
(39:57):
It's going to meet your competitive desire.
Which one was it?
So it was more career focused, but it was more along the lines of regardless of whether
I win or lose, I know I'll be able to share a message that will impact the community I'm
trying to reach.
Very cool.
So that I knew I'm going into it winning regardless.
Yeah.
You know, and I got very lucky because I was the only message.
(40:21):
I was only person who lost and got to share a message.
They gave me a platform to share and the rock ended up coming down and like hugging me
and stuff and like that interview went viral and it went viral for all the right reasons.
It wasn't social media virality.
It was impact virality and that was my favorite part, to be honest.
(40:43):
That's fascinating, man.
How that works.
Okay, let's shift.
NRG foods.
I got to read this for people.
They're going to look it up.
Oh, a tagline.
This is so good.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Bunts.
Like big bunts.
So what is NRG foods?
What are you guys making?
(41:04):
Yeah.
So I was speaking, you know, I'm a professional keynote speaker if you didn't get that by
now.
No, I got that, man.
That's my main career.
But I did a co-talk with another type one diabetic who is a yacht chef and the talk
went incredible for a diabetes organization and we were like, hey, you want to meet up,
hang out?
I'm like, yeah, let's do it.
He's like, I got this little company thing.
(41:26):
I'm not sure.
I want to get your advice on it.
I went over.
I was like, wow, these are terrible.
You're honest.
Yeah.
He was like, I want to hire you to consult.
I'm like, great.
I did marketing consulting because I built my whole brand through marketing.
Okay.
And he was like, man, I can't afford you.
So I want to hire you, but I also want to potentially give you a percentage of the company.
(41:47):
Sounds like a shark tank episode.
Yeah, pretty much.
Yeah.
And then from there, he's like, man, there's not enough I can give you.
So I'm just going to make you co-owner.
You're going to rebrand the whole company and we're going to run with it.
Can I do foods?
So it's a low to moderate carb snack that has quality protein, all natural ingredients.
Okay.
And it's made by two type one diabetics to help people enjoy the snacks.
(42:10):
Our goal is to not sacrifice taste for health and vice versa.
So we have protein bars.
So we're coming out with new line of products as well, but they just taste good.
And they don't have any guilt.
That was a good tagline you used right there about taste.
Yeah.
We don't have to have a taste for health or vice versa.
So you got to use that throw it on the t-shirt.
Yeah.
(42:31):
Yeah.
All right.
Let's jump into something else you've been doing.
The upper hand and a link for this to the book is going to be on the life's a road trip
website.
I want to read your elevator pitch.
Reading the upper hand means to gain an advantage or control over a person or situation.
The purpose of this book is not to put you in a winning position over other people.
(42:56):
It's to give you the upper hand over yourself.
I think that that probably summarizes everything we've heard from you during the entire show
and you must mean it.
So talk about the book a little bit and maybe what spurred you to do that or was that something
somebody gave you an idea for or asked you to do or I could think of so many different
ways how you got to doing it.
So tell about a little bit about the book and how you got into it.
(43:19):
I think I exhausted myself because any entrepreneur has probably told them a story you have to
write a book and you could write a book.
You have a great story.
You could write a book.
Write a book.
It's always, you know, but it's there's more to writing a book than just having an idea
of writing a book.
Exactly.
It's not about what you want to write.
It's about will this impact the people that would read this?
(43:40):
The book is for the readers, not for you because you're the author, not the reader, you know.
So that I apply that across all walks of life to make sure that the end result is for the
people who will be getting it, you know.
I love communication.
I'm fascinated by communication.
But I've always heard the phrase communication is key and it never made sense to me because
(44:04):
that's step two because self communication is key.
How can you expect other people to communicate with you if you can't communicate with yourself?
If you don't know who you are, if you can't have those internal dialogues to work out
your problems, then communicating with other people will never be successful.
So this book, I wanted to focus on self communication and it took me five years to decide to write
(44:28):
this and a year and a half to actually write it.
And I realized that I am not a writer.
I'm a speaker, so I spoke the book into existence, recorded it and transcribed it to a book
because I am a speaker and I tried to force myself to be something I wasn't and it wasn't
working.
So this book is truly spoken from my mouth to pages.
(44:50):
I've never heard of anyone doing that.
Did you have an editor at least?
I mean, some of it.
I did, yeah.
They had to clean it up.
Because I thought I could do it by myself and I had my friend check it and she was like,
did you even spell check this?
I'm like, I thought I did.
Don't proofread yourself.
Yeah.
No, no.
Yeah.
(45:11):
You miss a majority of things.
So luckily I don't need spell check when I'm speaking.
Okay.
Now you're very proficient in speaking.
Hey, let's get into it.
I'm going to do this.
Just open up your website, ChrisRudin.com.
And again, the link will be on the Life's A Road Trip website.
What can a guy with 1.5 arms teach you about diversity, inclusion, adversity, everything?
(45:35):
Start the conversation here.
So that's a good hook.
And you've got the photo of, there you are, your right hand is holding your left prosthetic.
I think it's very dynamic.
And I came down and you've got a couple of videos on here that like, man, this guy, I
would love to be at one of his speaking engagements.
And I look in here for crying out loud, man.
(45:58):
You've been with, you've spoken for Facebook, Nike and Zappos.
I mean, that's just three out of a bunch.
Tell me, tell me about your first one.
How did it go?
Were you sweating a lot?
I mean, you seem so comfortable doing it now.
How have you progressed?
My first ever, my first ever keynote.
(46:20):
Yeah.
You're talking about you up on a stage, you know, in front of people sitting in real
chairs.
What started my speaking career was a buddy of mine was hosting a diabetes nonprofit.
And he was like, we want to have a speaker.
Would you be down to do it?
I'm like, yeah, I've never done that before, but I'll try it, you know?
At that point, I just wanted to be a physical therapist.
(46:41):
You know, that's what I wanted to be.
There's a little difference here, Chris.
A big difference there.
My mom still doesn't understand what I do for a living.
So I spoke on that stage.
And I thought I was like, I could definitely do better than that.
That was not people loved it.
They were like, wow, this is great.
Did you practice this?
Like, this is so good.
And I'm like, same thing with powerlifting.
(47:04):
I was like, man, if I did good, like this, imagine what would happen if I trained this,
you know?
Good.
So I went to classes.
I went to like a Toastmasters.
I studied communication.
I was like obsessed with how to tell a story better and why storytelling can be effective
or ineffective.
And I was like, okay, if I identify a message and I can communicate it in a way that makes
(47:26):
people listen, maybe I can actually help people.
I started speaking and I did like 30 talks for free, you know?
Because I didn't realize that I didn't think I was worth the money until someone offered
me money.
And I was like, no way.
And now it's to the point where I'm definitely on the higher end of speakers and it is my
full time career.
(47:47):
And I absolutely love what I do.
How long is, uh, are your typical gigs?
And what are you up there for 45, 60?
Anywhere between 30 to 90 minutes, it ranges.
And if I'm doing like a workshop on top of a keynote or not.
And you're not like a stand up comic that has everything memorized or you have something
on the floor that you're reading off of, you're just off the cuff.
(48:08):
I have three main talks.
Yeah, I see.
Three topics.
All right.
What are they?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So each one can be kind of tweaked for depending on what the company or organization needs.
But the majority is, uh, it's definitely not memorized.
Okay.
So you're winging it.
Well, no, you're not winging it.
(48:29):
I, I, I didn't mean it like that.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
You're talking from the heart.
Yes.
That's the best way to put it is because, uh, people would be like, wow, this was incredible.
Like it, I get in the moment and I'm very in the moment when I do my craft.
I love speaking and communicating.
I am, I think one of my skills, maybe naturally is improv.
(48:50):
So being able to accommodate the current situation of the room, uh, the climate we're
in, I just love communicating because I can see what hits with people.
And it's so nice to see when someone gets it.
So you are comfortable enough.
It's like through competition, you're comfortable enough to, to read everything that's going
on.
Even though you're leading it, you're also reading what you're getting back.
(49:13):
Yeah.
You could be a stand up comic, uh, and be able to get by it.
So, uh, people can reach out to you and, and, uh, contact you regarding this.
Do you have an agent now?
Are you still doing this by yourself?
I have a few bureaus that represent me, but non-exclusively the majority, I would say this
is crazy.
(49:34):
95% of my business is inbound.
Real.
Well, you've got so many hits.
The people are going to be picking up.
I focused a lot on creating myself as like a delist celebrity, uh, in the diabetes space
and then in the disability space and then I went kind of small to wide.
So the majority of my, my income is inbound and then now I create bigger partnerships
(49:58):
with certain companies that I work with repeatedly.
And my goal starting this year is working with other speakers to build, you know, actual
real speaking, uh, careers where a lot of people make a little bit of money here and
they're speaking, but it is very possible to be a, I hate the cheesiness of saying six
(50:20):
figure speaker, but like to actually make money in keynote speaking.
So I was going to ask to wrap this up.
I was going to ask you this straight forward question.
What's next?
Well, you just kind of answered it unless you got more.
Crapes.
There's always more.
There's always more.
Yeah.
But also you working on though.
So not just floating around in your head.
Senior coaching and a speaker mentorship is the main like lifelong goal for, if I could
(50:44):
create speakers in marginalized communities that I can't penetrate to become kind of like
what I do, but how they would do it.
That would mean to me, this is the most fulfilling life.
I want to speak for the rest of my life.
I'll always dabble in certain businesses because I love seeing a solution to people's problems
come to life.
But the main goal in life is speaking and communication.
(51:07):
So it seems to me, while you're talking about that, that little kid with the weird left hand
that didn't like himself, that all of this stuff seemed pent up over so many years and
it didn't just come out, it blew up.
And I think that's really cool because I get that from you and it seems like this has always
(51:30):
been you, but it wasn't always you.
It couldn't have been because that kid wasn't like this.
And same thing, like pre and post, whether you had an accident and lost limbs or like
just something changed in your life.
We've all had the potential, you know, sometimes you have to face something to realize like,
this is not how I want my life to be.
And before my life, before accepting myself is not there was no good life that could have
(51:56):
come from that.
That's so wild.
And how sometimes we get to certain places.
It's a road trip.
All right, so speaking of road trips, we are going to do the road trip roundup.
I've got five questions for you, Chris.
Just be yourself on responding to these.
I'm not trying to trip you up, but if I do, what the heck?
(52:19):
When road tripping, do you tend to do fast food or local diners?
Fast food, but I always enjoy local diners too.
Waffle House is a weakness of mine.
Yeah, you're down in the south.
I love Waffle House.
All right, so when you're at Waffle House, do you sit at the counter or at a table or
at a table?
Table.
Table.
At a table.
Yeah.
(52:40):
Okay.
Find dining only.
We've got a thing up in Wisconsin here called George Webb.
It's the same as Waffle House because I've been the Waffle House, but it's the same exact
thing.
But I've always find sitting at the counter because I'm a talker and I want to talk to
the person as they're serving.
And if they handle everything, you know, cooking and cleaning and giving drinks to folks and
(53:01):
taking them their meals and stuff, just to lighten up their day if I can make them
chill.
That's great.
Yeah.
I love that.
All right.
So what's your dream car for a road trip?
That can be something you grew up with, like a big station wagon you guys had or something
you've got now or something that if you're on a road trip, say you were going up the
coast, you would probably want to rent.
Well, I can tell you now, my car now, I treated myself and I got a Porsche Taycan, which is
(53:27):
a car.
Yeah.
But I tried to take a road trip, the range anxiety on that is so real.
It is so real.
So never again, I dream car would be like doing some sort of RV trip.
I would love to do an extended road trip, like RV trip around the country.
That would be cool.
I always wanted to do maybe route 66 for whatever is there and maybe stop at some places.
(53:51):
You are definitely not the first person that has said an RV from all my guests.
That comes up more than I ever would have thought.
That's awesome.
That's a real road trip in that.
Okay.
So you're kind of a young guy, but this might still hit you.
Last cassette or CD that played while you're on a road trip.
CD was probably on a road trip, a CD, the Eminem show.
(54:15):
The hell is that?
Eminem, the rapper.
Oh, I was thinking.
The Eminem.
Not you're thinking like some commercial for chocolate.
Listen, I love snacks, but not that much.
Chris, real the kids in this.
Chris really loves the sexy green one that you get into.
(54:36):
Yes.
Okay.
That's my weird.
Yes.
Someone's mind is that, you know, don't take me there.
You started it, man.
All right.
Let's get ourselves pulled together.
Cocoa Pepsi.
I'm a Pepsi person, but I'm a diet because of diabetes, but I love Pepsi.
(54:57):
I prefer Pepsi over Coke.
I challenge you to try new Coke Zero.
I was drinking.
I didn't try it.
And it's good.
It's definitely better than diet for sure, but I don't know why I like diet Pepsi.
It just does it.
Pepsi has a different, you know, Coke has, yeah, a little bit more, not as sweet as Pepsi.
Yeah.
Last one.
(55:18):
And you take this wherever you want.
I just love asking this question to my guests.
Favorite road trip memory.
Favorite road trip memory.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
Let's see.
Favorite road trip memory.
I'd probably say going up to New Orleans with my mom and my brother.
(55:41):
And it was the first time I had a beignet.
And I was like powdered sugar on anything, let alone.
Oh, but it's-
Hillewee Heavenly Go.
Like I can taste, smell, and remember everything about that memory.
So like that was a really cool trip.
Wow.
Did you guys take in any of the music?
(56:02):
Do we what?
Did you guys take in any of the music?
Not that I can recall.
I'm definitely more of a food person if you can't tell by the Eminem lady and like everything
else.
So I am very food driven and my ultimate goal is just traveling around the world more as
I'm doing now, but like more and trying foods.
I think food is such a good representation of culture.
(56:23):
It's such a good community builder.
It's a bonder whether it's with friends, family, business.
I love food in that sense.
So that's a big motivator for me.
Very cool.
Hey, we're done and I want you and I to stay on for a couple minutes and pick each other's
brains a little bit, maybe be even a little bit more casual than we were even with this.
So I will just say, chow and chillax everybody and keep listening to Life's A Road Trip.
(56:54):
Thanks for listening.
Check out previous episodes with new ones dropping each Tuesday.
If you don't see a synopsis of this show where you're listening, visit our website at
lifestroedtrip.podbean.com for more information on this week's guest.
This is your host Scott Martin reminding you that Life's A Road Trip.
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