Check Out Our Podcast: The Verdict
Welcome to the first episode of The Verdict with Clarke Speaks. We’re kicking of a series on the five failures from success that Clarke has experienced over the course of his life. Hosted by Carson Grace Toomer, we’ll take you through a series of life events that initially seemed like setbacks but later revealed themselves to be pivotal moments of growth and success.
In this video, Clarke shares his personal journey, opening up about these key moments that look completely different in retrospect. Through the lens of a powerful Chinese farmer parable, he discusses the importance of perspective, resilience, and the unexpected blessings that arise from adversity. Tune in to hear how Clarke's early life challenges shaped his independence, confidence, and the invaluable relationships he cultivated along the way.
Here’s what we discuss in this episode:
0:00 – Intro
0:27 – The story of the Chinese farmer
3:03 – How Clarke’s childhood shaped his outlook on life
14:03 – What Clarke learned from his childhood experiences
19:52 – The connection Clarke had with his football coach
22:24 – How did Clarke’s outlook on life shift?
25:51 – Finding motivation to succeed
Motivation, business, family, faith, law, overcoming challenges
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Web Posting Details & Nuances
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Unknown
My name is Carson Grace Tuma, and I'm here with American injury lawyer Clark speaks.
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Unknown
Now, Mr. Speaks, this series is called Your five Failures from success. Can you explain to me a little bit your philosophy behind this title, and why you feel it so
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Unknown
important? Sure. I'll be happy to, So, so, like I remember here in,
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Unknown
the story of the Chinese farmer, you may have seen it on social media or whatever, but the idea is there's a Chinese farmer in this, and, he has a horse, and the horse runs off one day, and all the people in the town come to him and say, well, hey, that's
00:06:17:06 - 00:06:39:00
Unknown
terrible. Your horse ran off and he says, well, maybe. And the next day the horse comes back with seven other horses, and all the townspeople say, well, that's great, that's wonderful. And he says, well, maybe. And then the next day his son is riding, one of the horses and falls and breaks his leg, and all the townspeople say, that's terrible.
00:06:39:02 - 00:07:01:03
Unknown
Well, maybe. And then, the next day, the conscription officers come and they're drafting people to go off to war. And in his, they don't draft his son because of the broken leg. And the townspeople come, come and say, well, that's great, you know? And he says, well, maybe in the idea, it's not my idea, but it's a it's a good idea.
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Unknown
And the idea is that when something bad or good happens in your life, it's not determinative, right? It's not. It may be bad, it may be good. It's just you don't know the rest of the context. And there may be a bigger plan, a bigger picture that you don't see yet. And so for me, why this is important is because
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Unknown
in this series we'll talk about, you know, five things that happened in my life.
00:07:28:21 - 00:07:44:12
Unknown
I did it or it was happened to me or done or whatever. But but the point of it is that at the time I thought, this is such a colossal, life changing experience that I will never, you know, it's going to affect me negatively for the rest of my life.
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Unknown
And then when I look back on these experiences, without question, these things that I thought were so negative turned out to be by far, some of the greatest blessings in my life.
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Unknown
And when they happened, you could not have convinced me of that for anything. I thought, oh my goodness, there you know, it's all it's just terrible, right? And then now that I have a little bit of more distance and perspective, I can see that those things were not curses, that they were blessings, and that I have benefited greatly from those experiences.
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Unknown
Right. That's a very far from a metaphor. Now, let's really get into, these specific failures that you've deemed, you know, were failures at the time but have led to your success or prosperity. Now, what would you say would be the first, you know, big failure in your life that you had that outlook on?
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Unknown
Sure. Yeah. Well, so, the first thing that comes to mind, it wasn't so much of my personal failure.
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Unknown
This first thing, some of the rest of them were. But this first thing is more like something that happened, you know? So I'm, nine years old, 8 or 9 years old, and, it was my mother, my brother, my father and me. We lived together, and, it wasn't perfect, but it was a it was a it was a family, like a lot of families.
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Unknown
And, we didn't have a lot of money. And, my dad, was in business, and he was expecting to close this big deal. And, so, like, when that happens in a family that doesn't have, a whole lot of money, you kind of wait on your bills, right? You maybe your bills, instead of being 30 days are now 60 days or maybe 65 days.
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Unknown
70 days, you know, so so we're, like, anticipating this money coming in and and we as a family sometimes if you're, if you're a family that's struggling, even if you're young, if your kids kids know about all that stuff and they might even participate in it, like we'd, you know, pray and, you know, and, and hope the thing was going to go the way it was supposed to, and it looked like it was going to win it.
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Unknown
And it did. Well, then the, day that it's supposed to happen and we're supposed to get some money and maybe we get pay up, catch up on our bills, and maybe do something as a family or whatever. You know, I come home from school that day and I find, a, a, envelope on the kitchen counter counter, and it's got $1,000 and a letter and it's, from my father, and my father says, in the letter, and it makes it clear that he's leaving, and he has no plans to come back, and it leaves us $1,000, which is not enough to do what we need to do, and I don't
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Unknown
I'm 8 or 9 years old, but I knew that. And so, about that time, the phone rings and, I answer it, and it's my mom. She's crying. She was a teacher, and she was calling from school. I would get home from on the bus before she would get home. And so she says, she's she's, I don't remember her calling me other times, but somehow this day, she happened to call, and I wanted to give her this information.
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Unknown
But I also knew that I wanted to be careful about how I gave it to her, because, I knew it would worry her. And I knew that it would hurt her feelings because she'd got left to, you know, and, so that was a, you know, I didn't know quite how to do that. So I just, you know, came out with it and said, hey, listen, I got something to tell you.
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Unknown
There's a letter here and here. And she's like, well, read it to me. And I read it to her. And, you know, I was I was first of all, impressed. One of the first things I learned from that experience was just how strong my mom was, because I knew she was hurt, and I knew she was scared.
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Unknown
But I saw her be strong, you know, because that's what she had to be. And so she didn't flinch. She didn't, you know, flip out. She just was like, okay, well, thank you. And I'll be home in a little while. And so that, that, that first does a so I went from being afraid and, hurt to being, okay.
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Unknown
Well, that gives me some kind of confidence that we'll be able to deal with this.
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Unknown
We came home and we talked. My mom came home and my brother came home. We talked about it, and we knew things would get difficult. Right. Because we were kind of, you know, on the low side of middle class in terms of how we lived and all this.
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Unknown
But now, you know, it was going to be a little bit more
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Unknown
difficult. Right. And we were going to so, you know, our peer group, you know, would have been here and then our ability would have been here. And that was going to present certain challenges. And it did. Right. We had it. We had we had to depend on our family and our friends and our church for, money and help and assistance and all this kind of stuff.
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Unknown
And, and, and my brother and I had to get jobs. My brother, worked at a restaurant and, delivered newspapers and, you know, we sort of get through this time, but it presented some certain challenges, right, that were that at the time, I thought, I was the only person that had these challenges.
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Unknown
You know, I thought that
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Unknown
it was going to affect the rest of my life in a very negative way. You know, for example, this would have been the 80s and 90s, I imagine the same. Mr.. Probably true now, like, you know, as a kid, you think it's so important that you have this brand of whatever, right?
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Unknown
Like if you. So I remember in my in my case, it would have
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Unknown
been, you know, Nike's you know, you had to have the, you know, leather Nike's and, you know, you didn't wear the canvas Nike's. And God forbid you didn't want the, cougars or whatever it is. They, they so that were that were
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Unknown
and, and there was just we just couldn't afford to have those things.
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Unknown
Right. Even with my job and my pay for out and all that kind of stuff. So, and so, that was, it seemed like such a big deal. Or if we would, I remember we would going on a Boy Scout, camping trip and, and, you know, so everybody else's father would have been there and mine wasn't, or I would go to, football games and, you know, or, you know, I played sports growing up, growing up in high school, I played football and wrestled and played tennis.
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Unknown
And and I remember that, you know, everybody else's dad would, you know, not, you know, not all the time, but a lot of it. My perception was that everybody else's parents and families were, you know, together and were participating and, and, and, I weren't, you know, I was, I was, I was my mom was working because she taught school.
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Unknown
And then in addition to that, she worked at nights and on weekends sometimes. And a clothing store, to try to make ends meet. And so, so, that was another source. So, so that money, absent, you know, parents being absent from things that I felt like were important, there was another piece of it, too, which is it felt like our family was fractured.
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Unknown
Splintered. Right. You had this idea of what my family was, and then now it was
00:15:15:14 - 00:15:39:03
Unknown
different. It was. It was, different from what it was before. And so I, so, for example, holidays, special occasions, we would go to, my relative's house, right? I mean, they would just be the three of us. So Christmas set with the three of us didn't seem very festive, you know what I mean?
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Unknown
We didn't have really money for decorations as much as they did or whatever, so. So we would go to my aunt's house. My aunt had this huge, beautiful house and she was she she made it everything, festive and fun. And she was just warm and dynamic. And it was just fun. And it was awesome. And I loved it.
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Unknown
But we we were guests, you know, perpetually at Christmas and at Thanksgiving and those kinds of things. It was wonderful because those people made us feel so, you know, welcome and included and a part of it, but there's just a part of it where you're just like, yeah, this is I don't own this position. I just rent this position within this amazing sort of
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Unknown
scenario.
00:16:22:03 - 00:16:29:14
Unknown
And at some point I got to go back, you know, so it makes sense. Yeah. So. So when I'm,
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Unknown
Growing up, that was a huge part of what my perception is of what was going on. Right. And it seemed to me like everybody else had all these things. They had their father there. They had the money they need to buy the clothes or the shoes or the car. I didn't have a car till. I mean, everybody else got a car under 16.
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Unknown
I didn't have a car till I was,
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Unknown
Almost through college. And then that was a car that worked about, 3 or 4 days out of the month. You know, like, I remember physically pumping up the tire with a bicycle pump on trying to trying to get to work at different times. So, so like that was my perception is that is it my situation was so much different from everybody else's because of this thing that happened in my life.
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Unknown
Right. So it sounds like your father leaving led you to even more so kind of look towards what your peers and your peers family were doing, and that maybe negatively affected your outlook on life. Is that
00:17:34:10 - 00:17:41:22
Unknown
probably. Yeah. It did. If negative, I mean, it it it affected my perception and infected,
00:17:41:22 - 00:17:44:21
Unknown
when I looked at other people, which is always such a dangerous thing.
00:17:44:21 - 00:18:10:07
Unknown
And I think kids do that today. Right? They look at other people on social media and they're like, everybody else is thin and everybody else is beautiful, and everybody else is doing all these amazing things, and they have a thousand tons of friends, and they and they go to these amazing places and they have this amazing food. And it's just like you're just seeing everybody's projection of what they want you to see, which is okay.
00:18:10:07 - 00:18:31:00
Unknown
You know what I mean? We always want people to see the best versions of ourselves. But again, that's why I think this is so important, is I want people to see that that's not always the whole story, that there is a cause. Because I will promise you that if you went back and you asked people that I went to school with at that age, a lot of them would probably have no idea that this was going on in my life.
00:18:31:05 - 00:18:47:17
Unknown
They would have very. Only my best friends would know that this was what was going on in my life, you know? And a lot of them would think, have thought I was a lucky compared to them, you know what I mean? And this is just all this is kind of going on.
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Unknown
I mean, the reality is that my dad didn't leave and we did have money problems and we, you know, had a hard time keeping up.
00:18:54:01 - 00:19:14:10
Unknown
And we did have to depend on our family and friends and church and, and all this kind of stuff for, you know, food and, and sometimes I got friends to this day whose parents helped us during that time. They probably don't even know about it. You know what I mean? I can think of, several people that I went to high school with and they were in our church, you know, that would have helped us neighbors and stuff.
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Unknown
That would have helped us, that, they probably to this day don't know that they helped us, you know, so so I do think that that that perception of what's going on in the mind of somebody when they compare themselves to somebody else is is a is an important thing that people need to realize that, hey, other people have challenges to
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Unknown
like, what did you think you learned looking back, living through that experience?
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Unknown
There's a there's a few things I first of all, I one of the blessings is that, my brother and my mother and I became very, very close and got to a place where
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Unknown
we could, you know, and and it had this impact later. My mom's now 87 years old. She lived with us for, years and years and years.
00:20:04:15 - 00:20:34:06
Unknown
My brother and I are super close. I've talked to him a lot or almost daily basis, certainly this week, you know, and so the relationship that we have had was, phenomenal. It taught me independence, you know, by having a paper out when I was eight years old or whatever. You know, I learned from that experience, you know, and I went, I went through what I thought was a scary time, you know, for example.
00:20:34:06 - 00:20:45:01
Unknown
later in life. My kids are probably five and six years old. My older two kids, Nicholas and Katie. Nicholas is six, Katie's five. Were
00:20:45:01 - 00:20:57:07
Unknown
they both have bikes? The bikes have train wheels, and they ride all over the place in their bikes. I'm trying, to teach Nicholas to ride his bike without his training wheels, so I.
00:20:57:07 - 00:21:17:10
Unknown
I take the training wheels off, and then, at this point, again, this is, you know, ten, 15 years ago. So we live on a golf course, and so I'm on the cart path with him, and I've got, like, a pillow strapped to each knee and a pillow on his back and a pillow on his front and a belt around his thing.
00:21:17:16 - 00:21:38:22
Unknown
And I'm running because I'm trying to. I'm trying so hard to keep him from experiencing any negative, you know, being hurt. Right? I want to protect him right from being hurt, you know? And so I'm running up and down the cart path holding on to this thing. And he's got helmets and knee pads and I, you know, he's just over the top protection.
00:21:38:22 - 00:21:59:10
Unknown
His mom has him do this. Be honest with you. But but either way, this is what's going on in the meantime of me trying to do this running up and down, or I'm nearly having a heart attack run up and down the golf course, trying to trying to teach him to ride his bike with no training wheels. I look over to the side and his little sister has taken the the, training wheels off of her bike and is blowing past us on her own
00:21:59:10 - 00:22:01:05
Unknown
without any assistance.
00:22:01:07 - 00:22:14:13
Unknown
So the lesson from that, I think, is that, you know, sometimes when we're just thrown in the deep end by ourselves and we don't have anybody there to
00:22:14:13 - 00:22:31:20
Unknown
take our training wheels off and to make sure that we have the cross cut off of our bread and that we have, you know what I mean? It gives us an independence and a self-reliance and later a confidence that is irreplaceable.
00:22:31:22 - 00:22:51:17
Unknown
And so for me, not having anybody there during that time, that's not true. Not having anybody there, not having my father there during this time, ended up being this amazing gift because it taught me self-reliance, independence and confidence.
00:22:51:17 - 00:23:08:14
Unknown
The other thing that it did do, and that's there's something I think that it's a critical is it made me look elsewhere for guidance, for mentorship, for, you know, a role model.
00:23:09:02 - 00:23:28:00
Unknown
My dad would be, you know, he's deceased at this point in time. He'd be the first to tell you later in life. Later in life, we reconnected and, he's he's sort of we made peace. And he, you know, acknowledged what he had done and not done and, and, ended up being we ended up having a good relationship.
00:23:28:02 - 00:23:45:16
Unknown
But he'd be the first to tell you that at that point in his life, he was not the person that he would have wanted me to be. His role model. Right? He would not have wanted me to look to him and go, this is how you live life. So because he was absent, I had to look elsewhere, right?
00:23:45:17 - 00:23:58:07
Unknown
I had to look at other people. My mom became, you know. So in other words, Father's Day was recently. And so the first person I thought it was my mom, not my dad, because she was that sort of fulfilled that role.
00:23:58:07 - 00:24:04:05
Unknown
I had uncles, you know, my brother was was also he was my brother's five and a half years older than I.
00:24:04:06 - 00:24:12:15
Unknown
And, he was such a great role model. During this time, he took on the responsibility of being my father in many ways.
00:24:12:15 - 00:24:23:10
Unknown
Right. He would help me with, sports and athletics. That was a big part of my life growing up. He would, he he he he lived this sort of. He had a very unbelievable work ethic.
00:24:23:12 - 00:24:44:23
Unknown
And he kind of showed me about that. He taught me about, you know, fitness. And he taught me about all kinds of different things. And he felt a deep personal responsibility to fill that void. And I thought that was pretty cool. I had uncles that were phenomenal people, and they were, good husbands, good fathers, you know, spiritual, faith based people.
00:24:44:23 - 00:24:51:08
Unknown
That gave me a real good example on how to how to live life.
00:24:51:08 - 00:25:10:14
Unknown
I had a step grandfather who was just an incredible, person, who was, you know, with to West Point was a general in the, in the, Air Force and had this incredible, amazing life. And he would, you know, talk to me about things to do and things not to do.
00:25:10:14 - 00:25:19:05
Unknown
And how to live life and principles that you should incorporate into your, you know, I had these incredible coaches and, and,
00:25:19:05 - 00:25:40:20
Unknown
and, teachers, you know, I had, this coach, my football coach in high school was one of my favorite. You know, when you look back, you ever have a coach where you just have a connection with, for whatever reason, and you just you think back to the things that they say over and over again over the course of your life.
00:25:40:21 - 00:26:01:04
Unknown
Well, for me, that was this guy, Bruce McBride, a football coach that I have, JV football coach, and that I had him in high school, and he was so focused on discipline. And he was he was that he was focused on discipline for me at a very young age. And that was important. So, you know, he he would do this, he would talk about this drill and we would, we would he would he talked about how important it was to do.
00:26:01:05 - 00:26:20:17
Unknown
Exactly right. Right. Your toes had to be up to the line. Not on the line, not over the line, but right up to the line, you know, and that was a metaphor for lots of different things. And, so I had, you know, had Jackie Davis as a teacher who was just this incredible teacher, you know, and, I had coaches and teachers.
00:26:20:17 - 00:26:41:15
Unknown
But my point is, I might not have been as receptive to. Listening to those people, to understanding what they had to offer. If I just had a one person that I was communicating with on a daily basis, and if he had stayed, it would have been he would have been communicating some pretty negative examples for, for me.
00:26:41:15 - 00:27:20:06
Unknown
so that's why I think that his departure presented certain obstacles and problems, and it was psychologically challenging in some ways, but it really turned out to be such a blessing because of the self-reliance, the confidence, the, independence. And then it opened all these other role models, opened my eyes to all these other role models that were in my community, pastors and teachers and, you know, college professors and peers.
00:27:20:06 - 00:27:29:05
Unknown
You know what I mean? Sometimes your peers can be good role models. My, I've got cousins that were that were, that later in life,
00:27:29:05 - 00:27:39:05
Unknown
you know, got in, became, lawyers and different things. And I was like, okay, well, they can do it. I can do it. I have, friends that were doing it and doing amazing things.
00:27:39:05 - 00:27:54:13
Unknown
And I was like, well, shoot, if they can do it, I can do it. And, all those things were just blessings that I don't know, would have been available to me had I had the, path that I had pictured in my mind before this happened.
00:27:54:13 - 00:27:59:00
Unknown
Right now, how and when do you think that clicked for you?
00:27:59:01 - 00:28:15:20
Unknown
Was it, you know, this transition from a negative outlook on life to, you know, the importance of motivation and self-reliance? Was it something that kind of you learned or noticed slowly throughout the course of your life? Or was it this like big moment that this was such a blessing and I had no idea.
00:28:15:20 - 00:28:26:13
Unknown
Also, I think it's relatively recently when I've started, I think when I had kids, I started thinking more about putting all this stuff in perspective.
00:28:26:15 - 00:28:29:04
Unknown
You know, I think I had
00:28:29:04 - 00:28:55:12
Unknown
you know, once I'm talking to them about and I see them and also at work, you know, when I see somebody have something that is terrible happen to them. You know, and I see the way that they, a lot of my clients have, you know, for example, I have a client who was, who was on the, the podcast and other series who was in a bad wreck.
00:28:55:13 - 00:29:12:08
Unknown
And he talks about in the podcast, he was, hit by another car. His car is upside down. He's got gas running all over him, and he's, he knows something's wrong. He ultimately he's paralyzed from the waist down. And,
00:29:12:10 - 00:29:37:21
Unknown
There's another, person we had on the podcast, Parker Byrd, who's a East Carolina baseball player in the first Division one, college athlete, I believe that's played, with a prosthetic leg. And, and and I've learned so much from these guys because I see how they they are the perfect example of the Chinese farmer. Right? They, it's like, hey, this is a terrible thing, you know?
00:29:37:22 - 00:30:04:05
Unknown
And there's no getting around, really, that if you are paralyzed or you lose a leg, that's a bad thing. You know what I mean? That's that's not like your dad left. You know, that's a just a bad thing. But they still look at it as a okay, what can I do from here? That will what good can come out of this situation and and it's not so much they're not defined by something negative that happened to them.
00:30:04:05 - 00:30:10:08
Unknown
The people that I see that are successful, they're not defined by something negative.
00:30:10:08 - 00:30:26:02
Unknown
They are they take something negative and they look at it in a way that's optimistic and positive. So if you talk, if I talk to, Colin, who's who was paralyzed in this accident, what he focuses on is
00:30:26:02 - 00:30:32:22
Unknown
gratitude, which I was, like blown away by, you know, and what his focus on gratitude was.
00:30:33:04 - 00:31:00:09
Unknown
Hey, this could have been worse. You know, I'm alive. And then and then from that, he has built this really incredible, life. You know, he has a daughter. His there. He works on the land. He's got a business, he haunts, he fishes, he's, you know, he went to he went to dig Rock last week to watch the, you know, you know, tournament and to learn about that as he's fascinated by it.
00:31:00:09 - 00:31:22:06
Unknown
He has a rich, full life. And that is directly a function of his, positivity and his optimism and his attitude. And I think that that's such an important thing. Under these circumstances,
00:31:22:06 - 00:31:31:00
Unknown
how did this experience, motivate you to succeed and provide stability in your own life and then also your children's lives?
00:31:32:01 - 00:31:58:18
Unknown
Part of growing up under these circumstances, for me, was, you know, I did I did grow up having the confidence to, to think, hey, I can get through this, but I also had some degree of, Self-doubt.
00:31:58:20 - 00:32:28:03
Unknown
That ends up being a gift. It sounds funny to say that, but. And the reason is because you don't grow up thinking you're. You know it all. You don't grow up thinking, I know everything. You grow up in my mind thinking, hey, I need to be receptive to, other information. Coaches, friends, colleagues, you know? And to this day, collaboration is a huge part of what I do,
00:32:28:03 - 00:32:28:15
Unknown
right?
00:32:28:15 - 00:32:53:22
Unknown
If I'm doing something in business, if I'm doing something in law, or if I'm doing something like we we have, every week we have a meeting where the best minds in our company get together and collaborate on the biggest challenges that we face. And now that I think about it, not just once, but this is pretty much what we do
00:32:53:22 - 00:32:57:09
Unknown
5 or 6 times a week with different groups, right?
00:32:57:11 - 00:33:34:04
Unknown
Leadership gets together, marketing gets together, legal gets together, in for different different groups, exceptional cases and, and, and that collaboration is directly a function of recognizing that other people have great ideas and being receptive to hearing them and thinking about them, and then collectively deciding what's the best course of action to take. So, that's been an evolutionary process for me.
00:33:34:04 - 00:33:55:13
Unknown
And it's not, it's not, it's but I've always been sort of, you know, I've always been sort of that way. I get to have self-doubt, and I might not be the best word for it, but just, there's a point at which confidence I think can be destructive, you know, and recognizing that you. I don't care who you are, you don't have all the answers,
00:33:55:13 - 00:34:11:22
Unknown
you know, last night, I'm talking to my 14 year old, and we're talking about faith, and we're talking about, you know, Christianity, which is what we are Christians, and we talk, we're talking about the Bible and Jesus and God and all these things, and
00:34:11:22 - 00:34:13:08
Unknown
I don't know all
00:34:13:08 - 00:34:39:16
Unknown
the answers that she's asking. I don't know that. But I know people who do know a lot of these things. You know, and I know where to find a lot of these answers. And I'm also interested to hear what her perceptions are and what her, thoughts are. And I think, and again, I think all of those things are,
00:34:39:17 - 00:35:05:06
Unknown
Were made stronger by this experience that I had that when I was eight years old, I thought was terminal. I thought it was destructive. I thought it was harmful. But retrospectively, I think it was an unbelievable blessing. My dad was, by the way, one of those confident guys that he knew everything. You know, he was like, he I mean, he was good at everything from the time that he was young.
00:35:05:06 - 00:35:20:19
Unknown
You know, he was a phenomenal athlete. He was a phenomenal football player. He was phenomenal golfer. I mean, I learned about records he had and and in high school that what I mean, in the past ten years that I didn't even know about, you know, he was he had he was
00:35:20:19 - 00:35:36:13
Unknown
things were easier for him. He had he was you know, he was handsome and, and, and he, he just had these gifts that were that you would have probably thought were blessings that might have been curses because it made it easier for him.
00:35:36:13 - 00:35:38:18
Unknown
And he didn't value some of the same things that
00:35:38:18 - 00:35:57:17
Unknown
you have to value when you struggle to get them, you know? So, so, so this, this whole thing that happened that ended up that I thought was such a terrible thing, was, was really a pretty phenomenal blessing. It has brought me,
00:35:57:17 - 00:35:59:22
Unknown
good things in my life since.
00:36:00:17 - 00:36:03:09
Unknown
Right. Well. Thank you. Sure. Thank you.
00:36:03:09 - 00:36:10:05
00:05:33:11 - 00:05:41:02
00:05:41:02 - 00:05:44:17
Unknown
My name is Carson Grace Tuma, and I'm here with American injury lawyer Clark speaks.
00:05:44:17 - 00:05:55:01
Unknown
Now, Mr. Speaks, this series is called Your five Failures from success. Can you explain to me a little bit your philosophy behind this title, and why you feel it so
00:05:55:01 - 00:06:01:08
Unknown
important? Sure. I'll be happy to, So, so, like I remember here in,
00:06:01:08 - 00:06:17:06
Unknown
the story of the Chinese farmer, you may have seen it on social media or whatever, but the idea is there's a Chinese farmer in this, and, he has a horse, and the horse runs off one day, and all the people in the town come to him and say, well, hey, that's
00:06:17:06 - 00:06:39:00
Unknown
terrible. Your horse ran off and he says, well, maybe. And the next day the horse comes back with seven other horses, and all the townspeople say, well, that's great, that's wonderful. And he says, well, maybe. And then the next day his son is riding, one of the horses and falls and breaks his leg, and all the townspeople say, that's terrible.
00:06:39:02 - 00:07:01:03
Unknown
Well, maybe. And then, the next day, the conscription officers come and they're drafting people to go off to war. And in his, they don't draft his son because of the broken leg. And the townspeople come, come and say, well, that's great, you know? And he says, well, maybe in the idea, it's not my idea, but it's a it's a good idea.
00:07:01:05 - 00:07:24:00
Unknown
And the idea is that when something bad or good happens in your life, it's not determinative, right? It's not. It may be bad, it may be good. It's just you don't know the rest of the context. And there may be a bigger plan, a bigger picture that you don't see yet. And so for me, why this is important is because
00:07:24:00 - 00:07:28:21
Unknown
in this series we'll talk about, you know, five things that happened in my life.
00:07:28:21 - 00:07:44:12
Unknown
I did it or it was happened to me or done or whatever. But but the point of it is that at the time I thought, this is such a colossal, life changing experience that I will never, you know, it's going to affect me negatively for the rest of my life.
00:07:44:12 - 00:08:01:01
Unknown
And then when I look back on these experiences, without question, these things that I thought were so negative turned out to be by far, some of the greatest blessings in my life.
00:08:01:03 - 00:08:24:21
Unknown
And when they happened, you could not have convinced me of that for anything. I thought, oh my goodness, there you know, it's all it's just terrible, right? And then now that I have a little bit of more distance and perspective, I can see that those things were not curses, that they were blessings, and that I have benefited greatly from those experiences.
00:08:25:02 - 00:08:42:04
Unknown
Right. That's a very far from a metaphor. Now, let's really get into, these specific failures that you've deemed, you know, were failures at the time but have led to your success or prosperity. Now, what would you say would be the first, you know, big failure in your life that you had that outlook on?
00:08:42:04 - 00:08:48:10
Unknown
Sure. Yeah. Well, so, the first thing that comes to mind, it wasn't so much of my personal failure.
00:08:48:10 - 00:09:12:21
Unknown
This first thing, some of the rest of them were. But this first thing is more like something that happened, you know? So I'm, nine years old, 8 or 9 years old, and, it was my mother, my brother, my father and me. We lived together, and, it wasn't perfect, but it was a it was a it was a family, like a lot of families.
00:09:12:23 - 00:09:36:22
Unknown
And, we didn't have a lot of money. And, my dad, was in business, and he was expecting to close this big deal. And, so, like, when that happens in a family that doesn't have, a whole lot of money, you kind of wait on your bills, right? You maybe your bills, instead of being 30 days are now 60 days or maybe 65 days.
00:09:36:22 - 00:09:58:03
Unknown
70 days, you know, so so we're, like, anticipating this money coming in and and we as a family sometimes if you're, if you're a family that's struggling, even if you're young, if your kids kids know about all that stuff and they might even participate in it, like we'd, you know, pray and, you know, and, and hope the thing was going to go the way it was supposed to, and it looked like it was going to win it.
00:09:58:03 - 00:10:34:04
Unknown
And it did. Well, then the, day that it's supposed to happen and we're supposed to get some money and maybe we get pay up, catch up on our bills, and maybe do something as a family or whatever. You know, I come home from school that day and I find, a, a, envelope on the kitchen counter counter, and it's got $1,000 and a letter and it's, from my father, and my father says, in the letter, and it makes it clear that he's leaving, and he has no plans to come back, and it leaves us $1,000, which is not enough to do what we need to do, and I don't
00:10:34:05 - 00:11:00:06
Unknown
I'm 8 or 9 years old, but I knew that. And so, about that time, the phone rings and, I answer it, and it's my mom. She's crying. She was a teacher, and she was calling from school. I would get home from on the bus before she would get home. And so she says, she's she's, I don't remember her calling me other times, but somehow this day, she happened to call, and I wanted to give her this information.
00:11:00:06 - 00:11:22:22
Unknown
But I also knew that I wanted to be careful about how I gave it to her, because, I knew it would worry her. And I knew that it would hurt her feelings because she'd got left to, you know, and, so that was a, you know, I didn't know quite how to do that. So I just, you know, came out with it and said, hey, listen, I got something to tell you.
00:11:22:22 - 00:11:41:08
Unknown
There's a letter here and here. And she's like, well, read it to me. And I read it to her. And, you know, I was I was first of all, impressed. One of the first things I learned from that experience was just how strong my mom was, because I knew she was hurt, and I knew she was scared.
00:11:41:10 - 00:12:06:15
Unknown
But I saw her be strong, you know, because that's what she had to be. And so she didn't flinch. She didn't, you know, flip out. She just was like, okay, well, thank you. And I'll be home in a little while. And so that, that, that first does a so I went from being afraid and, hurt to being, okay.
00:12:06:15 - 00:12:11:05
Unknown
Well, that gives me some kind of confidence that we'll be able to deal with this.
00:12:11:05 - 00:12:29:01
Unknown
We came home and we talked. My mom came home and my brother came home. We talked about it, and we knew things would get difficult. Right. Because we were kind of, you know, on the low side of middle class in terms of how we lived and all this.
00:12:29:01 - 00:12:31:22
Unknown
But now, you know, it was going to be a little bit more
00:12:31:22 - 00:12:53:03
Unknown
difficult. Right. And we were going to so, you know, our peer group, you know, would have been here and then our ability would have been here. And that was going to present certain challenges. And it did. Right. We had it. We had we had to depend on our family and our friends and our church for, money and help and assistance and all this kind of stuff.
00:12:53:03 - 00:13:16:13
Unknown
And, and, and my brother and I had to get jobs. My brother, worked at a restaurant and, delivered newspapers and, you know, we sort of get through this time, but it presented some certain challenges, right, that were that at the time, I thought, I was the only person that had these challenges.
00:13:16:14 - 00:13:19:14
Unknown
You know, I thought that
00:13:19:14 - 00:13:36:21
Unknown
it was going to affect the rest of my life in a very negative way. You know, for example, this would have been the 80s and 90s, I imagine the same. Mr.. Probably true now, like, you know, as a kid, you think it's so important that you have this brand of whatever, right?
00:13:36:22 - 00:13:40:02
Unknown
Like if you. So I remember in my in my case, it would have
00:13:40:02 - 00:13:54:10
Unknown
been, you know, Nike's you know, you had to have the, you know, leather Nike's and, you know, you didn't wear the canvas Nike's. And God forbid you didn't want the, cougars or whatever it is. They, they so that were that were
00:13:54:10 - 00:13:59:12
Unknown
and, and there was just we just couldn't afford to have those things.
00:13:59:13 - 00:14:26:20
Unknown
Right. Even with my job and my pay for out and all that kind of stuff. So, and so, that was, it seemed like such a big deal. Or if we would, I remember we would going on a Boy Scout, camping trip and, and, you know, so everybody else's father would have been there and mine wasn't, or I would go to, football games and, you know, or, you know, I played sports growing up, growing up in high school, I played football and wrestled and played tennis.
00:14:26:20 - 00:14:45:20
Unknown
And and I remember that, you know, everybody else's dad would, you know, not, you know, not all the time, but a lot of it. My perception was that everybody else's parents and families were, you know, together and were participating and, and, and, I weren't, you know, I was, I was, I was my mom was working because she taught school.
00:14:45:20 - 00:15:09:13
Unknown
And then in addition to that, she worked at nights and on weekends sometimes. And a clothing store, to try to make ends meet. And so, so, that was another source. So, so that money, absent, you know, parents being absent from things that I felt like were important, there was another piece of it, too, which is it felt like our family was fractured.
00:15:09:13 - 00:15:15:14
Unknown
Splintered. Right. You had this idea of what my family was, and then now it was
00:15:15:14 - 00:15:39:03
Unknown
different. It was. It was, different from what it was before. And so I, so, for example, holidays, special occasions, we would go to, my relative's house, right? I mean, they would just be the three of us. So Christmas set with the three of us didn't seem very festive, you know what I mean?
00:15:39:03 - 00:15:58:20
Unknown
We didn't have really money for decorations as much as they did or whatever, so. So we would go to my aunt's house. My aunt had this huge, beautiful house and she was she she made it everything, festive and fun. And she was just warm and dynamic. And it was just fun. And it was awesome. And I loved it.
00:15:58:22 - 00:16:21:11
Unknown
But we we were guests, you know, perpetually at Christmas and at Thanksgiving and those kinds of things. It was wonderful because those people made us feel so, you know, welcome and included and a part of it, but there's just a part of it where you're just like, yeah, this is I don't own this position. I just rent this position within this amazing sort of
00:16:21:11 - 00:16:22:03
Unknown
scenario.
00:16:22:03 - 00:16:29:14
Unknown
And at some point I got to go back, you know, so it makes sense. Yeah. So. So when I'm,
00:16:29:14 - 00:16:54:07
Unknown
Growing up, that was a huge part of what my perception is of what was going on. Right. And it seemed to me like everybody else had all these things. They had their father there. They had the money they need to buy the clothes or the shoes or the car. I didn't have a car till. I mean, everybody else got a car under 16.
00:16:54:08 - 00:16:56:18
Unknown
I didn't have a car till I was,
00:16:56:18 - 00:17:22:00
Unknown
Almost through college. And then that was a car that worked about, 3 or 4 days out of the month. You know, like, I remember physically pumping up the tire with a bicycle pump on trying to trying to get to work at different times. So, so like that was my perception is that is it my situation was so much different from everybody else's because of this thing that happened in my life.
00:17:22:21 - 00:17:34:10
Unknown
Right. So it sounds like your father leaving led you to even more so kind of look towards what your peers and your peers family were doing, and that maybe negatively affected your outlook on life. Is that
00:17:34:10 - 00:17:41:22
Unknown
probably. Yeah. It did. If negative, I mean, it it it affected my perception and infected,
00:17:41:22 - 00:17:44:21
Unknown
when I looked at other people, which is always such a dangerous thing.
00:17:44:21 - 00:18:10:07
Unknown
And I think kids do that today. Right? They look at other people on social media and they're like, everybody else is thin and everybody else is beautiful, and everybody else is doing all these amazing things, and they have a thousand tons of friends, and they and they go to these amazing places and they have this amazing food. And it's just like you're just seeing everybody's projection of what they want you to see, which is okay.
00:18:10:07 - 00:18:31:00
Unknown
You know what I mean? We always want people to see the best versions of ourselves. But again, that's why I think this is so important, is I want people to see that that's not always the whole story, that there is a cause. Because I will promise you that if you went back and you asked people that I went to school with at that age, a lot of them would probably have no idea that this was going on in my life.
00:18:31:05 - 00:18:47:17
Unknown
They would have very. Only my best friends would know that this was what was going on in my life, you know? And a lot of them would think, have thought I was a lucky compared to them, you know what I mean? And this is just all this is kind of going on.
00:18:47:17 - 00:18:53:23
Unknown
I mean, the reality is that my dad didn't leave and we did have money problems and we, you know, had a hard time keeping up.
00:18:54:01 - 00:19:14:10
Unknown
And we did have to depend on our family and friends and church and, and all this kind of stuff for, you know, food and, and sometimes I got friends to this day whose parents helped us during that time. They probably don't even know about it. You know what I mean? I can think of, several people that I went to high school with and they were in our church, you know, that would have helped us neighbors and stuff.
00:19:14:10 - 00:19:34:20
Unknown
That would have helped us, that, they probably to this day don't know that they helped us, you know, so so I do think that that that perception of what's going on in the mind of somebody when they compare themselves to somebody else is is a is an important thing that people need to realize that, hey, other people have challenges to
00:19:34:20 - 00:19:40:11
Unknown
like, what did you think you learned looking back, living through that experience?
00:19:41:08 - 00:19:55:12
Unknown
There's a there's a few things I first of all, I one of the blessings is that, my brother and my mother and I became very, very close and got to a place where
00:19:55:12 - 00:20:04:15
Unknown
we could, you know, and and it had this impact later. My mom's now 87 years old. She lived with us for, years and years and years.
00:20:04:15 - 00:20:34:06
Unknown
My brother and I are super close. I've talked to him a lot or almost daily basis, certainly this week, you know, and so the relationship that we have had was, phenomenal. It taught me independence, you know, by having a paper out when I was eight years old or whatever. You know, I learned from that experience, you know, and I went, I went through what I thought was a scary time, you know, for example.
00:20:34:06 - 00:20:45:01
Unknown
later in life. My kids are probably five and six years old. My older two kids, Nicholas and Katie. Nicholas is six, Katie's five. Were
00:20:45:01 - 00:20:57:07
Unknown
they both have bikes? The bikes have train wheels, and they ride all over the place in their bikes. I'm trying, to teach Nicholas to ride his bike without his training wheels, so I.
00:20:57:07 - 00:21:17:10
Unknown
I take the training wheels off, and then, at this point, again, this is, you know, ten, 15 years ago. So we live on a golf course, and so I'm on the cart path with him, and I've got, like, a pillow strapped to each knee and a pillow on his back and a pillow on his front and a belt around his thing.
00:21:17:16 - 00:21:38:22
Unknown
And I'm running because I'm trying to. I'm trying so hard to keep him from experiencing any negative, you know, being hurt. Right? I want to protect him right from being hurt, you know? And so I'm running up and down the cart path holding on to this thing. And he's got helmets and knee pads and I, you know, he's just over the top protection.
00:21:38:22 - 00:21:59:10
Unknown
His mom has him do this. Be honest with you. But but either way, this is what's going on in the meantime of me trying to do this running up and down, or I'm nearly having a heart attack run up and down the golf course, trying to trying to teach him to ride his bike with no training wheels. I look over to the side and his little sister has taken the the, training wheels off of her bike and is blowing past us on her own
00:21:59:10 - 00:22:01:05
Unknown
without any assistance.
00:22:01:07 - 00:22:14:13
Unknown
So the lesson from that, I think, is that, you know, sometimes when we're just thrown in the deep end by ourselves and we don't have anybody there to
00:22:14:13 - 00:22:31:20
Unknown
take our training wheels off and to make sure that we have the cross cut off of our bread and that we have, you know what I mean? It gives us an independence and a self-reliance and later a confidence that is irreplaceable.
00:22:31:22 - 00:22:51:17
Unknown
And so for me, not having anybody there during that time, that's not true. Not having anybody there, not having my father there during this time, ended up being this amazing gift because it taught me self-reliance, independence and confidence.
00:22:51:17 - 00:23:08:14
Unknown
The other thing that it did do, and that's there's something I think that it's a critical is it made me look elsewhere for guidance, for mentorship, for, you know, a role model.
00:23:09:02 - 00:23:28:00
Unknown
My dad would be, you know, he's deceased at this point in time. He'd be the first to tell you later in life. Later in life, we reconnected and, he's he's sort of we made peace. And he, you know, acknowledged what he had done and not done and, and, ended up being we ended up having a good relationship.
00:23:28:02 - 00:23:45:16
Unknown
But he'd be the first to tell you that at that point in his life, he was not the person that he would have wanted me to be. His role model. Right? He would not have wanted me to look to him and go, this is how you live life. So because he was absent, I had to look elsewhere, right?
00:23:45:17 - 00:23:58:07
Unknown
I had to look at other people. My mom became, you know. So in other words, Father's Day was recently. And so the first person I thought it was my mom, not my dad, because she was that sort of fulfilled that role.
00:23:58:07 - 00:24:04:05
Unknown
I had uncles, you know, my brother was was also he was my brother's five and a half years older than I.
00:24:04:06 - 00:24:12:15
Unknown
And, he was such a great role model. During this time, he took on the responsibility of being my father in many ways.
00:24:12:15 - 00:24:23:10
Unknown
Right. He would help me with, sports and athletics. That was a big part of my life growing up. He would, he he he he lived this sort of. He had a very unbelievable work ethic.
00:24:23:12 - 00:24:44:23
Unknown
And he kind of showed me about that. He taught me about, you know, fitness. And he taught me about all kinds of different things. And he felt a deep personal responsibility to fill that void. And I thought that was pretty cool. I had uncles that were phenomenal people, and they were, good husbands, good fathers, you know, spiritual, faith based people.
00:24:44:23 - 00:24:51:08
Unknown
That gave me a real good example on how to how to live life.
00:24:51:08 - 00:25:10:14
Unknown
I had a step grandfather who was just an incredible, person, who was, you know, with to West Point was a general in the, in the, Air Force and had this incredible, amazing life. And he would, you know, talk to me about things to do and things not to do.
00:25:10:14 - 00:25:19:05
Unknown
And how to live life and principles that you should incorporate into your, you know, I had these incredible coaches and, and,
00:25:19:05 - 00:25:40:20
Unknown
and, teachers, you know, I had, this coach, my football coach in high school was one of my favorite. You know, when you look back, you ever have a coach where you just have a connection with, for whatever reason, and you just you think back to the things that they say over and over again over the course of your life.
00:25:40:21 - 00:26:01:04
Unknown
Well, for me, that was this guy, Bruce McBride, a football coach that I have, JV football coach, and that I had him in high school, and he was so focused on discipline. And he was he was that he was focused on discipline for me at a very young age. And that was important. So, you know, he he would do this, he would talk about this drill and we would, we would he would he talked about how important it was to do.
00:26:01:05 - 00:26:20:17
Unknown
Exactly right. Right. Your toes had to be up to the line. Not on the line, not over the line, but right up to the line, you know, and that was a metaphor for lots of different things. And, so I had, you know, had Jackie Davis as a teacher who was just this incredible teacher, you know, and, I had coaches and teachers.
00:26:20:17 - 00:26:41:15
Unknown
But my point is, I might not have been as receptive to. Listening to those people, to understanding what they had to offer. If I just had a one person that I was communicating with on a daily basis, and if he had stayed, it would have been he would have been communicating some pretty negative examples for, for me.
00:26:41:15 - 00:27:20:06
Unknown
so that's why I think that his departure presented certain obstacles and problems, and it was psychologically challenging in some ways, but it really turned out to be such a blessing because of the self-reliance, the confidence, the, independence. And then it opened all these other role models, opened my eyes to all these other role models that were in my community, pastors and teachers and, you know, college professors and peers.
00:27:20:06 - 00:27:29:05
Unknown
You know what I mean? Sometimes your peers can be good role models. My, I've got cousins that were that were, that later in life,
00:27:29:05 - 00:27:39:05
Unknown
you know, got in, became, lawyers and different things. And I was like, okay, well, they can do it. I can do it. I have, friends that were doing it and doing amazing things.
00:27:39:05 - 00:27:54:13
Unknown
And I was like, well, shoot, if they can do it, I can do it. And, all those things were just blessings that I don't know, would have been available to me had I had the, path that I had pictured in my mind before this happened.
00:27:54:13 - 00:27:59:00
Unknown
Right now, how and when do you think that clicked for you?
00:27:59:01 - 00:28:15:20
Unknown
Was it, you know, this transition from a negative outlook on life to, you know, the importance of motivation and self-reliance? Was it something that kind of you learned or noticed slowly throughout the course of your life? Or was it this like big moment that this was such a blessing and I had no idea.
00:28:15:20 - 00:28:26:13
Unknown
Also, I think it's relatively recently when I've started, I think when I had kids, I started thinking more about putting all this stuff in perspective.
00:28:26:15 - 00:28:29:04
Unknown
You know, I think I had
00:28:29:04 - 00:28:55:12
Unknown
you know, once I'm talking to them about and I see them and also at work, you know, when I see somebody have something that is terrible happen to them. You know, and I see the way that they, a lot of my clients have, you know, for example, I have a client who was, who was on the, the podcast and other series who was in a bad wreck.
00:28:55:13 - 00:29:12:08
Unknown
And he talks about in the podcast, he was, hit by another car. His car is upside down. He's got gas running all over him, and he's, he knows something's wrong. He ultimately he's paralyzed from the waist down. And,
00:29:12:10 - 00:29:37:21
Unknown
There's another, person we had on the podcast, Parker Byrd, who's a East Carolina baseball player in the first Division one, college athlete, I believe that's played, with a prosthetic leg. And, and and I've learned so much from these guys because I see how they they are the perfect example of the Chinese farmer. Right? They, it's like, hey, this is a terrible thing, you know?
00:29:37:22 - 00:30:04:05
Unknown
And there's no getting around, really, that if you are paralyzed or you lose a leg, that's a bad thing. You know what I mean? That's that's not like your dad left. You know, that's a just a bad thing. But they still look at it as a okay, what can I do from here? That will what good can come out of this situation and and it's not so much they're not defined by something negative that happened to them.
00:30:04:05 - 00:30:10:08
Unknown
The people that I see that are successful, they're not defined by something negative.
00:30:10:08 - 00:30:26:02
Unknown
They are they take something negative and they look at it in a way that's optimistic and positive. So if you talk, if I talk to, Colin, who's who was paralyzed in this accident, what he focuses on is
00:30:26:02 - 00:30:32:22
Unknown
gratitude, which I was, like blown away by, you know, and what his focus on gratitude was.
00:30:33:04 - 00:31:00:09
Unknown
Hey, this could have been worse. You know, I'm alive. And then and then from that, he has built this really incredible, life. You know, he has a daughter. His there. He works on the land. He's got a business, he haunts, he fishes, he's, you know, he went to he went to dig Rock last week to watch the, you know, you know, tournament and to learn about that as he's fascinated by it.
00:31:00:09 - 00:31:22:06
Unknown
He has a rich, full life. And that is directly a function of his, positivity and his optimism and his attitude. And I think that that's such an important thing. Under these circumstances,
00:31:22:06 - 00:31:31:00
Unknown
how did this experience, motivate you to succeed and provide stability in your own life and then also your children's lives?
00:31:32:01 - 00:31:58:18
Unknown
Part of growing up under these circumstances, for me, was, you know, I did I did grow up having the confidence to, to think, hey, I can get through this, but I also had some degree of, Self-doubt.
00:31:58:20 - 00:32:28:03
Unknown
That ends up being a gift. It sounds funny to say that, but. And the reason is because you don't grow up thinking you're. You know it all. You don't grow up thinking, I know everything. You grow up in my mind thinking, hey, I need to be receptive to, other information. Coaches, friends, colleagues, you know? And to this day, collaboration is a huge part of what I do,
00:32:28:03 - 00:32:28:15
Unknown
right?
00:32:28:15 - 00:32:53:22
Unknown
If I'm doing something in business, if I'm doing something in law, or if I'm doing something like we we have, every week we have a meeting where the best minds in our company get together and collaborate on the biggest challenges that we face. And now that I think about it, not just once, but this is pretty much what we do
00:32:53:22 - 00:32:57:09
Unknown
5 or 6 times a week with different groups, right?
00:32:57:11 - 00:33:34:04
Unknown
Leadership gets together, marketing gets together, legal gets together, in for different different groups, exceptional cases and, and, and that collaboration is directly a function of recognizing that other people have great ideas and being receptive to hearing them and thinking about them, and then collectively deciding what's the best course of action to take. So, that's been an evolutionary process for me.
00:33:34:04 - 00:33:55:13
Unknown
And it's not, it's not, it's but I've always been sort of, you know, I've always been sort of that way. I get to have self-doubt, and I might not be the best word for it, but just, there's a point at which confidence I think can be destructive, you know, and recognizing that you. I don't care who you are, you don't have all the answers,
00:33:55:13 - 00:34:11:22
Unknown
you know, last night, I'm talking to my 14 year old, and we're talking about faith, and we're talking about, you know, Christianity, which is what we are Christians, and we talk, we're talking about the Bible and Jesus and God and all these things, and
00:34:11:22 - 00:34:13:08
Unknown
I don't know all
00:34:13:08 - 00:34:39:16
Unknown
the answers that she's asking. I don't know that. But I know people who do know a lot of these things. You know, and I know where to find a lot of these answers. And I'm also interested to hear what her perceptions are and what her, thoughts are. And I think, and again, I think all of those things are,
00:34:39:17 - 00:35:05:06
Unknown
Were made stronger by this experience that I had that when I was eight years old, I thought was terminal. I thought it was destructive. I thought it was harmful. But retrospectively, I think it was an unbelievable blessing. My dad was, by the way, one of those confident guys that he knew everything. You know, he was like, he I mean, he was good at everything from the time that he was young.
00:35:05:06 - 00:35:20:19
Unknown
You know, he was a phenomenal athlete. He was a phenomenal football player. He was phenomenal golfer. I mean, I learned about records he had and and in high school that what I mean, in the past ten years that I didn't even know about, you know, he was he had he was
00:35:20:19 - 00:35:36:13
Unknown
things were easier for him. He had he was you know, he was handsome and, and, and he, he just had these gifts that were that you would have probably thought were blessings that might have been curses because it made it easier for him.
00:35:36:13 - 00:35:38:18
Unknown
And he didn't value some of the same things that
00:35:38:18 - 00:35:57:17
Unknown
you have to value when you struggle to get them, you know? So, so, so this, this whole thing that happened that ended up that I thought was such a terrible thing, was, was really a pretty phenomenal blessing. It has brought me,
00:35:57:17 - 00:35:59:22
Unknown
good things in my life since.
00:36:00:17 - 00:36:03:09
Unknown
Right. Well. Thank you. Sure. Thank you.
00:36:03:09 - 00:36:10:05
