Opportunity Made Podcast Transcript, Episode 8

Sean Entin, I Can - I Shall - I Will

Opportunity Made, Sean Entin, I can - I shall - I will

[00:00:00] Sean: Nothing was working, nothing was working. And the first neuropsychiatrist who got ahold of me in San Diego said to me, she evaluated me the next day, she came in, said to me, she did a couple of quick tests and said, um, you know, your brain is dead. Don't count on walking or talking for a while.

[00:00:17] I was starting to talk and she goes, and work's gonna be put aside, but you have a lot of work ahead of you. And we don't know when you're in a walk again. I looked at her with everything I had. I said, get out of my room and you're fired. She says, you can't fire me. And I said, yes, I can. And I fired her.

[00:00:35] And the next therapist who came in, I said, don't tell me I can't, tell me I can. That's how my mantra started of I can, I shall, I will.

[00:00:43] Katherine: Hello everybody and welcome to Opportunity Made, the podcast that promotes the idea that we can make new opportunities for ourselves and others on a regular basis, if we take chances, are intentional in our actions and invest deeply in our own lives. I am your host, Katherine Lewis an accessibility advocate, software engineer, and Executive Director of the Leon Foundation of Excellence.

[00:01:12] I'm going to give an audio description of myself. I am a European American woman with short blonde hair. Today. I am wearing a lavender top and there is a white wall behind me. I have a super special guest with me, Sean Entin the Stroke Hacker. Sean Entin was on top of his game when he had a stroke at age 39. He survived and now helps other stroke survivors recover so they can become strong and independent again. Sean, I am so excited to spend time with you. Welcome to the show.

[00:01:47] Sean: Thank you so much. This is an honor. Am I supposed to introduce myself and what I'm wearing too as well?

[00:01:53] Katherine: Sure. Go for it.

[00:01:55] Sean: I'm wearing a white t-shirt that's button up with a v-neck and behind me is my mantra of I can, I shall, I will.

[00:02:02] Katherine: Awesome. I love that mantra so much. Where did that come from? And is it a newer mantra or have you had it for a while?

[00:02:11] Sean: 10 years old. It, it started when I first got injured with my stroke. So I can, I can back you up into the conversation. Should I start from the beginning?

[00:02:20] Katherine: Let's start with your business background just because that came a bit before the stroke and really was a substantial piece of your life. So you went to business school, you leave college and all of a sudden you're set free upon the world and some incredible things happen. Tell us a little bit about that.

[00:02:40] Sean: Yeah, I, uh, it's interesting. I, I didn't know anything at the time. I thought I knew everything in my twenties. I didn't and I just kept going and making things happen is what I really did. And it's all about the people I was surrounded myself with and graduating from USC and then going off into, into the business world, I learned how to write business plans. I learned how to create everything I needed and at 21, I, um, I opened up my first business. It was actually called Spiral West. It was for teenagers. I took the teens off the streets and put 'em into a dance club.

[00:03:17] I know it sounds kind of funny or maybe sounds lame. Um, but there was a need for it. It, it was really a disruptor. If you look back, if I look back now, um, there was no place for, for us to go. And my sister, my sister is younger, I was in my twenties, but all the teenagers would run around at LA looking for a house party, meeting in a parking lot, just doing what teenagers do.

[00:03:38] And so I decided to take over a restaurant Sunday nights and, and with the dance permit. And then I brought in a DJ and I started to, back then this was '92. There was no internet. There was no social media. We created some flyers. We started handing out the flyers to the local high schools and, um, friends and family and whatnot.

[00:04:01] And I remember I rent out this place right here. Right, right, right near my house. The capacity was 275 people. And I remember telling my parents, I'm taking over nightclub and I'm gonna open this up to teenagers. Everyone thought I was crazy. They all thought I was nuts. They're like, what are you doing?

[00:04:19] Why, why are you gonna go rent this place out? And I said, I have a vision. And it's gonna work. I'm gonna promote this thing. I'm gonna take all these kids who need a home and we're gonna do it. So we had one phone line. We made the flyers. The day of the event, the phone kept ringing so much, we had to, we to throw the, the, the whole machine way back then this was a phone recorder with a real hardware. You know, the phone kept going out and they throw it in the closet cause the phone just kept going on and on. And I, I thought maybe people were dialing the wrong numbers, but what they were looking to do is find out information on where the club was at, how to get in, how much it was.

[00:04:57] We, we didn't even have a price then and take you forward to what happened was, um, we, we took it over on Sunday nights. It was during the summer, the club opened up at 8:00 PM. The club only held, I think it was 275 people. My parents come with me cuz cuz they wanna see what's going on. Dad's a doctor, mom's a mom.

[00:05:18] My grandparents even came. Everyone was coming. It was like driving me nuts. I was getting anxiety. I'm inside the club. My dad comes running up to me and says, Sean, we have a problem outside. I said, dad, what's the problem. He goes, I think there's 600 kids in line. I said, what do you mean 600 kids. We're not opening until eight o'clock.

[00:05:33] He goes, I know. What do we do with everybody? Literally. I said, why don't you get behind the counter with mom and start collecting money? He goes, how much do we charge? I said just charge everyone $10. I didn't know what I was doing. Sure enough, I had to bring, I had to bring the kids in, but not only the kids, I was, I was talking to their support teams.

[00:05:53] So I was talking to moms and dads, cuz they were like, okay, you wanted to drop off your kid for three or four hours. This sounds pretty cool. I get to go now take my, my spouse, my loved one to a movie or for a nice dinner. And you're basically gonna watch our children and I'm like, yeah, just give 'em to me.

[00:06:07] I gave them all a tour, and opening night I think we turned over like 500 people through in and out and I had a zero tolerance, no alcohol, no drugs, no nothing. Um, and that was the first night. The first night rolled over so big that the next Sunday night, um, phone line went off again, starting the next day. I had to throw that recording. I had to redo the tape, put in a new tape cause people kept calling and wanted to leave messages.

[00:06:36] And then I stopped flyering and the following Sunday night, I did double the numbers and it kept growing and growing and growing and I realized, hey, I'm really good at promoting this. And I'm bringing home some serious cash cuz it was just cash. We weren't taking the credit cards. And um, next thing you know, I had the Daily News, which is a local newspaper here in LA showing up, wanting to take photos.

[00:07:00] They came by. The LA Times, came by and I was like, this is kind of cool. So that launched the newspapers. So that happens. And the next thing I know the following Sunday I'm getting kids coming in from as far as far south, as like Ocean Beach, Northern San Diego to Orange County up north of me, which is another hour north, like the Lancaster.

[00:07:22] So Santa Barbara, so people were traveling an hour away to come to my nightclub and I wasn't even prepared for this. So I had to up security, up my staff. New York Seltzer came knocking on my door. This was a, a company way back in the day that made like, um, flavored sodas and stuff.

[00:07:39] They came knocking. They wanted to give away free product at my establishment, cuz I wasn't, I wasn't serving alcohol. I was serving like juice and water. It was like, it was kind of fun. And, but I knew my door was making enough money to cover my costs. So, um, and then Adidas came knocking and they wanted to give all of us free Adidas gear and that picked up and then things just started to happen in that event that I started to get some celebrities because my sister was, um, you know, on and off TV at the time.

[00:08:10] So Fred Savage, he came by. Mario Lopez came by and just, I even think one of the events Snoop came in. I think he actually spun for us one time. We didn't even know who he was, well we knew who he was, but it just kept going, going and going. And the, the, the, the next thing, you know, I have the mayor of LA thanking us for taking the kids off the streets and putting them in a safe place.

[00:08:33] And to me, it was so enjoyable cuz I was giving back and just loving on these kids, loving on what I was doing and I was making money and I was going to USC at the time. And at that time they had started a undergraduate program called Entrepreneurship. I didn't even know how to spell the word entrepreneur.

[00:08:51] I was just like going with, I was going with my gut. So I got involved with that. I started learning to write business plans, but all along as I was at school, my brain kept turning over saying, hey, what's next? What's next? So then the guys in my fraternity wanna open up their own in Newport Beach and they wanted then franchise this all over the states.

[00:09:11] And I was like, this could be fun. Big mistake because I didn't know what I was doing. Quality control is everything. And my club in LA kept rolling. We made it to Thanksgiving of that next year. Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday, Black Friday's on a Friday, so we would throw a party on a Thursday night.

[00:09:30] Well, one Thursday night we didn't have to hand out flyers. I had 2000 kids show up to a place that held 275 kids. What are we gonna do? The next thing I know I have the Chief of Police circling my club, fire engines coming around and thank God I hired off-duty officers cuz I was able to send them out into traffic and say, hey, tell your buddies what we're doing is good.

[00:09:56] So that was all happening and then I really learned and started understanding what business was all about. And I was able to apply my business to what I was writing, my business plan, my thesis for USC. That's how it all kind of started. Well, to circle back to this story, I told my daughter, who's now 15, about this two years ago.

[00:10:13] I said, we should think about opening up another teen dance club and let's call it Spiral West. And she goes, dad, that is so stupid. That is so dumb. That so lame. Well, two weeks ago she came to me and said, dad, she's now in performing arts school, one of the best in the country.

[00:10:26] She comes to me and says, dad, you know that Spiral West thing you wanna do, I'm ready for it. I'm like, really? So now we may bring it back, cuz it's such a good way. We've all been stuck and secluded and really invisible with the pandemic. And now that we're coming about, it's like, why not reopen this up?

[00:10:43] So if I do it, I'll do it under, under their name.

[00:10:46] Katherine: Oh my goodness. That I didn't even know this about you. And I I'm like, there's so many ideas that are coming up in my mind. I mean, this is incredible. It's like a early kids' night out. Are you familiar with kids' night out?

[00:10:59] Sean: No I don't, but please share with me.

[00:11:01] Katherine: So kids night out, I went to this when I was a teenager, but basically it's the same concept. You have an alcohol, drug free club, you've got dancing, arcade games and they send kids here and then the parents go into whatever they're gonna do. So basically the exact same concept but maybe in early two thousands, rather than 1990s. That is just so incredible. And the fact that your daughter came back to you and was like, all right, dad, I'm ready. Let's do this. So when that happens, you're gonna have to come back on and tell us.

[00:11:32] Sean: Of course. I mean, listen, I'm gonna wait for her. I've learned to, to surrender and just sit back and wait for things to happen now instead of going against it. And, um, when it's the right opportunity, we'll move on it. And then from there, I, um, I just started meeting people and gathering, um, contacts and just, I've always been a people person and I've always loved just engaging the conversation, making people smile and having fun.

[00:11:59] I just learned a line from a good friend of ours, that's friends with Sam Morris and I. He says, if it's not fun, then move on. I love that thought. It's just, you know, if you're not having fun, then move on and find something that that's gonna make you have fun, or that's gonna create that inside of you.

[00:12:14] So from there I went and friends of mine who are my age or 21 and over kept saying to me, hey Sean, when are you going to open up clubs for us 21 and over? And I was like, do I really want to get mixed up with the alcohol scene and this scene? So I started to promote nightclubs on the sunset strip in LA.

[00:12:33] That was a whole different experience. Um, it was great cause I got to meet a whole bunch of new people, crazy people. Um, but just different environment altogether. You throw alcohol and that sort of thing into, into the twenties and over, but what was great about it I learned what a nightclub was, what a restaurant was.

[00:12:53] And I started helping close friends of mine open up nightclubs and restaurants from there. And then I, I went back to USC, my entrepreneurship and said, you know what? Now I'm gonna write a business plan to open up a nightclub in a restaurant. So I did that thinking at 22, I was gonna open up a nightclub and restaurant. Didn't do that.

[00:13:10] That was genius to me for not pursuing that cuz I would not have liked it. Um, and then all my friends at USC were going to the film school. So here I am becoming an, an entrepreneur. I'm thinking they're, they're learning cinematography. They're learning screenwriting. They're learning direction.

[00:13:26] But I, I went to them and said, okay, guys are gonna make all these movies, but how you gonna finance and how you gonna distribute it? And they're like, we don't know. Sean, you'll figure it out. So what did I do? I figured it out. I went back to my class and said, now I'm writing a business plan on how to make a movie and how to sell it.

[00:13:41] So I learned how to do that. In the course of doing that, I met a friend of mine who's now one of my best friends, um, named is Chris. He's 10 years older than me. And we met through a connection and he sits me down one day at a deli. This guy was a location manager at the time, brilliant guy. We're at a deli, he takes out a crayon, starts writing out on this piece of paper in front of us at this deli. Says I wanna build sound stages and I wanna build a film studio.

[00:14:08] And I'm like, I don't get it. I don't wanna do this. I got a film that's gonna go in Louisiana in six weeks. I've already casted, I'm already crew up. One of my friends I think was directing or was involved with it. And I knew that I was set to go make movies. And I was like, I don't wanna build a film studio.

[00:14:25] So he sets me down, shows me it. He ends up buying a building in downtown LA and says I wanna take this five city blocks and I'm gonna call it LA Center Studios. And we're gonna be the first independent film studio. Warner Brothers, you have Sony, you have Fox, you have Disney. I'm walking around this thing and downtown at the time near USC was ghost town. Nothing was there, there was no Staple Center. There was no life, no night life, zero. And I was like, I don't get it. What do you wanna do? And he goes, I need help writing the business plan and I need help promoting this thing. You gotta go out there and help me find money.

[00:14:59] I'm like I've raised money from movies, but now we're gonna raise tens millions of dollars to go get phase one, phase two, phase three. Short of the story is I, I worked with Chris, we got, we, we, we spoke to 132 institutions. 131 said no. One said yes, came in. We swallowed up the land and built these six sound stages.

[00:15:23] And we've shot everything from Mad Men to X-Files to the show 24. Arnold Schwartzer, um, he announced his running for governor was launched there and now LA Center Studio sits in downtown LA as one of the premier independent studios, but I was involved there because I brought some money to the table in like the 19th hour, before the deal closed. They had to raise so much money to get from phase one all the way to phase three.

[00:15:50] So we brought in money just in time to get that deal done. And when that thing happened, I was like, he said to me, okay, now, now you have a home, let's go make movies. Let's go and produce content. So I was like, okay, new business plan, new model. So Chris and I, and I love this man. He, I mean his children, they call me uncle Shawnie.

[00:16:11] My dad delivered all of his kids. My dad's an OBGYN. And, um, took me on this journey on this ride and explained to me metaphorically like what quantum neurology was. What quantum physics was. This is way before, this is back in the day when Wayne Dyer was around there, there wasn't even a Joe Dispenza. Tony Robbins was just coming up, but Chris knew, he felt in his heart of hearts of what was gonna happen next.

[00:16:33] So let's fast forward from that. So the studio's built. The studio's up and going. It's still going now, um, home to a bunch of shows, thousands of shows have filmed there. Um, he calls me in 2007, says, hey, listen, we need to get into, into renewable energies. And I'm like, what are renewable energies? He says solar, wind, and power.

[00:16:55] The planet is failing us. We gotta, we gotta go. And I'm, like I said, we're building houses. We're flipping houses. You have your stages downtown. What do you mean? He goes, well, I found this guy up in Los Gatos, which is in mid California, who's making this machine that's producing ethanol.

[00:17:11] We can put in people's homes and we can fuel their cars with ethanol. And I'm like, he goes, I'll pick up tomorrow morning at 5:30 AM. We're driving up to Los Gatos. I'm like, why are we doing this? I get in the car with him. We go up there and this guy built this machine. This man built this machine where you take waste of spilt milk, spilt tequila, spilt whatever you want, put in this machine, kinda like back to the future.

[00:17:35] It makes ethanol, you put ethanol in people's cars. So I go up there. I grab someone who're working with who just started a company in San Diego called Greenhouse, where they're going to people's homes, retrofitting them, making them more Leed certified, more energy efficient, took them with us. And they said, if we get the rights to this machine, we can outfit all of San Diego.

[00:17:56] So we get the rights to this machine. Um, now we have Southern California, um, locked in. So I was like, okay, we can take this micro fueler, start in San Diego and then move up the coast and take this nation wide. So I bring my wife at the time and my daughter, I think was three years old.

[00:18:13] We go down to San Diego. I go, I really like it out here. It's nice. There's the water. There's community. There's military. Um, and we kept going back and forth because it started in their backyard or on their front porch about talking about some idea and it started to develop and they already had a little bit of a company.

[00:18:31] And I said to them, have you guys thought about writing a business plan? They're like, what's a business plan. I'm like, oh boy, really? And these guys are all ex-military, ex finance guys, but they didn't know what they were doing. And I love them now. I still talk to them. So we went in there. I said, the first thing we gotta do is raise money and create a business plan.

[00:18:50] So, so they let me do that and they said to me, we want you to move down to San Diego. So I was like, okay, but I need a position here. So they, they gave me what I wanted, made me a deal I couldn't refuse. And then I'm launching a new company called Greenhouse Builders, which then became Greenhouse Energy, which was really, um, like I said, is residential first.

[00:19:10] And we moved, we moved to commercial or mixed use and then we got involved with the military. The military wanted us to come in and start doing that, but we didn't have enough money to back our momentum. So then I said to them, we need to go to Wall Street. They're like, what's in Wall Street. I said, where the money's at.

[00:19:25] And they're like, do we have to wear a suit and tie? Yeah, you gotta put on a suit and tie. So we literally it's 2008, the crash hits. There's no money anywhere. Goldman's, Goldman's got no money. I mean, uh, Morgan, Stanley's got nothing. Everyone's like folding up shop. And here we are walking around New York City um, with the business plan saying we need $5 million to go build us our dream and our vision about creating ethanol in people's homes, putting solar up and everything else. And sure enough, one of our last meetings of that three day trip, I get a call from an investment banker, says that, that they want to do our deal.

[00:20:01] And we looked over their, their LOI and the first investor on that deal was Shaquille O'Neill who came. Shaq came in, cut us our first check and that's what happened.

[00:20:12] Katherine: Oh my goodness. I'm just blown away how like you just make things happen one after the next. Yeah. And it doesn't matter if it's like an industry you're familiar with or not.

[00:20:24] Sean: My first film set was my own. I didn't go to film school. I didn't know what, I didn't know what film was at until, until we built this, the studio was built and I just picked it up. I didn't not, I didn't know the key words, the key, uh, phrases. I knew I could learn as I went. And that's kind of like what it, what it is with just life.

[00:20:42] It's just adapting and having fun with it and surrounding yourself with a really, really good team. So I get down to, uh, San Diego. Um, we, we do move. We go on this ride of a lifetime. A couple year, year span. I, I have Shaquille O'Neill as one of my investors. Um, I'm in San Diego. I get my family all set up.

[00:21:04] We find out from a, a source of ours that in Mexico this spilt tequila is, is being tossed into the, into the landfills. Mexico's dirtiest, little secret. And I'm like, I want that tequila for my micro fueler. I can use that tequila to fuel my micro fueler. So we get on, we get on a plane to Mexico, in Guadalajara. We start walking around this tequila farm and only to realize that this tequila farm can only produce so much spilt tequila. So I had the idea, I said, listen, guys, you have all this agave here, which makes great tequila. You guys are winning all these awards right now.

[00:21:41] Why aren't you guys in production? I see all the barrels and they're like, we have no money. So I'm like, how much do we need? So they, so they told me a price. I'm literally drinking tequila with them and the way they made it was so tripled, it was tripled distilled. It was almost organic. You don't get hung over.

[00:21:57] It's a very soothing alcohol. And they said to me, um, we need to raise money. I said, do you guys have a business plan? No. So I stay up all night, drinking tequila, writing up a business plan. Call back to states the next day and say, hey guys, do you guys wanna get in the tequila business?

[00:22:14] And they go, um, should we call Shaq? I said, yeah, call Shaq. Shaq says, um, can we call it, can we change the name to Shaquila? And I'm like, as dumb as that sounds, it's gonna work. And so we launched Shaquila. As that's all happening, um, Greenhouse still taking shape.

[00:22:36] While I was in San Diego, my daughter was dancing at the time and made friends with another girlfriend of hers in this dance class only to realize her father was a Navy Seal. So we become friends and I have a huge love and affinity for the, um, for the military and our veterans and anyone who's active duty or non-active duty, and to find out what they go through as human beings of how to just accomplish their goals.

[00:23:02] And so realizing that, you know, the war on terror is happening right now, they're being sent to Afghanistan. They're being sent to Iraq. And these are guys your age, who are in their twenties, who are trained mercenaries to go overseas, protect my children, protect my family, go there and come back and realize what do they come back to?

[00:23:23] And that's not a whole bunch. And they all wanted to become entrepreneurs. So I realized, um, I said, guys, just bring, I said to Isaac come on over. He goes, can I bring a couple friends? I said, sure. I'm not home. Just tell, tell Stephanie, I'm not there. Well, I'm at the office for Greenhouse.

[00:23:41] I get a call from Stephanie, my ex-wife. She goes, uh, Sean, there's 10 guys on our front porch. They all look like Abercrombie & Fitch models. I said, honey, those are our Navy Seals. Give 'em whatever they want. She goes, I don't think I have enough food in the house, said just take out whatever they need.

[00:23:56] I said, give 'em the, the tequila. They were drinking tequila. I come back to my house and they're sitting on the front porch and they're like, you know, and they're sweet guys, smart people. Um, my, my ex at the time was breastfeeding my youngest kid. She comes out all dolled up. I said, you got ready quick. She goes, you see those guys out here? They're, they're kind of good looking.

[00:24:15] I'm realizing these guys are in so much pain and agony. You don't see it, but it's from the neck above. To realize they're going through such tragic loss and PTSD that they don't know how to reinsert themselves back in a society.

[00:24:32] So it's breaking my heart, but I didn't understand what a brain injury was. I didn't understand what mental and emotional instability is. And I said to them, I'll tell you what, I'll make you guys a deal. I'll teach you guys how to become entrepreneurs. I'll teach you guys how to write business plans, cashflow statements, performance sheets, P&Ls, and everything else.

[00:24:50] And I can show you guys how to create this, but you guys take me training. Big mistake. They said, we'll be here tomorrow at four o'clock. I heard four o'clock, 4:00 PM. They show up next day at oh 400, 4:00 AM in the morning, knocking on my door. There's like 10 of 'em. I've, I've, I've one kid sleeping in our bed, one kid in a crib.

[00:25:10] Stephanie's sleeping. Next thing I know I go downstairs and I think, um, there, there are these guys in my door and they're all like built. You know, they have 60 pound weights on their back and they're like, we're going for a run. You said you wanted to train. I'm like, how do I say no to this? So I was like, okay, let's go.

[00:25:25] I'm barely able to rub my eyes out and I'm trying to hold it together. I'm, I'm 30, I'm 38, 39. These guys are in their twenties and they're built to go forever. And I'm, I'm, you know, I'm an athlete, I'm doing some jujitsu, I'm training, I'm doing my yoga, nothing compared to like being a Seal. And so I started hanging out with them and really trained with them and loving them.

[00:25:46] Also I realized is that my company was growing. I need to hire people. And I started hiring these guys and these veterans come work for me. And, uh, and they were amazing cuz they didn't look at their watch. They just kept going and kept executing and kept getting the job done.

[00:26:01] Katherine: That's a community that will take whoever you are today, and just 10 X that just by being around them and letting them influence you.

[00:26:11] Sean: Yes. Loving them. And so they said to me that, that they overheard me talking one day to one of my friends who was still in the fight circuit named Dan Henderson, who was a legend in the UFC, in the MMA world. He held so many belts, so many titles, both in Japan and the US. And Dan was on his last leg of his career. It was like the big like Rocky Drago fight. He was the American whose is fighting the Russian in Chicago. So these guys wanted to go with me. So, um, I said, come on, I'll pay for it. Let's go. So I took them with me on this tour with Dan, but along the way, they also wanted to learn mixed martial arts.

[00:26:49] They wanted to learn close quarters fighting. So as we're doing this, um, I was, I wasn't the teacher, I had my own teacher teaching them. And Dan was nice enough to start teaching them because as a Navy seal, the government doesn't want you getting within three feet of your opponent, cuz every Navy Seal, the average cost from boots to combat is 10 million to get them ready for combat. 10 million per Navy Seal.

[00:27:12] However, when they come back, they have zero. There's no stipend, there's no 401k to help, the health systems terrible with the VA. And these guys are lost and all they wanna do is they wanna learn combative training. Some of them were still in, some were going back and forth. So we started to train and one day I was training and in jujitsu two things could happen.

[00:27:36] You'd either get submitted by like an submission, meaning you, you tap out from an arm or a leg or a heel or you get choked out. I got choked out one day, which is common. And I went home that night and back of my throat kept irritating me. I thought it was just a swollen gland. It was just a bruise.

[00:27:53] You know, I'm in that point, in that point in my life, I'm immortal. I'm thinking myself going, it'll go away. It's nothing. Um, and what happened was five weeks later, what had happened, my carotid artery got dissected, which means it got split in half. And, um, the carotid artery is used for the blood and the air to go up to the brain and to keep it moving. At the lack of oxygen and blood to the brain stops, the body dies. The brain's like the main CPU for the whole, for the whole body. Um, so I didn't know this, but I'm traveling to Orlando. I'm traveling to watch Dan in Chicago. I'm traveling to the Dominican Republic with this neck that kept throbbing. I had no symptoms of a stroke.

[00:28:37] So when, when you have symptoms of a stroke, I teach everybody look for FAST which means face, arm, speech, and timing. So you look for those signs. If the face starts to droop or the speech starts to go, or you can't move the arm, it symptoms of a stroke. I didn't know what a stroke was.

[00:28:54] I'm immoral. I think I'm, I'm training with athletes. I'm, I'm working out with the Navy Seals. I got two companies that are on the verge of huge success, by all means more success than I could even of imagine. Um, my, my body's now giving out. So I go from traveling. We made plans in 2011 to go up to San Luis Obispo, which is between here and San Francisco, um, with our friends who were our money managers at the time to go spend a few, a few days. So I got the family ready, drove them from San Diego along PCH, up to San Luis Obispo. Two kids in the back seat, our Labrador, our dog, Stephanie and I are in the front seat and I kept feeling my left arm going numb. And I'm like, I'm like, okay, wake up, wake up, wake up.

[00:29:46] And something was wrong. We go up there. We take the kids out, we're playing, we're running around, I'm playing basketball. Everything is great. We then go into town. There's wineries everywhere. We, we, we have some wine and Thanksgiving was that night. We, we, we prepared our Thanksgiving meal.

[00:30:06] Stephanie decided to sleep in another room, cuz she's breastfeeding. And she wanted take the girls. And I had a little bit of a headache. I thought I was maybe just a little hungover. I just needed just to get, you know, and I was supposed to do a 5k the next morning for some non-profit that I was gonna go run and raise money for something.

[00:30:24] Um, wake up in the middle of the night, the room's spinning for me. And I was like, my stomach hurts, but I couldn't throw up. And I'm like, I feel really yucky. I feel bad. I went back to sleep, woke up again in the morning, got no sleep that night, went to look in the mirror, my face is drooped, my speech is gone.

[00:30:42] I put my right hand in front of me. I couldn't see my hand. My, my brain and my hand were not working, even my right hand. My left arm is not engaging. I called for Stephanie. She's upstairs. She comes running down. I said, listen, something's wrong. And when she walks into the bathroom and I'm in the mirror, Katherine, I, I, I literally saw my soul leaving my body.

[00:31:07] I said, I said to her, call my dad. He's a doctor. I'm dying. She called my dad. And he says, Sean's having a stroke. I didn't know what a stroke was. Cause I lost my speech, I was now talking perfectly to like, rah rah rah. It sounded like, wow, wow, wow like nothing was coming out. I had full aphasia. I pass out. Um, my Labrador dog is standing over me.

[00:31:29] EMTs come in. She's trying to protect me, trying to lick me. And they get me to one hospital, a little hospital named French Hospital in the middle of nowhere. No neuro center, no stroke center. Um, closest one is San Jose, which I was just at watching Dan Henderson's fight. And the other one was in Santa Barbara.

[00:31:45] It's Thanksgiving weekend. There's no doctors around. There's nobody around to do anything. Sure enough, by a stroke of luck, there happened to have been a neurosurgeon in Santa Barbara because they were originally gonna take me down by, um, an ambulance. Had I gotten in that ambulance, I would've been DOA. I would've been dead on arrival. The helicopter comes in.

[00:32:08] I remember the blades overhead. I was in so much pain in my head because the stroke was starting to take effect now that I kept coming in and outta consciousness. This neurosurgeon called for a helicopter, gets me to hospital by seconds, evaluates me, gets me stable, but I'm not stable cuz my brain is, is, is loss of oxygen and blood now but my body was in such peak shape, I kept wanting to live.

[00:32:34] Over the course of a couple days, I'm not, not seeing any kind of new, new growth or, or new advances. I was coming in and out of consciousness so many times. My buddy, Chris who was the one who I mentioned earlier, who built LA Center Studios and was the one who really inspired me to get involved with, um, Greenhouse Holdings at the time, um, comes flying in from the east coast, cuz it was his birthday.

[00:32:59] He comes in, he says, I'm here. I got you now. And I remember looking up at him and he says, you're gonna go to sleep now. And I said, I don't wanna go to sleep. I said, throw me in the hot yoga, let me go run five miles, but I couldn't speak. Let me heal myself. All I kept saying is I can do this myself, myself, and he goes, you gotta go to sleep.

[00:33:16] And I'm like, why? He's like, we gotta put you into a coma. I was like, I don't wanna go into a coma. So they had induced me a coma for 10 days, hoping that my brain would, would decrease the swelling so I can at least make the comeback cuz I was swelling so bad that it was trying to come outta, literally the brain was trying to pop outta my head.

[00:33:36] The coma did not work either. They had insert feeding tubes into me. I go from being 175 pounds to 135 pounds in the manner of minutes or manner of days, weeks cuz my body was just atrophying. In the coma the neurosurgeon said we're, we're losing him. He's not getting better and he had to do what's called a craniectomy, which means he had to take a piece of the skull off my head and then put it back on days later.

[00:34:03] So I woke up from the coma, not being able to speak, not being able to really understand where I was. All I know is that I was in massive pain. I was thirsty cuz I hadn't had any food in probably over three weeks. They were feeding me all that Ensure stuff all through my pick lines, my feeding tubes and everything else, but it wasn't enough to keep my body stable. And Stephanie was a dietician and she was one who actually, um, initiated the feeding tube to be put into my stomach, to, to plant more food there cuz my body needed it.

[00:34:35] And then woke up from the coma and it was hell. It was complete torture. I didn't know who I was. All I remember is I wanted to see my kids. I didn't know their names. I didn't know anything. And my brain was at 39 in peak performance, managing member of two companies that were on the verge of huge success.

[00:34:57] I now have the brain of a three old child and I couldn't talk and couldn't walk. And all I was told that was I had to breathe because after 10 days of being in a coma, they wanna put a trach in on me. And they said, if I didn't breathe that they were gonna put a trach on me. They didn't have to put the trach cuz I'd started to breathe.

[00:35:13] And I had to find the power within really and the neurosurgeon came and said okay, you're alive. Let's get to work. I'm like, where am I? And who am I? And he kept talking to me and saying, send in occupational therapist, speech therapist, physical therapists. And by pure luck, I pulled through that. That was a hard few weeks in the ICU coming and going, not sure if I was gonna make it.

[00:35:40] My dad who is, um, was the former Chief of OBGYN at the local hospital here in Tarzanno and on the medical board and on the board at USC medicine as the clinical professor for medicine, didn't, didn't think I was gonna make it, said this, my son could be a vegetable for, for the rest of his life.

[00:35:56] They didn't know what what's gonna happen to me. And when I came out of it, I said, I was given a second chance, then I'm going to make the comeback.

[00:36:07] Katherine: Wow. The fact that you were able to recognize the value of that opportunity and not waste it while you were in that state, is just incredible. I would imagine that someone in that state would go to a place of possibly depression or suicide, or just not even know what's going on and instead,

[00:36:25] Sean: oh, I was yeah.

[00:36:26] Katherine: snapped in, right? Yeah.

[00:36:28] Sean: You're so right. You're spot on with that. That's a great observation. So then they moved me to Santa Barbara, to San Diego where, where I was living at the time cuz I didn't know where I was. I didn't know what state I was in. I didn't know what planet I was in. All I know is that on the, the day I turned 40, they put me in an ambulance on a Friday afternoon that took four and a half hours to get from one hospital to the next in a body that was completely paralyzed.

[00:36:55] Nothing was working, nothing was working. And the first neuropsychiatrist who got ahold of me in San Diego said to me, she evaluated me the next day, she came in, said to me, she did a couple of quick tests and said, um, you know, your brain is dead. Don't count on walking or talking for a while.

[00:37:12] I was starting to talk and she goes, and work's gonna be put aside, but you have a lot of work ahead of you. And we don't know when you're in a walk again. I looked at her with everything I had. I said, get out of my room and you're fired. She says, you can't fire me. And I said, yes, I can. And I fired her.

[00:37:30] And the next therapist who came in, I said, don't tell me I can't, tell me I can. That's how my mantra started of I can, I shall, I will. And within eight weeks of being there and it was, I called it my bootcamp. I couldn't move from my bed to my chair, from my chair to my bathroom. I was, I mean, I had to learn to do everything all over again, brush my teeth to shave, to use, um, to use my lower extremities.

[00:37:56] And, you know, I started taking my first steps and eight weeks post, I walked out of there not really pretty, but I walked outta there with a walker and I was able to get some movement out of it, but I put my heart into it and I knew I had to let go and just give it up to God, spirit, or the universe.

[00:38:13] I had to just succumb, not give up in a sense where I was gonna let everything happen. But I had this mindset already of being, you know, being a fighter or being this person that was gonna, that was gonna take the challenge and I was gonna overcome it.

[00:38:28] Katherine: Wow. Eight weeks sounds incredibly short. Like what were the doctors and your therapists thinking when it was only eight weeks?

[00:38:38] Sean: I pissed everybody off. I said to everybody, what I really did was I really, um, I look back now and I didn't do things right. I wish I would've had a me back then, is I didn't know how to quit or stop, but what I realized the brain needs to move fast, but the brain also needs rest. And I told them, once I started talking, I said, you bring someone in on Saturdays and Sundays. I'm not waiting a day longer. I wanna get my brain going. I wanna get moving. And so they brought people in even on the weekends and they were piling up therapies on me, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy and everything else.

[00:39:15] But what I didn't realize what was happening, my emotional and mental health was diminishing cuz my body was taking over, but my brain wasn't able to keep up with that and I wanna see things happen faster and better, you know, cuz I still wasn't able to get used to my left arm. I wasn't able to get my heel to toe going, a lot of things that were working and I was in a lot of pain and I didn't know where that pain was coming from because I was in spasms and pulling muscles and I thought every time I moved or twitched and no one could explain this, no one could teach me what I was going through because no one lived in my body. Even though you're a PT or an OT or speech therapist or a neurologist or physiatrist and they're wonderful people. So I'm in, I'm in the hospital for probably six to eight weeks.

[00:40:01] Go back home to home health, got all new therapists. They had to rearrange my house. I now have two young kids. Shiloh's 18 months. Savannah's four years old. I have a Labrador that are all wanting their father's attention because before that moment I was super dad, one child on my chest, one child on my shoulders.

[00:40:20] We're off to SeaWorld. We're off to the zoo. We're off to the beach. Bring it, pick it up. Let's go. Let's get outside. Let's enjoy the nature. Let's let, let's be part of the community. Now I'm in the chair in diapers trying to manage to take two steps. How do you even function? How does Stephanie who's been so great all along of being a wife and being a mom now having to take care of two young kids and me, it's so hard.

[00:40:51] It is so tough. I went through such depression. The wheelchair and I did not really do well cause I had one good arm. Every time I got in that wheelchair, I kept spinning in circles. I didn't really know how to use it. I lived on, what's called the Sunset Cliffs. It's a 50 foot drop into the ocean. It was like prime place to be anywhere in California. I just wanted to get my wheelchair over the edge and to go off cuz I was like, I don't wanna burden my family anymore. Thoughts like that came to me all the time.

[00:41:21] And I called Chris one time and said, Chris I've had it. I'm done. And he came to my rescue several times. A lot of people did who were working for me and said, today's not your day. One more day, one more day. And I just kept thinking to myself, okay, if I just take a couple more steps every day now from here on out and two led to three, three led to four, four led to a 5k, then a 10K and then unbalancing and balancing, but all along, what I was realizing too, Katherine, was my brain, my emotional instability was hurting me a lot more than my physical disability, but I didn't see it. And being on medications that some were great, some weren't great, but I couldn't get my brain and my heart connecting. And even like the Navy Seals who I was working with and, and my partners all came to mind said, just keep going, keep going, keep pounding it.

[00:42:13] And that was my mentality. The more I did the faster I'd get there, but I just kept running into a wall because I didn't know how to stop. And I think with everybody it's finding the flow and finding that common, that common area of what works and what doesn't. You can't take a brain injury and give them seven hours of therapy every day. They can't handle that. They have to do it in a momentum that works for them. And no one knew how to coach my family. No one knew how to coach my parents. I'm in San Diego. My dad just retired. My parents are up in LA and here I am still trying to use the phone and play and play my role as a Chief Marketing Officer and investor relations person to all my investors on Wall Street.

[00:42:58] And I couldn't talk and I was just having a really hard time. I got on this, um, um, assisted walking thing where they took six people for me to get on this treadmill at one, one point. It was like a harness and they tried to get my legs going. And once I did this, I said to them, what's the fastest anyone's ever gone. And how long can I go for? And they're like, you're not ready for that. I said, don't tempt me. And of course, what did I do? I outperformed everyone else. But the next day I paid for it.

[00:43:30] I said, you know, I was like, can I do squats? Can I do this? And I couldn't do anything, but my brain thought I could. And when I did it, I over pushed myself and I would set myself back thinking that if I got ahead of this, but there's no getting of anything, gotta just literally relax into the moment. And, um, it was hard.

[00:43:52] I mean, cuz I, you know, I, back then I, I was immortal, but I found my, I found the mortality and what I realized is the ego in me and maybe some of the arrogance, some of the cockiness of being that young entrepreneur was still there, but I learned what empathy and compassion is now in this new body. And years later, after 10 years of being, uh, being a, a, a, a, a stroke survivor that I love, I love my stroke.

[00:44:20] I love who I am now. Cause now I get to touch people, touch, move, and inspire people into a place where I never had that ability ever. And even though, yeah, money's great and money helped me get back to, to where I am. But it's also the point where it's like, if I would've had a coach like me around back in the day, I would've saved hundreds of thousands of dollars on things that, that don't work.

[00:44:42] Cause a lot of times, Katherine, we're preyed upon. People have a solution. People have this, people have that and they're like, hey, for an extra thousand dollars, we'll do this. Extra $10,000, you can do that. And it just kept adding up. And insurance only covers you for so many hours of therapy. And, um, back in 2015 or 16, while I was slowly starting to see the light at the end of this tunnel here, you know, um, with this stroke, someone, uh, challenged me and said, why don't you start going on Facebook live and documenting your recovery?

[00:45:13] And I'm like, I think at the time I may have had like an iPhone three or four. I'm sitting there holding the camera up to my head and trying to record. Maybe there were two people on, I didn't know what, I didn't know what LinkedIn was. I don't think there was even Zoom at the time. I mean, it was Facebook live and I think it started with me and one and one other person following me.

[00:45:33] And, um, two led to three, three led to a hundred, hundred led to thousand, thousand led to more thousands. And I started building my show around Facebook live, where I started documenting my journey every day of what happened to me. And lo and behold, someone found me in Washington. This guy's named Tony Bode, who also suffered a stroke, who was in a bad place.

[00:45:59] The stroke recovery groups were always about playing victim. And I was like, we're not playing victim with me. We're gonna show you what's possible. And he followed me. We became friends. Not only did he take on my mantra, his drive to work every day was an hour of driving.

[00:46:15] I said, when you go to work the next day you call me and I'll walking in those doors. And I walked him into getting back to work and getting back into his life. And Tony turned into more people like Tony and I started realizing, hey, I have a gift here. I may not have full use of my left arm, my left foot, but here we go.

[00:46:35] I've used of my whole body right up here. I can create anything I want. I create everything from nothing and the act of giving back and, and just being of service to people was really my power. And I just started doing it, starting my own podcast called Adventures in Health, where I would interview people, the road to recovery.

[00:46:56] My first interview was Sam Morris, who, you know, who, um, um, is paralyzed from the belly button down. And I started talking to these amazing people and they became my heroes. But along the way, these people all had different traits and tricks up their sleeve, meaning, hey, they went to this chiropractor, they went to this person and sure enough, I, I knew better.

[00:47:16] I was like, okay, I wanna meet that doctor. I have my MD team. There's a whole Western studies of MDs and doctors, but what's the Eastern philosophies have to show us. And that's why I started to bridge both back and forth. And so Adventures in Health was really about showing people what's possible between Eastern philosophies and Western philosophies.

[00:47:36] And that's where I really started learning about my voice and what I can do and what I can speak to. And then I became a geek, a neuro geek, learning about the brain and learning about the body.

[00:47:48] Katherine: One of the things that you've mentioned to me offline is how your skull was put in your abdomen. And I think this is like the most interesting bizarre medical fact of your story. Tell me, why did that happen? How did that happen? Did it get replaced?

[00:48:03] Sean: Okay. So yeah, it it's cardiectomy. So what happens is the piece of the skull is taken off the head and mine was right here. I mean, it was the size of a horseshoe and instead of them putting it into ice or to freeze it, cuz they were gonna put it back within a few days.

[00:48:18] Some people have it off for months. Instead this neurosurgeon put it into my abdomen, to store it in the tissue to keep it preserved. I wake up scratching my belly and Chris is saying to me, don't scratch your belly because your skull's in your belly.

[00:48:34] I'm like my brains are in my stomach. I don't understand. What do you mean they put my brains in my stomach? He goes, not your brains, your skull. And I went to go touch my head and I had this helmet on me because my skull was, was, was exposed.

[00:48:50] Katherine: In your abdomen, you have all your organs, you have the muscles, right? Where in all of that, is it placed? Is it just under the skin?

[00:48:58] Sean: The fatty, the fatty tissue. Yeah, right underneath the skin. Yeah.

[00:49:02] Katherine: Wow. And then they, they just remove it after.

[00:49:05] Sean: Yeah. It's no longer in my abdomin. It's back of my head.

[00:49:08] Katherine: Right, right, right. Oh my goodness. How do you replace something like that?

[00:49:12] Sean: People have, have asked me is back on? I said, I sure hope so. Um, but yes, back on, um, and it's healing fine. It hurt in the beginning but everything hurt.

[00:49:23] Katherine: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:24] Sean: Listen, modern science, you know, it's just 10 years before that I would've been gone. I would never have made it. Technology just keeps going. Yeah.

[00:49:33] Katherine: Yeah, yeah. No, that's, I'm glad for that. I'm grateful. Sean, where did that take you? Because now you've realized your power. You've realized that you have this gift that came from this experience and that people need your guidance. They need your advice. So what did that turn into? I believe it influenced your nonprofit as well. And your Stroke Hacker

[00:50:00] Sean: yes.

[00:50:00] Katherine: Company.

[00:50:01] Sean: Yes, it did. So I, um, I was nicknamed the Stroke Hacker. There's biohackers out there like Dave Asbury, who's wonderful who we know, who is known as the Bulletproof coffee. I'm sure you guys know of that, of who he is, but biohacking is different than stroke hacking because I think biohacking wants to get longevity, get vitality, live, you know, stronger, faster, smarter, better.

[00:50:23] That's great. But what about for people like us who just want, you know, want to get rid of their pain and, and ease in to life and create a, a sense of longevity for them? Cuz the unknown for us, it's all about recovery. So I teach people, really I, I get, I meet people wherever they're at. Where are you at right now in this moment?

[00:50:42] What do you wanna do? Do you wanna see, do you wanna hear, do you wanna walk? Do you wanna run? Do you wanna learn to drive? What, where is it that you want to go? I'll meet you right there. And when I'm really good at doing is I, I, I crack a smile on somebody and get someone to smile I just won that conversation and that's what it's really, it's not bringing some humor, some love, some empathy and sense of connection because people like myself and James who you know, and Sam, we, we, we become invisible.

[00:51:12] We become lost. We're like, we're like, we're like in the back of the class, you know, with the little hat on saying, oh, don't talk to that kid in the back cuz he's he's strange, you know, we're kind of. and we're not, we are very much functional and our abilities are more than others.

[00:51:29] And what I do is I teach people how to utilize all their senses. You look at Erik Weihenmayer. We were just with him in No Barriers. We were went on a little hike at the end of the summit, this last weekend. And I remember Erik sitting next to me, um, at this table and I was within earshot of him because he's, he's blind completely but this guy climbed Everest, this guy climbed the seven largest peaks in the world. He looks over at me and says, someone get me my jacket. And I'm looking around, it's hot outside. People are like, Sam's turning purple red because he's in the sun too much. He said, it's about to rain. And I'm like, okay, he's on something.

[00:52:07] He feels it. He felt the rain. He felt the energy of the weather changing. Within 20 minutes, it was hailing on us.

[00:52:15] Katherine: Oh my goodness.

[00:52:16] Sean: He doesn't need to see. He just felt it. And that's what I said. It's like, of course, and Sam and I were supposed to get an interview with Erik, but we couldn't get down the hill cuz it was pouring so bad.

[00:52:28] And we all have powers. It's about digging inside, finding the belief of what, what, what we can do, not what we can't do. Don't feel bad for me. Don't have sympathy for me. Feel with me. Love me. Let me take you on my journey cuz together we'll get there because everyone's got a path. Everyone is disabled, whether the neck below or the neck above and it's all about, you know, is what, you know, soul performance and breathing into your body.

[00:52:57] And that's why Sam Morris has been so instrumental, so powerful for me because I didn't have that. I was so focused on my body and walking and talking and driving and going and being better and stronger. And I thought for so long, not until I have my body back will anyone love me, will anyone see me.

[00:53:16] People look at me and people, you know, I, we can create anything we, we want. I, I use a line, create everything from nothing. And when I started really spending time with Sam, I'm like, wait a second. This guy can't even stand up. He, he cannot stand. Not because of a choice, but he's taller than Shaquille O'Neil.

[00:53:36] Sam is taller than Shaquille O'Neil and he's more powerful than anyone I know, because the way his brain works, he's had to go inside and say, he's more able bodied than most people are able bodied. And I learned, I had to learn that. I learned that through a sense of transformation through what works for me on the Western side of things, what works for me on the Eastern side.

[00:53:57] And there's so many beautiful plants out there with plant medicines and finding your way through things. It's like, yeah, if people don't wanna believe in something like with cannabis, then don't do it, but at least learn about it. Why did our US government have a patent on it in, in 2002 on CBD and took so long for CBD to get out there and really say, hey, now CBD's really helping for muscle relief and connecting the nerve receptors in the brain. Why does it cross the blood brain barrier? Because our government knows that CBD does something. There's things that we can, that we can choose to get involved with.

[00:54:32] But I'll tell everybody, if you do not believe in something you're about to do, do not do it. If you believe in what your doctor's gonna tell you, it's gonna help you heal, then go with what your doctor says. But if you don't wanna believe that there's plenty of chiropractors out there in shamans and healers, that can show you a different way.

[00:54:49] I created a course, a curriculum, a master class. As a stroke hacker, what I do with this is I take them all the way back from day one of having a brain injury where people are in the hospital, the loved ones in the hospital. I focus in on the family. What does that spouse do? What does that mother do? What do the kids do? Because so many people don't know what to do and they're not educated. I go, I visit hospitals before COVID, I'd go into ICUs and talk to people who were in comas and then go talk to people in the waiting rooms and give them and say to them half the time, get, get outta here, go home.

[00:55:24] When your loved one wakes up from the coma and they're stable, your job's gonna be good. They don't know this. They all wanna be around the hospital. They all wanna make a thousand phone calls, notify everybody. It causes more anxiety, more stress. Let the doctors get them stable. Talk to the social workers, see what therapies are out there and really understand what's the difference between a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist and what are the new, the new technologies needed to be given to these people that can not only help the survivor, but help the families.

[00:55:54] So I created a course that really shows people with amputees cause I'm still really one handed and my left arm is still pretty weak, how to function with one hand and then hacking tips. So I've, I've created a whole system in my house. I brought a camera guy. We videoed me making smoothies, making food, preparing meals. How do you even drive again?

[00:56:16] Cause I think our biggest thing like with Sam, James and I, or a lot of people who go through a, a, a traumatic injury is how do we gain their independence. My whole goal is to get you from where you're at being back to independent so you feel good about yourself.

[00:56:31] I want people to, to become their own coaches cuz if you're a coach to somebody else, you're now helping others. So it's that circle effect.

[00:56:40] Katherine: Is the course for those who had the stroke or can caregivers gain a lot?

[00:56:45] Sean: Oh no, this is for caregivers, this is for therapists. I want, I want UCLA, I want Stanford to adopt it. There's so many books out there and theories on how a stroke works, but no one's really taking this like, like I think I have from being in the body of a stroke survivor, what really is needed.

[00:57:04] And it's simple. If someone's having aphasia, then how do you go around, I call it the side door, the back door, start knocking on that amygdala so their vocal cords can start working. The, the brain's real easy to understand and they're having memory issues. How do you get the hippocampus working?

[00:57:21] How do you then get so many different things in the brain working together? So it's symbiotic instead of them all working separately and studying the brain and becoming this neuro geek who I am, not only can I study it, I use myself as a Guinea pig.

[00:57:36] One of my best friends is the founder of Therabody, Dr. Jason. He created the Theragun. He's always using the Theragun on me, testing it on my nervous system before he brings it to before he brings it to market cuz he knows what works and what doesn't. I use the LiveO2, which is created by Mark Squibb.

[00:57:53] I think oxygen can help the body heal, you know, or hyperbaric chambers, but there's so many things out there that people don't know about cuz if big pharma or the FDA doesn't support it, then Western medicine won't use it. But if you go to Germany, you go to Israel, you go to France, go to the UK or you go to South America, they're using all this technology. Just in America, everyone's hands tied because the attorneys run, run this and big pharma runs it. And what I wanna show people, hey, there's solutions out there. Like my biggest, my biggest, my biggest inspiration with going to No Barriers was meeting Billy Lister. You know who that is.

[00:58:30] The guy who's the stroke survivor is now this paralympian who's cycling for the Olympic team as a para athlete. I haven't chosen to ride a bike in 10 years because the day before my stroke, as I was sharing, I was on bikes with my kids. He's gonna show me how to ride a bike. He's gonna show me how to do a, do a lot of things cuz I don't have all the answers. I'm always learning and then applying. And then I'll reteach that. What I love about No Barriers, is that anybody who's handicapped anywhere in their life, there's ways to adapt it and get up. Like Erik gets up a mountain blind.

[00:59:07] Like a skier who skied Denali, he built his poles with other, like, I mean, there's so many different things out there that are beautiful. Why not take all this? So I wanna do, I wanna, I'm gonna congregate all this information, all this knowledge and say, hey, listen, you wanna learn to ride a bike? You wanna learn to drive a car? You wanna learn to do anything you wanna do? It's all out there. I'm gonna show you the way on how to get there. And money should never be an obstacle and only should be something that, cuz money will come. Don't worry about the how. I just tell people, get in front of me, I'll show you what to do and the money will flow. Whatever you need at that point, it will show up. But I need people to walk through that door to find me. Yeah. Cause I'll open it for them.

[00:59:49] Katherine: I was curious about that because you went through so much therapy in such a short amount of time. And as you mentioned, insurance won't cover it all. So do you have recommendations for people who don't have insurance or good insurance or don't have extra funds?

[01:00:04] How can they heal in a way that doesn't get them stuck? Because I think you mentioned there's a window, what six months to about two years where you really gotta show progress.

[01:00:15] Sean: Yeah. You know, I would never say, listen, I'm 10 years out. I'm still seeing, uh, progress. I'm still seeing movement all the time. Um, but I will say the first 18 months it's crucial, but it, but again, if you jam pack it with too much therapy in the first 18 months and don't mean, listen, you, you were at Sam's breath workshop, right?

[01:00:33] Katherine: Mm-hmm

[01:00:34] Sean: How hard is it to take a breathwork? I mean, I wish I knew about breathwork to calm the nervous system down or meditate. I didn't know what breathwork was or meditation was back in the day. That doesn't cost a lot. There's different things that I, we can do things with people. I've gotta calm down the nervous system first, before we do anything.

[01:00:51] Katherine: Mm-hmm

[01:00:52] Sean: Cause once we've calmed down the nervous system, cuz we're all in fight or flight all the time. Cuz I don't care. I was always fighting and, and, and flee, uh, for me I was fighting, but if I'm supposed to be doing exercise to help me stand and walk and my nervous system is on full tilt, I'm not gonna then gain that momentum.

[01:01:10] I need to get ahold of somebody, ground them, teach them to breathe, teach 'em to meditate, let them visualize and seeing their own brain, them using their hands, using their legs, using their eyes. And if they, if they still cannot use their arm, the legs the way they want, how do get the rest of their body doing it?

[01:01:31] Katherine: I think that's important, imagining yourself, gaining back functionality in those, uh, parts of the body. Do you use anything like a mirror or any other tool where you can actually see the body move?

[01:01:45] Sean: Um, VR. The metaverse has been interesting zone. On the Oculus, um, my good friend Parker, created for me in the neuroplasticity trainer, where he actually took video of my body and I can go into, I can go into the VR and he took my right hand, which works perfectly and replaced it with my left hand.

[01:02:03] So I can actually see my left, my left hand, opening up and closing. And I, I do that at times. And he also built the Cosmic Looking Glass, which is about breath and medians and chakras. But if I can't get somebody grounded first and to get out of their own head of thinking what they have to do and just being able to be settle, then I can't move them into where they need to be.

[01:02:26] And so there's so many different things that I, I mean, I have four hours of content on my master course that I give people. I have the certificates, I have homework, I have different tips and tools that everyone can then use that people don't even think about doing that are so cost effective.

[01:02:43] Like for example, I tell people, um, who have aphasia, um, put on a, an eye patch and they're like, what do you mean by an eye patch? Well, one of your eyes is deficit. So if you put, if you put the eye patch on the good eye, it's gonna force the, the weak eye to start dialing more and using it more.

[01:03:00] They use it for vision. It does help, but what it also does, it helps the brain to reconnect with neuroplasticity and if I wanna give you all my tips and trades right here, it'd be four hour conversation.

[01:03:13] Katherine: Well, we'll just let people go and see that curriculum. So where could they find it if they wanna sign up?

[01:03:17] Sean: Strokehacker.com. We will launch by the end of September of 2022 and what I, what I'm really excited about doing which I want, I want you to help me with, come on as a guest, is I'm gonna be building my own show where I'll be having a community of people come, come to my show. I producers putting it together for me, where I'll be having on a guest every week.

[01:03:39] I'll have a speech therapist on, I'll have a Sam Morris on, I'll have a neurologist on, and my goal is to have hundreds of people on this show, send them to breakout rooms and then they'll be able to ask questions to a neurologist, ask questions to a chiropractor, ask questions to a nutritionist cuz I believe the microbiome, which is the second brain of the body, that food is thy medicine.

[01:04:00] There's things I can show them just on their diet that can help them cuz if the brain's inflamed and swollen, I gotta get rid of all that. I mean, you know, getting away from salt, things that are extra salty, things that are a lot of people have hypertension and high blood pressure. I can work with you on that too. I can work on a lot of modalities that if the body's in an alkaline environment, alkaline state, it keeps away a lot of things.

[01:04:26] It keeps the body very healthy. I'm not saying one diet's good for everybody, but I've tried. I've tried everything from Keto to intermediate fasting to vegan, vegetarian. Everybody wants something else, but I can create a system for somebody to help them see drastic results very quickly. When they find me, I'm like, okay, I got you. Come to me. I'll hold on to you. Hold on to me. And we'll become our own rope team and I can take them anywhere I need to take them. And my success rate is very high and now I wanna deal with a global community. So if you know anybody at LinkedIn, I need help.

[01:05:03] Katherine: Yeah. I, I might know a few folks. Yeah. When someone works with you and then you see success, how are you defining success? What did they start out as generally? And then how do they change?

[01:05:17] Sean: Okay, that's a good question. So one of my clients who is, um, an Air Force veteran suffered stroke on the job, got released, could not count to 20 when I first met him. This guy was a Master Sergeant in charge of 50 people and I'll use Bo. I'll say Bo. Bo and I found each other through an, um, a different company and when we met, I said, are you ready for the ride of your life? He goes, let's bring it. And I knew he had the mentality of a veteran going through a bootcamp. I said, I'm gonna push you, but I'm also gonna slow you down and I'm gonna change everything up right now.

[01:05:56] And in the course of 10 sessions, we're gonna get him back. He now wants to take, he wants to take an advantage of the, um, of, of the GI Bill. He's gonna go back and get his master's in psychology. And he'll probably become my first stroke hacker coach. And I want him to go out and coach other survivors.

[01:06:14] Yeah. So, but, but he, you know, he is got young kids, um, going through, going through a breakup, but here's a young guy in his mid thirties who was lost and couldn't put, couldn't put words together. Couldn't put, couldn't get his thoughts into, couldn't get his thoughts to his words. And when I first started texting him, I realized that something was blocking and he couldn't, couldn't read the, he couldn't understand the text.

[01:06:41] So he'd always call me and go, okay, man. Okay, man. Okay, roger that, roger that. And I was like, I had to break it all down over sessions. Now he's able to have a full conversation. He got stuck on certain things, certain numbers, certain words. I was able to help him to get through a lot of that, because I think with speech, a majority of people have aphasia end up committing, uh, suicide.

[01:07:05] It just happens. It's probably one of the most, most horrific disabilities, worse than being paralyzed in the body with legs or anything else because you can't speak, you can't get the brain and, and, and the mouth to work. How do you even communicate? You're totally. I mean, it's, it's tough and speech therapists are wonderful.

[01:07:26] They're great. But what I usually do is I, I came with Bo, spoke to the speech therapist and said, hey, wait a second. I get what you're doing. And all these speech therapists, all these therapists work inside the box. I don't work in any box. I'm gonna take you outside the box. We're gonna jump from here to here to everywhere else.

[01:07:42] And we're gonna move around and we're gonna play and we're gonna have fun doing it. And sometimes people scratch their head and their therapists are go like, where is this guy going? I'm like, just trust me and sure enough, I get results like that. I mean, I was, I was asked by a, a friend of mine to go meet Larry King when Larry King had his strokes, actually Sam brought me. I actually got Larry to stand up at the very end and take a couple steps at a deli in Beverly Hills. It's about creating smiles. It really is. And I love what I do and I love watching people succeed.

[01:08:19] If you did research on me, Tony Bode, who had suffered a stroke, he was in his late forties or early fifties, was head HR at a huge bank. And I helped him get back to work, helped him take his first steps. He took it so big time.

[01:08:34] He took the mantra behind me and tattooed his arm. If you look at my Facebook, that's not my tattoo. That's his tattoo. I've even had a veteran who had a stroke, put Stroke Hacker on his chest. And I didn't even know this guy. They found me just through me doing little Facebook lives way back in the day.

[01:08:50] So it's just, you never know who you're gonna touch and you're gonna be of service to, and that's what I think James can actually do. The more he's in conversation, the more he discovers his own power and discovers his own potential of what he can do from his point of view, just from that chair alone, he can be a cause for transformation for thousands of people.

[01:09:10] Katherine: Well, and that's what this whole podcast is all about, right? Because everyone thinks, okay, I've gotta make it to a certain point and then I'll have the money, then I'll have the connections, then I'll have the influence or whatever to do whatever my heart is calling me to do. And it's like, no, it actually just starts right now.

[01:09:26] Sean: I call it the if, when. When I have enough money, then I'll fall in love, then I'll get, then I'll have, you know, everything I need, but that's a difference between what Sam and I do is I help people achieve that and I can't tell you how many people who are millionaires or billionaires who use Sam and say, I made it all, but I'm miserable. I'm burnt out. And I'm tired. I'm like, what do I do now? And, and they're bored. And they think by buying more, having more, doing more, stronger, faster, smarter, better, it's gonna get them everything.

[01:09:55] It doesn't. If you're not happy here and here, and there's not a, a, a heart brain coherence, you have nothing.

[01:10:04] Katherine: Yeah. Well, that's the important piece, right? Is, is being able to have that head to heart connection and not searching for more material things or more relationships or whatever. People are just chasing a certain feeling.

[01:10:16] Instead, I don't know, it's like having that contentment within to where you can still have all those things. You can go after, you can push yourself, but it's not a desperate need to fill yourself up with them.

[01:10:30] Sean: Thousand percent.

[01:10:32] Katherine: Okay. So Sean going back to the beginning of your story, you know, top of everything, just really feeling like you're starting to get to that top of the mountain where you can stand and you can overlook everything. And it's like, yeah. What happens internally when all of a sudden you've lost all this basic functionality that we just don't think about because we just have it. And now of a sudden you have to start thinking about it and you don't know if you're gonna get it back. What impact does that have internally on your identity, on how you like the substance of you as a person?

[01:11:10] Sean: It can go any which way you want to go. It can go down the darkest thoughts, the darkest holes. Watch the worst R rated movie, worst horror movie you've ever seen. It's worse than that. Um, but I'll tell you I'm, I'm gonna answer this. What if I told you, Katherine, that I just got, what if I was climbing up the wrong mountain and summited the wrong peak and then pushed off the mountain so I can summit the peak next door.

[01:11:35] And that's what I just got out this conversation, that I was climbing up the wrong mountain all along. Oh. And I thought I had some this face, but I just, some face that that was, that was in the distance.

[01:11:49] Katherine: So in your journey, can you pinpoint a moment where you had that aha?

[01:11:54] Sean: Just now. Just now. I just realized after going to No Barriers and talking to you, you gave me, this was one of my aha moments. I applaude you and I thank you. And I love you for helping with that because that's the true, I just, I just, I just, no, I want you to, um, to take, please take credit for this.

[01:12:12] Listen, there were many people, there's many aha moments and one of 'em was going to Sam's breath workshop the first time right here in Los Angeles and learning to breathe and learning to quiet my mind down. It's just about who wants to take the red pill. Most people don't wanna take the red pill. They're really comfortable with, with just the blue pill but yeah, if you want to tap in and go to the matrix, get ready for the ride of your life.

[01:12:39] Katherine: Yeah. That is so incredible. Sean, I didn't know that you had that aha moment. And I actually, I had the chance to ask Billy and Sam this question, so I wanted to ask you. What inner barrier are you pushing up against in this moment? What's that next step for you in life?

[01:12:58] Sean: I wanna be a cause for transformation for 1 million people, but, uh, by 2030. I wanna be, I, I wanna be, I wanna help people take the first steps again and I need your help and I need a village of people to help me do it.

[01:13:15] Katherine: That's what I love about this is creating that rope team. I mean, this, the community, the people that you're naming and just the community in general is so strong.

[01:13:24] I mean, some of the most empathetic and compassionate people I've ever met. Amazing histories, the things that they push through, it's like, wow. And the wisdom that you can glean, isn't just stuck to accessibility as a topic or disability as a topic. It's the human experience. And we can take this wisdom and apply it in so many different ways.

[01:13:45] So if someone is listening and doesn't have a disability or hasn't experienced a stroke, what would you still want them to learn from your experience?

[01:13:54] Sean: Allow yourself to be loved. Allow yourself to have to receive help. Allow yourself to be okay with just being. And so many people get like I was, like, I don't need your help. I can figure this out myself. I got this. I'm strong male. I've made money. I've done everything I can. We're gonna do it my way. No. I learned to really love and appreciate life and appreciate you and appreciate the world that we have. And my whole thing is I just wanna connect with people, love people, love you and love my kids and be a better human being cuz I can tell you in my coma, I crossed over and came back and you know, you can't take any of that with you. All I wanna do now is I wanna leave my memories and what I'm doing now for not just my children, but for my children's children.

[01:14:46] Katherine: What effect did this have on your kids?

[01:14:49] Sean: Oh, we haven't seen it all yet. I mean, I'm gonna start crying now, but they're 15 and they're 12 and they're just starting to see it. I'm teaching them resilience. I'm teaching them to walk towards resistance. I'm teaching them not to, not to give up and don't gimme excuses. Just keep going. It's okay to fall. As long as you can fall and you can look up, you can get up. And I encourage them every day to keep failing because the more you fail, the more you're gonna, uh, succeed.

[01:15:26] Katherine: Oh, I love that. What a strong message to get from a supportive dad. That's just, I don't know, just very touching.

[01:15:34] Sean: They're my inspiration. They really are. I walk because of them. I didn't want, I didn't want them to see me in the wheelchair. Not say that. Not say that the wheelchair was wrong, but I was given the chance to walk. Why not just do it? And if I didn't, if I couldn't figure it out, I learned to walk a different way. Just because you just, because science says you can't walk, I think Sam Morris flies. I don't think he's in his wheelchair. I think this human being flies. I think he flies and flies and flies.

[01:16:03] I think he is in a whole nother dimension. Sam and I are creating a show right now called Beyond Limits where, where we're really gonna take people and show them what's possible. Take them beyond their imagination of what they can do. It's it's for the ability and for the disability, but everyone can see this. I mean, look at Erik. Look at Billy. Look at all these look at Mandy Harvey. She's, she's deaf and she's a beautiful singer. I mean, I just, if people only knew what gifts Sam and I and James, James will have it too, Billy can offer the world and guys like Erik, first couple years, it sucks. It's brutal. It's tough. You gotta get to year three or to year four.

[01:16:54] Katherine: What did your children teach you from this journey?

[01:16:58] Sean: To be vulnerable, to be vulnerable, to be open, to be vulnerable. And it is okay to share everything. I'm in diapers and my youngest is in diapers at the time. I was in diapers and it's like, we all, we all, we all pee, bleed, and poop the same way. We're all human beings. We're all part of love. And let's just be okay. Instead of us being so divided, let's just get united. Let's be a rope team to help each other.

[01:17:35] Katherine: Mm-hmm .Yeah, absolutely. I am part of your rope team and I think that you would say the same and just instantly, as soon as meeting you all, yeah. I mean, it just, you can feel the compassion and the empathy and recognizing the humanness to each individual is, is where you find peace but also stability as well, where you're not having to outperform someone else or compete or bring your ego in and see, who's better. You can just say, yeah, we're all here. Let's lift each other up and, and just be okay.

[01:18:10] Sean: I love you. And thank you. And forever, you're part of my, of my rope team forever. You were connected to Sam and I. I knew the minute you walked into our lives, I said to Sam, this girl's special and she's now part of our family. And Sam saw it too, and we still see it. So thank you. Thank you for everything that you do.

[01:18:29] Thank you for this podcast. And by all means, I think like you taught me something I never knew before, which was, I never heard of, was it Chief Accessibility Officer? I mean, I didn't know that. I mean, mm-hmm, , I think every company should have one. That to me right there really says so much about who LinkedIn is, because I think we all, I think, I think everyone needs every, I think every family needs one.

[01:18:55] I think everyone needs every, every school, every, every organization needs a CAO because in some way, shape or form, aren't we all going through our own therapy, our own life's journey, our own hero's journey. I think we are.

[01:19:12] Katherine: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh my goodness. I love that you touched on that because that's something we talk about so much. People who are able bodied and especially when you're younger and you haven't experienced how age can impact you, you don't think about the products you're designing or the environments you're creating and how they might be harder for people with different abilities or lost mobility from age, but we're all gonna get there. We're all going to go through that. And I know even just from going through the pandemic, I was inside a lot and sitting around for the last couple years, I've lost a lot of the same strength that I had in my body.

[01:19:52] And so it doesn't matter age necessarily. It's just, it can happen to anybody and we can't control it. And so if we can bring some intelligence and some empathy to what we're creating, which is what a Chief Accessibility Officer is supposed to inspire and supposed to do, they lead that charge. I mean, it makes me so excited to see how things are going to change because this momentum is happening now.

[01:20:17] And it's going to keep growing. People like you, people like me, we're going to keep this going. And so imagine the world that your kids will continue to grow up in as we are able to consider people of all abilities and we change our environments, we change our products, we change the way that we think about people, because people with disabilities have been outcasted from society, for what...ever?

[01:20:41] I mean a really, really long time and it's slowly starting to change, but I just can't wait until it's like, look, we're all humans and things happen.

[01:20:50] Sean: I love that. And let me tell you something else, you don't need to be disabled to be, to be a Chief Accessibility Officer. Katherine, you have everything it takes to be that position.

[01:21:00] Katherine: And why is that?

[01:21:00] Sean: You know that right? You do, you don't need to be blind, deaf, or paralyzed. You can do it. I don't, I, I think a CAO should be anybody. It's like, I was a CMO for all my companies, former CEO, c level everything. I had no experience. I just learned on the job. I just had the love and the interest and the passion for marketing, love and the passion for raising money, the love and the passion for talking to investors. You could totally run that position for LinkedIn. I mean you got my vote.

[01:21:36] Katherine: Thank you. Well, I think I need a couple other, other votes, but we'll get there.

[01:21:41] Sean, I wanna comb back through this conversation cuz there's so much more than I wanna ask you about. I'm a business major myself and so hearing your story, I'm like, wow, I just, the amount of what I'm gonna call courage to go out and start these things on the fly, not knowing anything, uh, and learning as you go is really impressive to me because I'm the complete opposite.

[01:22:03] I need all my ducks in the row. I need everything tied up with a nice little bow and then I will launch. Well at that point, you know, you're kind of seeking perfection and you can never guarantee it's gonna be perfect. That's the antithesis of starting a company. So what would you recommend to someone who is looking to start something?

[01:22:23] Sean: You have to have, you have to have a backbone. Literally I tell everybody, I mean, I remember my first day at a USC, there was our professor. His name is Mac Davis. He says everybody in the, in the class, you guys get ready to get sued first and paid last. If you're not ready for that to happen don't say in my class. A third of the class got up and left. The ones who stayed behind

[01:22:46] Katherine: wow.

[01:22:46] Sean: were ready to go through that challenge. But I'll tell you something, if you overthink things and over, you can overanalyze, it's one thing to become prepared, but if you overanalyze everything and never can get outta your head to go make that choice and talk to someone, or to see what does this pen really mean? You know, if you overthink the pen, no. Here's what the pen, here's what the cost of the pen. This pen right now is so magical and so special that I know the first deal, the first deal that you're gonna make with this pen is gonna be worth millions of dollars.

[01:23:16] But if you take apart the pen and you overanalyze it, you're never gonna get there. It's the same thing I say to people. Now go watch Top Gun Maverick. There's a line in that movie that I love. He says, if you think up there, you're gonna die. Stop overthinking things. Just start walking, start doing, start moving.

[01:23:33] Cuz that's what I'll say to my all my stroke survivors too, all my chronic brain injury survivors. Don't overthink it. Just take the first step. Your body remembers what to do. Mm. And I encourage you to fail. Fail backwards, fail forward, fail sideways. Keep failing. You'll keep succeeding.

[01:23:51] Katherine: Mm-hmm mm-hmm

[01:23:52] Sean: It's not for everybody. It's not.

[01:23:56] Katherine: Yeah. Yeah. But I think everybody has something within them that if they wanted to go there, they could. It's just a matter of choice. Or do you think that there really are certain people who are cut out for it and certain people who aren't?

[01:24:10] Sean: You gotta find your why. You gotta find your inspiration. Entrepreneurs want their freedom. They wanna set their own path. They wanna build their own way. Look at Steve jobs. You look at Elon Musk, you look at Richard Branson for a Virgin, Michael Dell. These guys are all crazy in a very good, good, positive way. Who's gonna think about, let's go make an electric car. Let's call it Tesla. Do we even know what Tesla was? How many times did Edison fail before he got the light bulb or electricity? I mean, how many times did you know the railroads? The, you know, everything. If you go back and look at how history was made, you gotta take chances.

[01:24:53] The thing is though with, with, with, with having a traumatic injury, you have no longer, you no longer an elective to back out. And being an entrepreneur, you gotta get, you gotta get, you gotta get in the mindset that there's no other choice.

[01:25:07] You eat what you kill and working for somebody is great, but some people want stability. Some people want security and civility, which is fine, but entrepreneurs don't. We want our freedom. We wanna create. We wanna build teams. Why, why does Erik climb up Everest? Why is that guy ski Denali with one leg? Why is Billy Lister wanna compete in the Olympics? Why is Sam Morris wanna lead a million people in breath work or create whatever he's gonna do. It's just, you gotta find what's inside your soul and let that be your passion.

[01:25:42] Katherine: I've never thought of the perspective that when you have a disability, say with your stroke, you can't back out. With entrepreneurship, you can get started and then you can say, yeah, nevermind. Or I need to think about this a little bit more, or let's make sure that this is good to go. You're using the same kind of skills in entrepreneurship as you were to recover from your disability, but with less options, you had to just make that decision and go.

[01:26:09] Sean: Zero. Zero options. Because everyone can get a gym membership. Do they use it? 90% of the time they don't. Most people who are traumatic survivors, if they don't go, if they don't get, if they don't go through recovery, they will not get better. And there's no longer, there's no longer electives.

[01:26:30] There's now requisites. And these requisites can be so easy after put into place and if there's a system, like I said, calming down the nervous system and finding the flow, finding what works, accelerate, break, accelerate and break. My whole thing was I wanted to run too quick, too fast and ran myself right into a wall several times.

[01:26:52] And that's how I am doing what I do now. I tell everybody, if you wanna be entrepreneurs, get ready to lose everything, get ready to go into full debt, get ready to max out every credit card, get ready to beg, borrow, and steal and hold on for dear life.

[01:27:06] But once you catch that ride and you get people to believe in who you are, that, that, that snowball effect, that avalanche happens so quick that your business then just starts taking off. And that's when you need a team behind you. I'm sure the guy who started LinkedIn, I don't know his story, but I'm sure it's something similar where he just created something and then it just started happening.

[01:27:27] Zuckerberg didn't know what he was doing. He wanted to communicate with friends. Even with this podcast, I say with the podcast, keep rolling them out, keep putting them together. See what happens. You start getting the momentum.

[01:27:39] Start having people like Sam, myself, and Erik, everybody you know, start putting it out into their tribes. My tribe will latch onto your tribe. Your tribe then gets bigger and then hopefully soon you start getting sponsorship deals. You start getting enough of an audience where it's now making you money.

[01:27:55] And now, now you have a choice to do what you wanna do, whether it's a hybrid of LinkedIn or be a full-time podcast, or maybe I could see you on the View someday, who knows what your, what you thing could be. You never know. I mean, why not strive for that goal?

[01:28:10] Katherine: All right, let's do it. I'm not gonna say no to that.

[01:28:15] Sean: I mean, you think Ellen or Oprah had any idea what they were gonna do? I, I mean, have you ever heard of Oprah's story? How she was an orphan mm-hmm and how she was raised by her grandma and had nothing and she managed to become Oprah Winfrey. I mean, hello.

[01:28:29] Katherine: Mm-hmm.

[01:28:30] Sean: I mean, so many of these stories, I mean, look, I could be talking to you right now in, in 20 years, you may have the biggest show on the planet. I'll be like, Katherine remember me? Hello, I want back on your show. And that's how it could happen. It starts right now with what you're doing.

[01:28:50] Katherine: And that, that's what I love so much, Sean because when, when we're young, at least for me, it was this idea of something just happened and all of a sudden you are Oprah, you're Elon, you're Justin Bieber, pick your flavor. We never get to see the journey. And I so want people to see the journey because that's when you can realize like, oh, I just need to wake up today and do something, take a step forward and then take another step tomorrow. Take another step the next day. And that's how you grow into your potential. It's when we stop, we, you know, kind of maybe not, I'm gonna get scared. Is it the right direction? Let me change. I don't know my why. I don't know my story.

[01:29:33] That's what holds people back and they get stuck and I'm all about as we did this last weekend, like breakthrough, have no barriers and just full charge go big!

[01:29:43] Sean: Yeah. So I got two things for you. Be ready to take a risk and behind every breakdown, there's a breakthrough. If people just remember that from this podcast, it's everything.

[01:29:55] Get ready to take every risk you can cuz risks have rewards to it. If you don't get off the couch, you don't walk through that door and walk outside, you never know what's out there.

[01:30:06] Katherine: Mm-hmm, yep!

[01:30:07] Sean: Erik Weihenmayer, I have no desire to climb Everest. I really don't. I have no passion. I have no, I, he loves it. Let him do what he wants to do. You gotta look at the risk reward option, um, and figure out what it is. But I keep telling push through, push through, but also know when to accelerate and when to back off mm-hmm people go too hard and too fast, that's when they break and that's when something's gonna happen.

[01:30:32] Sam broke. Sam rode a team of nine teenagers across America, thinking that he just got, he just accomplished his biggest adventure of a lifetime until he gets in the back seat of a car of a drunk driver and they hit a tree and he is got a full spinal cord, you know, disconnect. Things happen. He's the warrior, I'm the warrior, you're a warrior. There's so much to learn off him. There's so much to learn off everybody, but people have to be okay with being a student because that's the big thing. And for all students, we all can gain something.

[01:31:04] Katherine: Well, and I think that's how you move from discord to unity is when you look at everybody as your teacher, even if you don't like them, there's something to learn from them. Even if it's learning how to deal with people you don't like.

[01:31:18] Sean: I love that.

[01:31:19] Katherine: As part of your journey to recover, you mentioned it took a toll on your family, your friends, your parents, and to have you go from being a dad and being a businessman to now in diapers, the brain of a three year old or younger, what was that process for the caregivers?

[01:31:38] Sean: They were everything to me. My, my caregivers, my nurses, my therapists, doctors were great, but the doctors aren't there for the recovery. They're there to get you stable. They're there to save your life. The journey begins with the caregivers.

[01:31:52] Those people, I have so much love and empathy for them because what they go through, what they had to do for me, just basic active daily living needs, taking showers, brushing my teeth, using the bathroom, urinating, pooping. I couldn't sit on a toilet myself. I'd fall over. I had no midline. I had no stability. I know trunk stability.

[01:32:16] And they taught me a lot of things cuz it's just me and them engaging. I mean understand having a stroke. The left side of my body was cut off. My vision was gone. My smell was gone. My mouth was drooping. They had to become another part of my body. I learned a lot off them and I appreciate all of them, everyone who's in the hospital.

[01:32:35] I tell everybody if you end up being in the hospital, be as kind, as you sweet as you can to everybody. As hard as it gets, just love everyone and thank everybody because they're really, they're really there to be of service to you.

[01:32:51] Katherine: That's beautiful. Yeah. I think we saw a rise in awareness around thanking healthcare givers and providers over the last couple of years, but hopefully that gratitude continues because they tend to be very compassionate people who are also there to help you go through that experience and, and ease the pain as much as possible.

[01:33:11] Anyone who is caregiving for someone in the home, especially if you have to leave your job, maybe the person who is sick has to leave their job, it can be a very stressful situation financially, mentally, emotionally. Do you have like one or two pieces of advice of how to ease some of that stress?

[01:33:31] Sean: I tell everyone let's calm down the nervous system. I keep saying it's finding that flow cause you can't make decisions for anything unless you're calm, unless you're in your breath. Yeah, the money's out there. There's different nonprofits. There's different grants. There's different funds. There's different support groups that can help you raise money and get you what you need. But none of that makes a difference. None of that matters unless you are in a calm state.

[01:33:59] I tell everyone, if you get tired, shut your eyes for 20 minutes, take a nap. Let yourself, let yourself just go wind down.

[01:34:07] Katherine: Mm-hmm . Yeah, I love that. As you were talking about before the body in our society tends to be in fight or fight. So right now, like I'd love for us to take a breath. Because it's so

[01:34:21] Sean: Yeah. Right. Isn't that nice?

[01:34:23] Katherine: Doesn't that feel good? Yeah.

[01:34:31] Sean: Absolutely. And that costs us nothing.

[01:34:34] Katherine: Mm-hmm

[01:34:34] Sean: There's no money. There's no, everyone's so worried about finding money. Breathing's free. Right. It's just, and, and I tell people just in inhale for seven hold for seven, exhale for seven. Do that seven times and watch over the course of doing that throughout the day how calm you get.

[01:34:51] Katherine: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You don't need a lot of time for it. You definitely don't need money for it. And it's the one thing that will be consistent throughout your entire life. It will always be there for you at any point in time. That's what's so beautiful about just breathing.

[01:35:10] Sean: I'm gonna work for you someday. I haven't work for anybody worked for anyone in, since I was 18. I think, or, or 19. I'll come work for you. I'll come work. How about if I work with you and we'll accomplish everything together, I am, as anything is possible. Yeah. Anything is, you know, and I will, the one thing I'll say to everybody here is reframe that word impossible cause it only means I am possible. Mm-hmm. Everyone gets that word all messed up.

[01:35:40] Katherine: Mm-hmm.

[01:35:40] Sean: I tell everybody, keep repeating, I am calm, I'm strong and I'm in control and keep breathing all that in. I'm calm, I'm strong and I'm in control. That's all you need to really do. I teach people, take, take yourself out of it and what can you do to give back. If you're constantly giving back and being of service, everything will come to you, tenfold.

[01:36:03] Katherine: Sean, I have to ask you so many people think to be successful, you take. How can I get to the next ring of the ladder? How can I, how can I, how can I, and you've kind of had a bit of that path, but now you're telling me it's about what can you give. The we, yeah. How can you serve? So can you really experience the same success by flipping the mindset?

[01:36:28] Sean: A thousand percent. Thousand percent. Find what you love doing and, and get into that place and find your love. Find your passion. Um, well listen, I used to sell tequila. Do I have any desire to sell tequila right now? No. Do I wanna open up a restaurant or nightclub? No. Will I help my kids do that? Sure. Of course. But I wanna be at a place where I love what I'm doing and I wake up every day. I'm like, yes, I get to go make a difference. That's what I wanna do.

[01:37:00] Katherine: And it sounds like through your curriculum, through the Beyond Limits show, you're plugging in, in different ways and able to do that.

[01:37:08] Sean: Everything, the nonprofit, which is the Move2Improve Foundation, m2i.org. Everything, everything, whatever you want to create is all right there in front of you. You gotta keep going. Make a plan and stick to the plan and go for it.

[01:37:24] Katherine: If you were to imagine your life pre the stroke as a bucket and that bucket was full of things and then you have your life now and it's another bucket full of things, could you describe what's in those two buckets?

[01:37:39] Sean: Um, false, false success. What I found now in this bucket is, is empathy, kindness, and compassion, and true love for people, myself, the world. Realize this moment is gonna pass and you don't need to have everything. Your self worth is not what you have in the bank or what you're wearing or what you own.

[01:38:04] Your self worth is really about what it is, what you can do to provide and to give. And that's the difference now with me. The money will come. The money will ebb and flow, but people shouldn't get stuck on it being their everything and being, you know, if I have this much, then I'll be looked at in a different way. No. Not at all.

[01:38:23] Katherine: My mission is Serve Widely, Give Greatly. So what you're saying,

[01:38:29] Sean: I love that. I love that. I love that. Say that again.

[01:38:33] Katherine: Serve Widely, Give Greatly.

[01:38:37] Sean: I love that. I might have to steal that. That's a good one. That's a really good one.

[01:38:43] Katherine: You can steal that, spread that around.

[01:38:45] Sean: I love that. Listen, thank you so much. Thank you for who you are and thank you for that smile of yours and thank you for just being a alive for all of us, because so many people who are caught up in that darkness and that tunnel and Katherine, you are an amazing human being. You're beautiful on the outside, you're more beautiful on the inside.

[01:39:04] And I wanna, uh, just sense an appreciation for, for what you're doing and keep going, girl, keep believing, keep pushing forward. And I'm part of your rope team. So is Sam. And if you ever need anything, what we're right here for you.

[01:39:19] Katherine: Oh my goodness. Sean there are no words for how that feels. Thank you so much. Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing your story. I hope that everybody reaches out in many different ways, on social media, through your community, through your curriculum. What are ways that people can support you? Who do you need help from? How can they collaborate?

[01:39:41] Sean: I want to connect with every stroke center, every traumatic brain injury center, whether it's Craig in Colorado or at Shepherds in Atlanta, I wanna connect. I want people, I want therapists, I want doctors, I want chiropractors, everyone to come into my world and let me help place people with where they need to be, because we all need each other and we all need to be united.

[01:40:06] And strokehacker.com is a place to start. And I said, I want to build this community, um, where I'm talking to people such as Sam or, or, or James or, or Billy, or the Eriks of the world. Anyone who's got any kind of disability and really bring them along for the ride and I'm gonna show them how to become what they wanna do.

[01:40:30] I wanna love people. I wanna talk to people. I wanna root them on. I wanna cheer them. I wanna hug people, love 'em and just keep moving forward. Cuz the moment we stop is the moment we start dying.

[01:40:46] Katherine: Well for everyone who's listening, everything that Sean's saying applies in person. I have been there. It's a lived experience. You can feel it just in his presence. I hope that everybody reaches out to you, Sean, whether it's through Stroke Hacker, or on social media. Where else can they find you?

[01:41:03] Sean: Stroke Hacker. They can find me. I have a team now who's doing this for 'em because I, I really gotta be a millennial to run the whole social stuff. Listen, I've, I've been all over the news, in the media and I'll continue to do so. And I need people like you to believe in me and to build up my name and to support it.

[01:41:22] Not based on an ego, cuz I know every day I wanna make one person smile, just one. It becomes two becomes three, becomes four, great, but if I can turn a smile onto somebody every day, I'm saving a life, not only a life, but I'm saving two daughters who need their father. I'm saving that child from taking their life and leaving their parents.

[01:41:46] I'm saving that spouse who wants to do something and leaving behind their family. Doesn't matter. Life's too precious. Suicide's selfish. Don't do it. We'll help you get through this. I've been there. I didn't pull the, I didn't pull the trigger or go through it, but it came close. And if I would've done it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have met you.

[01:42:09] I would've left these two girls without a father, and I never want anyone to do that. Mm-hmm especially our, our veterans. There's 90 a day taken their lives. 90 a day in just the United States. Our firemen. our police officer, our first responders, not fair, not cool. Let's take them in. Let's love them.

[01:42:28] Let's give them a home. Let's give them a sense of joy, of sense of nature, sense of being. These guy, these guys, and gals out there who donate their time and really give everything up to go join the military based on a choice, bring them in, talk to them. I love you and get that. I love all of you.

[01:42:49] Katherine: Yes. Thank you, Sean. And thank you to everyone who's listening to the Opportunity Made Podcast. Uh, it's such a pleasure to spend time with you, Sean, with everybody else today. If anyone has a story they wanna share or knows someone who was stuck in an area of life and pushed forward, created new opportunities for themselves, you can always message me on social media @OpportunityMade or check out opportunitymade.com. Serve widely, give greatly and take care y'all.

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