Dissecting The Anatomy Of Resilience With Chad Foster

 

High-impact keynote speaker and tech innovator Chad Foster is living proof that no obstacle can stop you from achieving your goals as long as you have a mindset founded on resilience. In this conversation with Adam Markel, he shares how his blindness did not stop him from writing a book and creating CRM software for the visually impaired. Chad looks back on his transition from tech to corporate, the biggest leadership lessons he learned from training dogs, and the immense power of hope and optimism. He also talks about the necessary mental shifts one must undergo to emerge from setbacks stronger and more empowered than ever before.

 

Show Notes:

• 01:50 – Experiences As A Professional Dog Trainer
• 08:19 – Leadership Lessons From Training Dogs
• 13:58 – Embracing Blindness As A Blessing
• 20:09 – The Power Of Hope And Optimism
• 23:24 – Writing The Book ‘Blind Ambition’
• 30:33 – Necessary Mental Shifts To Transformation
• 40:53 – Closing Words, Reflection, And Episode Wrap-up

 

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Dissecting The Anatomy Of Resilience With Chad Foster

Welcome back to another episode of the show. I am thrilled to be your host as always. I am so thrilled to be here with speaking to my guest Chad E. Foster. Me talking about my sore throat will seem silly on some level in the context of the transformation that Chad has experienced in his life. You’ll find out more about that from him in just a moment but let me share a little more about this gentleman and then we’ll get right into it.

Chad E. Foster is a trailblazer, defying limitations with resilience and innovation despite going blind at 21. He’s a rainmaker, billion-dollar generator and a tech innovator and graduating as the first blind executive from Harvard Business School Leadership Program. Chad created CRM software for the visually impaired doing what tech titan said, “Could not be done.” Thriving in a Fortune 500 company, he directed financial strategies that produced billions in revenue in best in class margins. Chad breaks down the anatomy of resilience empowering others to emerge from setbacks stronger, sleeker, and more resilient resolute to succeed. Sit back and enjoy my conversation with Chad E. Foster.

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Chad, I’m so happy to have you on the show. I know we’ve been rescheduling this thing and getting it on the books for a while now. I’m thrilled that we’re going to get the chance to chat. Reading your bio is epic, the places you’ve been, the things you’ve done, what you’ve been through, what you’ve experienced, and what you’ve “seen.” I want to talk about that.

Experiences As A Professional Dog Trainer

For a lot of people, they’re constrained by their eyes in some respects but I want to get your slant on that because you know better than me and far better than me, whether that’s true or not. What’s one thing that is not part of your bio? What’s one thing that I didn’t just read that you would love for people to know about you at the start of this conversation?

Seeing eye dog just walked in. Maybe it’s him. I don’t know. The fact that in order to be able to get around and do all the things that I do, I also have to be a professional dog trainer to be able to go from point A to point B. I traveled 250 days out of the year in 2023. I did 50 keynotes in 7 or 8 countries and traveling by myself with a seeing eye dog. This is a new seeing eye dog. I’m having to get him trained up and ready to go.

In addition to all the other things that I’ve done that people talk about, I travel quite a bit internationally and domestically by myself with. It’s just me and my guide dog. In order to do that, I also have to be a professional dog handler or dog trainer to be able to get him to understand what I need him to find me so he has to locate things for me.

Who knew growing up that I would also in order to navigate the change in my life, I’d have to adapt and learn how to understand dog, psychology dog behavior and train a dog to be able to get me from point A to point B but that’s the fact of the matter of where I live. I feel fortunate. I tell people it’s a good time to go blind. I know they think I’m joking but it’s not a joke. It’s a little tongue in cheek. There are things like guide dogs, smartphones, the internet, computers and screen reading software and all those things that make things more accessible. In the long arc of history, when you think about it, this is a good time to go blind. Your readers don’t have to worry, we’re not recruiting or taking applications or anything but it is a good time based on all the tools that are around us.

Tell me more. I’m a dog person. I love dogs. This is a period of our lives we don’t have dogs but for so long, especially while we were raising our kids, we always had at least two dogs. I do miss them. That’s another topic for another day perhaps but tell me about this. This new dog. Is it a shepherd?

It’s a German Shepherd named Major. The last dog I had his name was Sarge, so I figured I’d give this one a promotion. You would think with the name like Serge and Major they would be a little aggressive or whatever. He’s the opposite of that. He is the most kind-hearted dog you’ve ever seen. He’s a labrador wrapped in German Shepherd clothing. Even more ironically, the German Shepherd I had named Romeo years ago who you would think would be a lover and not a fighter was the aggressive one. It’s interesting how things work out.

This guy just two years old and he’s learning the ropes. They don’t roll off the print and press. It’s not like you get a seeing eye dog and they come equipped ready to take you. You can’t just go to wherever. Say you’re going into Hartsfield Jackson Airport and you say, “Take me to gate B18.” The dog’s not going to know what that is. You have to get the dog used to the environment that you’re in and I have to know where I’m going.

I communicate to the dog whether we’re going left or right or to look for an escalator or an elevator or a gate or I tell the dog what to look for, the dog finds point-to-point directions. We work as a team. He’s only as good as my ability to give him directions and he’s only as good as my ability to teach him what those directions mean. He didn’t know what escalator was when I got him, so I had to teach him when an escalator was and what a countertop was, people movers, upstairs versus down stairs, how to locate a chair for me, which is not finding a chair for a dog. It’s locating a place to sit down.

It’s a very abstract concept that you’re teaching a dog because every chair looks different. You’ve got chairs that look like theater seats, classrooms, recliners, and benches. You’ve got just all kinds of different things and we call them chairs but what we’re saying is, “Major, find me a place to sit down.” That takes some time and some exposure. There are different techniques we use to help them with that. Further to that, it’s, find me an open chair. A place to sit down that’s not occupied. That’s even more complicated for a dog.

You can ask Major to be a bouncer, too. There’s some space for me here.

Which he can’t do. People will see him coming and they’re very accommodating and they’ll make room for him. I try not let him get by with that if I can because he’ll lean into that but a very kind-hearted dog. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of fun to see the learning take place and to see how they continue to evolve. That whole process of getting them up to speed takes about 12 to 18 months after we get them. I’ve had him for a few months so far. We’re still in the early Innings but he’s doing well. He’s handling all the international travel exceptionally well. I’m happy about that.

Who are you providing feedback about Major? By the way, my wife had a dog named Major. She grew up with a Major Willie, I think was the name. A great dog. A collie. When you’re giving feedback to Major, what is that look like? Are you giving it directly to the dog or you’re giving it to the dog’s other trainers or handlers that you’ve got helping you with them?

No, it’s just me and Major now. The other people who trained the dog, they did that for three months. I went there and I was with Major for two weeks. I came home with him and then it’s me and him. If I need to go back to them for some reason, they’re a hotline. I can always send an email or shoot a text message but I haven’t had the need for that. It’s me and Major. The feedback is how you train the dog and the way that you handle the dog. It’s using a lot of positive reinforcement. It’s holding a dog to a high standard but at the same time, setting the dog up for success. A lot of praise and correction when it’s needed. Correction has to fit the crime.

There’s a ladder that you use to step up on correction. You start low and work your way up. Depending on how misbehaving the dog is. This guy requires almost no correction because he’s so kind-hearted and he just genuinely wants to make me happy. I think the advanced schools like the Seeing Eye. They invest about $75,000 into each one of these dogs. They’re paying attention to that. They want dogs who want to work and who want to make the handler happy because it makes handling much easier and it takes less correction.

[Years ago, I would have dogs that required more correction. Now, it seems like I rarely ever have to correct the dog. It’s a light verbal and he’ll get it. You redirect to tell him what you want them to do and he’ll be right on path. It’s always those principles, praise correction, repetition, set them up for success, punishment if it fits the crime, use a ladder when you can but always positive reinforcement trains the dog a whole lot more effectively than negative reinforcement.

Leadership Lessons From Training Dogs

This may be a little inelegant or maybe not, a segue into talking about leadership and people and using what you’ve learned as a dog handler, among other things as a blind person, navigating the world in need of this assistance, of this partner to get to accomplish what you’re looking for. I want to see where the parallels between what you’ve learned in that space and in the way that people work together and when they want to accomplish something together. This is the same a scenario where you’re relaying on one another.

Always hold people accountable with kindness and coming from a place of caring. Share on X

I’d start with it’s hard to inspire discretionary effort out of anyone with negative reinforcement or any dog, I should say. Any one person or anyone animal, positive reinforcement inspires discretionary effort. If you’re looking to get the most out of your team, coming down hard on them is probably not going to work. At the same time, you have to hold people accountable. There’s this fine balance of holding people accountable with kindness coming from a place of caring for the person and for the dog.

Showing the dog and the person know that you care about them at an individual level. I don’t mean I care about the work that you do for me. I care about you as a person, as a dog. I want you to be successful and I want to show you what success looks like. When we’re training dogs, we show them the task that we want. It’s up to us to make sure that task is clear. If the dog makes a mistake early on, you don’t use a lot of correction because the dog is still learning. Correcting a dog for a task it hasn’t mastered is not fair and that’s true with people.

We don’t get harsh with children when they’re learning how to tie their shoes or when they learning how to walk. It’s parallel to what you saying.

Again, once we know that they know how to do it, if they make a mistake, we have to hold them accountable. Again, we come from a place of kindness with it and we use a ladder in handling dogs and hopefully, handling people, if you don’t fly off the rails with somebody. When you use accountability, you make sure that they know that they messed up and you point out what it was. You’d be very specific about it and you get my chance to do it again.

 

When they get it right, you throw a party for them and that’s what we do with dogs. We make sure that the praise that they receive for doing something positive far outweighs the negative of when they mess up. I think it was John Gottman, the psychologist who studied relationships amongst the couples who had the longest lasting relationships or the strongest relationships. They found had five positive interactions to every one negative, 5 to 1. Think about that. Think about your own life. Let me put dogs aside for a minute and think about your relationships.

Your your spouse, your kids, your manager, or your team. Are you having a 5 to 1 interaction, positive to negative with those folks? Is it something different? it makes you reflect because you’re not married to those people. That’s the most significant relationship we have is with our spouse. I think human relationships are pretty similar. You want to build a connection with somebody. It starts by treating them well and there’s no better way of doing that than showing them more positive than the negative reinforcement.

I think I remember some of that that research back in the day and recall also that on the other side of the spectrum is like disdain. That what was an indicator of what would get in the way of a successful relationship, there was looking at somebody or treating somebody with disdain. I’m thinking to myself, this all sounds obvious, with a dog and again, anybody who might be thinking where we are going with this dog person.

It could be a cat person, a no animal person or whatever it is but it’s nature. We’re nature. We’re all part of nature. These are living beings. How do you get the most out of or the best out of ourselves? In nature, how do we interact with one another with every living thing in the most optimal and effective beautiful loving way as possible?

Probably when you think about dog training, everybody would understand why you would go above and beyond to praise the behavior that you’re looking for. Whether it’s to give them the dog treat or lots of love and pulling on their fur and kissing them. Everything. I’m having laugh around the water cooler in the office or wherever it is, we’re not going to do that with each other in that same way. We’re not going to be hugging because HR would have a freak out.

Yes, when you take it that far, but think about this, too. Think about all the tools we use incorporate that costs the company money. Praise doesn’t cost a thing and public recognition.

Chad, say that one more time.

Think about all the things we do in corporate that costs money to show recognition, but the truth is, praise, especially public praise doesn’t cost the thing. That’s the most powerful kind. You could praise privately but that’s not nearly as effective as praising publicly. You always praise publicly and hold accountable more privately, if possible, to help the person. Praise is free. It’s one of the most powerful motivators we have of human behavior. It’s recognizing the hard work that people are putting in, the effort and the results that go along with them.

Embracing Blindness As A Blessing

There’s no way in the time that we’ve got to cover this full landscape of your journey, but can you take us in big leaps from early on in your life and where you began to pivot to utilize? I don’t know if you call blindness a disability or not or have another word for, but you were lacking one sense. That puts you, on some level, at some disadvantage and on another level and many other levels, I suppose. You have heightened senses. When did you start to realize that maybe this was a blessing and not a curse? Did you ever thought it was a curse?

I did. I’ll give you the quick thumbnail of the background leading up to that and I’ll pause on the point where I started realizing that this could be a positive thing. Growing up, I could see. I played sports. I played basketball, football, soccer, drove car, and wrote about all the things. At three and a half years old, my parents noticed I had a hard time seeing in dark places, so they took me to do Duke University Medical Center where they diagnosed me with an inherited eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa or RP for short.

The doctors told my parents they should take me home and sign me up for a special school for only blind people. Instead, my parents chose to put me in soccer at 4 years old or 3 years old and then from there, I started playing soccer, basketball and all the things that I mentioned then I was bumping into things. Learning the limitations of my eyesight by literally running into things, so at dusk, at night, and all those things. I wasn’t sure what I couldn’t see because I couldn’t see it. I would find out something’s there by running into.

I was at the hospital. One time, I ran into a water truck that had a pipe on the back of it that was parked in the driveway on my grandparent’s farm. I couldn’t see it. We were at dusk and I was running down the driveway full speed. I had to get rushed to the hospital with a police escort. I was at the hospital so much. They questioned my parents and I in separate rooms because I thought they thought they were beating me. That happened.

There was physically discomfort learning the limitations of my eyesight. In high school, a lot of my friends was socially affordable because I couldn’t see well enough to drive at night. When I was in college at the University of Tennessee, getting my undergrad, I was studying to go into the medical field because I wanted to help other people. I had the Anatomy and Physiology classes. I can no longer see to complete those.

I had this moment where I realized when I was studying for one of my British literature classes, I couldn’t see the words in the page in front of me anymore regardless of what lighting system I used or how much time I used to rest my eyes. That was a moment that I realized my life was about to change. Everything that people had warned me could happen was about to happen. I was about to go into darkness figuratively and metaphorically.

That was a tough time. I had to get a medical withdrawal from my major because I wasn’t even sure how I was going to help myself at that moment. Let alone how I was going to help other people in the medical field. I went into business at that point. I switched my major. I lost about three years of university work. I went into a pretty bad spiral at that point. Feeling like, why was it me? Life sucks. Everything’s unfair. None of my friends have to deal with this. Why does this have to happen to me?

I go into this pretty dark place figuratively and literally. I go to get my first dog when I was 23 years old. I got my first seeing eye dog in Michigan in a placed called the Leader Dogs for the Blind. I was there and I met some folks there who changed the way that I looked at everything. I met folks there and some of them had mental impairments in addition to being blind. Some of them had cognitive impairments.

They were on dialysis. They had diabetes and there were these girls who were deaf and blind. They profoundly changed how I looked at everything in my life just seeing the living courage exhibited by these people. It just blew the self-pity right out of me. It almost was like a button like you could push a button and I came back from that experience with a newfound appreciation for all the things that I had that I had taken for granted.

It taught me the importance of gratitude and informing our perspective. That shifted my attitude. Everything changed from that point forward. My attitude did a complete 180 degree turn. I came back to University of Tennessee. I had to relearn how to learn, made straight As, made the Dean’s List, and learn how to use the technology that blonde people need to use called screen readers. I got a job at a top consulting firm and went into the corporate workforce in Atlanta. I had to move to Atlanta. It was terrified but still did it because I knew I had to do it. I couldn’t turn back because I was scared of not knowing what was possible.

I entered the workforce and figured out that a lot of the technology that I needed to use didn’t work with everything out of the box. I’ve found a Word document online that had an instruction manual on how to engineer the software that blind people need to use called screen reading software. I taught myself how to write code to engineer that software so that I could do my job more effectively. I ended up doing that professionally for a while and started a consulting business where I did that for different companies.

In fact, I got so good at it that Oracle started referring me work because I had learned one of their CRM applications. Someone had told me that it wasn’t possible to make it work. One of the Oracle reps said, “It can’t be done,” but I’d already done it for one of my clients. A friend of mine from Anderson Consulting had come to me. I had written some code to make one of their CRM applications work for the blind.

At the time, I was the only person in the world who could do that. As a result, I ended up getting a lot of referral businesses as well as called to testify in some court cases for various things. That was a pivot that I made from tech into corporate. I started doing marketing for large commercial outsourcing deals and I got into the pricing of it. I did the financial modeling and hundreds of financial models.

My blindness gave me an advantage in that respect because I had to see that modeling set more deeply, so I wrote 13,000 lines of computer code to integrate my software with the document object model. I would automate a lot of the work that we had to do as a team. In fact, the company started adopting a lot of my tools for the entire team. The visual basic macros that I’d written to speed up the work that needed to be done.

The Power Of Hope And Optimism

This is amazing to you, Chad, that you could express or experience what you’re sharing with us. Only a few years after you were stuck and not going anywhere with it. There wasn’t any change. You learn new skills but there was a different shift that had to take place in order for you to see that real about face in what you were experiencing at a life. I don’t know how many years in what you described from the point where you are at a college.

Not a lot of options, it sounded like and feeling pretty crappy about it to a place where you’re offering up a lot of service value in a variety of ways on the tech side but in many areas. What’s the difference between those two points and time? I look back at ten years in my life or 20 years or 30 years and it’s a blink. It’s nearly a flash. In that flash period that where time and space just collapse it seems, what’s the difference between the Chad in the past and in the present?

Even the time we’re talking about was a good eight year from me getting the dog. That was that point in time. That was in 2007 when I’m describing. That was still a good 15 or 17 years ago. It’s been light years I’ve moved since then. The difference is hope and optimism and agency in the situation. I saw that there was hope because of the technology that was available which created optimism and then I saw that I had some agency in the situation because I could use the computer. I could figure out how to write the code. It was hard. I wasn’t a computer science major but I saw that it was possible and that gave me agency.

I knew that my effort would control my destiny. I knew that the computer was my portal to the world. I’ve been given this golden opportunity to go blind at the dawn of the information age. I didn’t get to sign up for that. If I’m going to sit around and whine about all the crap that went wrong in my life, I need to at least appreciate the serendipity of going blind at the dawn of the information age with computers right there at my disposal. I thought, “This really is a good time to go blind.”

I taught myself how to write code to do that and it was hard. It took time. It was a lot of banging my head against the wall and all that. I’m literally riding computer code without being able to see my computer screen. I’m fixing the software applications that don’t work with my software by using these utilities to explore what’s going on in the hierarchy of the program, the operating system, the web page and all those things and figuring out how to reverse engineer that and create a user interface for people who are blind.

My wife used to give me a hard time. She’s like, “What are you doing?” I was like, “I’m learning how to write code.” She’s like, “What do you mean you’re learning? You’re just playing on the computer.” I’m like, “No, babe. I’m not. This is good. Someday, I’m going to make money out of this.” She’s like, “Yeah, whatever,” then I started getting some checks and I bought our first vacation home. She came back and said, “Can I get you some coffee? Is there anything I can get for you?”

Writing The Book ‘Blind Ambition’

Do you want to write any other code? Blind Ambition is the book and we’ll have all the information about how folks can not only get the book and find out more about you and the work you do in the world tell us about Blind Ambition the book.

I’ll fast forward to the point where you said where I wanted to do more to help other people. I brought in billions of dollars in revenue for my employer at the time, SRA International. We were a large defense IT company. We sold into the US Federal Government the three letter agency. I was a senior director of pricing strategy and solutions at the time. My job was making sure that we won these multibillion-dollar contracts.

I’d brought in billions of dollars in revenue for the company and they asked what they could do for me. I asked them to write a six-figure check and send me to Harvard. For some crazy reason they agree. They did. They wrote a check and they don’t normally do that. The CEO signed off on it. They sent me to Harvard Business School and you think you go to Harvard to learn about business, cases, and metrics and all those things. Certainly, we did, but I had an experience there that profoundly shaped the way that I moved forward from that point.

It was with the authentic leadership class that I was taking with Bill George who was a senior fellow and now he’s an executive fellow there and former chairman and CEO of Medtronic. He teaches how to find your true North. True North is all about finding moments in your life that affected you in a emotional way and linking that to your profession, whether you have some talent, an opportunity to monetize, maybe that’s professionally or some volunteer work but it’s repurposing a crucible in your life that you can have an impact with and create mission and purpose and all those things in life.

It occurred to me that I never done anything with my journey. There are people in my class. Some of them were wrestling with theirs. There was another guy in my class, Greg, who started a company called Trust the Doctor because he had lost his mom when he was younger. They couldn’t find the right oncologist because it was hard to find the right specialist, so he created a company that connected cancer patients with the right oncologist using a video platform. That was his mission, purpose, and why.

Mine reached up and smacked me in the face. I realized I hadn’t been doing anything with what I had been through. At that point, I was elected as our graduating speaker at Harvard. I saw firsthand how I could help people and once how much you can help people, it’s hard to unknow that. I had a gentleman in the class who came up to me. He gives me this big hug and he’s bawling in my arms and come to find out he had endured a loss the year before with his daughter. I never forgot it. It’s stuck with me that if I could help somebody in some small way navigate unimaginable loss like that then I had an obligation to put some more effort into it.

That’s when I decided I was going to write the book. I was going to build a speaking business around my message. Now, I teach people the anatomy of resilience. I did travel 250 days. I did 50 conferences on 7-8 different countries just talking to people about empowering. I think I talked to 30,000 or 40,000 people in person empowering them to bounce back from their own setbacks stronger and better off than before so that they don’t have to feel like victims of whatever is going on in their life.

I break down the anatomy of resilience. It’s not just telling them to try harder and not give up, but explaining what it takes and what mental shifts does it take to try harder and not give up. I do that for my lived human experience. It’s not something that I read about in a book somewhere. This is what I’ve gone through and what I’ve learned my own journey. I do that now full-time speaking.

I got a masterclass coming out as well for people who can’t make it to a conference where I’m speaking, but the book itself was the first incarnation of that. The book came out a few years ago with HarperCollins Leadership and I’m excited about it. It’s getting the message out to empower people so that they don’t have to feel like they’re stuck and giving them a path forward out of whatever’s going on in their life.

Maybe it’s something significant like going blind. Maybe it’s something that feels less significant but it’s still significant to them like a career thing or something going on with the kid or merger and acquisition. Any change that’s going on. How do you adapt to change and navigate that situation most productively. Maybe it could be any or all of those things but it’s meeting people where they are on their own journey. It’s something I learned back in 2012. One of my senior leadership offside says I had a tendency.

At that point in time, to hold people to my standard for resiliency and that wasn’t fair because not everybody is going through what I’ve gone through. We had some major changes we were going through as an organization and some people were having a hard time with that. I realized I need to meet people where they are and not where I thought they should be based on my own lived human experience. That is the key. It’s how do you meet people where they are and get them through that transition curve.

What was your correction at that time? Would you say that it was too harsh? How would you describe the difference is in leadership style if I can call it that.

We are all made up of the collection of experiences in our lives. Share on X

I call it less empathy than it was appropriate. I wouldn’t be harsh on the person but in my head, I was not as empathic as I needed to be. “You’re feeling that way about this. Come on. We can work with this. This isn’t that big of a deal.” With that person, it was because we were all made up of the collection of experiences in our lives. Not everybody went blinded at 21 years old and had to readjust to everything. That’s a significant change, so it moves me.

I don’t know if you’ve heard that about this movie that came out a little while ago, a NatGeo movie called Blink. It’s about some family that has taken when they discovered that 3 of their 4 kids were diagnosed with RP and they were going to lose their sight. These were ranging in age from the littlest being maybe 3 years old to the oldest woman being like 9 or 10 or something. One of their four kids wasn’t diagnosed. If you can imagine that, one of them is going to see and the other three are going to slowly go blind.

They take them on a year journey around the world, which you can only imagine what that was like or what it could have been like if they hadn’t had some people that stepped up to also help, including National Geographic who filmed this and it is quite remarkable. I’m bringing it up, just because for folks that are reading this, it might make sense to catch that movie and understand. For me, it was difficult watching this imagining what their future was going to be like.

You can imagine a three year old child that in the next 4 or 5 years going to be blind. What future is that? Their parents just wanted them to have, while they had sight, to fill up their memory banks with the sites of the Savannah and African elephants and mountains in the Himalayas and anything else that they could squeeze into that time period. What would their lives be? On some level, you’re the other side of that coin. It’s the possibility and the opportunity for their lives to be so rich in ways that they have probably no idea and no concept for.

Necessary Mental Shifts To Transformation

I want to get back to the question I asked you earlier and you began to answer just now around the mental ships because we’ve got a little time here left. I want to drill down if we can on what are the mental shifts that produce that greater resiliency? As you said, just to tell somebody, “You got to try harder or never quit or other people have it worse than you, so you can’t feel sorry for yourself when there are other people have got it so much worse than you have it.” When you’re talking to somebody about it or groups of people about how you develop that resiliency, what are some of those mental shifts that you remind people of and/or perhaps you share with them for the first time?

There’s a lot in here. I literally spend 60 minutes talking about this at a keynote and I filmed a master class that will have about 3 to 4 hours of content on this very thing, so there’s a lot here. I’ll try to be short with it. Essentially, it starts with number one, recognizing that you have a choice. You have a choice in the situation. Nobody on the planet gets to choose all the cards that they’re dealt in life but you alone get to choose how you play your cards.

I didn’t get to choose whether or not, I went blind. I didn’t get to choose whether or not I was born in the United States. I didn’t get to choose whether or not I was born into a family who chose to take care of me, my skin color, my gender, and the time period in which I was born. I could have easily been born into a third world country during the Middle Ages, as an example. We didn’t get to choose any of that. Being aware that, “I didn’t get to choose everything.” Nobody does, but I do get to choose how I respond. Making sure that everybody understands that you’re not responsible for all of the circumstances that you find yourself in.

You have to be accountable for your lives and for your outcomes in life. If you’re not accountable for your life, who’s going to be? Years from now when you look back, if you don’t get what you want out of your life, how are you going to feel if you didn’t get what you want out of your life? Would you rather make an excuse in the moment or would you rather hold yourself accountable so that you can achieve your goals and your dreams?

The other thing that’s important, here is understanding the importance of gratitude. A lot of people think, “Once I’m happy then I’ll be grateful or once I’m successful, then I’ll be grateful.” They have the formula in the wrong order. Once you’re grateful, then you’ll be happy. Once you’re happy, you’ll be successful. There’s data and all kinds of studies out there that prove happy people are more successful. They have 31% higher productivity, 37% higher sales and 300% more creativity. Happy people just do better in their careers.

 

The way to be happy is to be appreciative for what you have. The more you appreciate what you have, the more abundance you receive in your life. You sit around and if you’re thinking about all the things that you lack in life. All of your energy and attention is going to all the negative things. When you’re grateful for the things that you have, it makes you happier every day. There’s all kinds of research around this. That’s why at my house, we have a nighttime session with my wife and kids, where we all have to share three unique things that we’re thankful for because it forces us to bring our conscious attention to the very things that we subconsciously take for granted every day.

It helps to create the muscle memory of gratitude, which I know leads to happiness which I know then leads to success. Now, the next thing that’s important here and this one’s important is learning how to tell yourself the right stories. Now, I can sit around and choose to tell myself that I went blind because I’ve got terrible luck. Instead, I chose to tell myself that I went blind because I’ve got the strength and toughness to overcome that and use it to help with the people.

Technically, both stories can be true but one of those stories paints me is a victim. Whereas, the second story, the better story is a Jedi mind trick that transforms my disability and my strength. This is called Cognitive Reframing. When you look at up in the dictionary like the clinical dictionary, it is the linchpin of resilient thinking. It’s the meaning we attach to circumstances that determine whether or not we suffer or we bounce back better off than before. It was Friedrich Nietzsche who said, “He who has the why to live can dare almost anyhow.”

There’s a lot of research out there too by Viktor Frankl in terms of Man’s Search for Meaning, the Austrian-born psychologist who was in prison in a Nazi concentration camp. He found that people who found meaning in the suffering that they were experiencing were far more likely to make it out of the horse that they were experiencing there in those concentration camps. The next thing that’s important is learning how to visualize greatness even in unfavorable circumstances.

I had to figure out how to make blind look good. Now, it’s a little tongue in cheek but if you’re never figuring out how to make unfavorable circumstances work for you instead of against you, how could you ever move towards acceptance of those circumstances? You have to visualize greatness, especially when things don’t look so favorable. Now, this next thing is where mine set meets action. It’s where you have to learn to get comfortable with this comfort.

Life, growth, and innovation all take place outside of your comfort zone. You have to continually get comfortable with discomfort in order to expand. Share on X

The bottom line here is if you’re never getting out of your comfort zone, then you’ll never grow. Comfort zones equal complacency and nothing great ever comes out of being complacent. Life, growth, and innovation, all of that take place outside of your comfort zone, so you have to continually get comfortable with discomfort. When you do, your comfort zone will expand and that’s because you’re expanding.

The last thing that I’ll touch on here quickly is that you have to take advantage of your disadvantages. Every perceived disadvantage offers some advantage if we can just use it in the right context. It’s hard to wrap our minds around it. For me, if I can figure out how blindness can benefit me. There are ways to think about how other disadvantages can offer us advantages if we just use it in the right context.

Chad, I so appreciate that you went through each of those in the way that you did. We don’t have the time to dig in them all them but I want to recommend that our audience do is check out the website. They’ll be more information about your keynotes and the work that you do including that masterclass. To me, the one thing that you said and it was the first thing you said that I still am chewing on in my head. Was that you’re not responsible for all the things that happened to you.

In fact, I almost stopped you. I’m glad I didn’t because you went through what I believe is the chunks of it. Very often, we either unconsciously or consciously blame myself for the mistakes we’ve made or in some way, think it’s a sign that something wrong with us or that it’s punishment. Whatever it might be.

It’s a weight that we carry around this responsibility for what’s taking place in our lives. You saying that we’re not responsible for everything is important. At the same time that you’re saying, “We must be responsible for our outcomes. Only because you’re not necessarily the one that created every situation that you’ve experienced or even endured, doesn’t mean that you are giving a free pass for the future, especially when you have that consciousness. That’s a pivotal point right there, Chad.

It is. You could sit around and make excuses and say, “It’s not my fault,” but it’s still your life. You still have to live with it. If you’re not happy with the way things are going and you live your whole life that way. If you’re so fortunate to make it to your golden years and you look back and you didn’t get what you wanted out of your life. Who cares who’s fault it is?”

Would you rather be right? It’s an old personal development trope, you could be right or you can be happy. You can be right or you can be married or you can be healthy. There’s a lot of things to do with how people are attached to rightness and what it costs them.

 

To jump on that. One other thing that you said there, those problems and people’s lives, are those a problem or are those a growth opportunity in it skies? For me, to be honest with you, I now realize blindness was the beautiful gift that came to skies in some ugly wrapping paper. I get to help so many people every day with what I’ve learned. If you’d offer me the ability to see but say that I can’t help other people anymore. I wouldn’t take it. Bare bear in mind, I’ve never seen my wife and I’ll never see my kids. I don’t make that statement lightly. I’d love to see my kids. I’d love to see my wife.

The hair standing up on both of my arms. I appreciate you going there.

It’s real, when you can affect other people. The point there is move beyond yourself. Think about somebody else other than you. When you’re thinking about other people other than you, it makes things lighter. That’s why we’re here, frankly. We’re here to serve other people, which is why I got in the business of what I’m doing of speaking and helping other people. It’s so meaningful. It feels so purposeful. I don’t have a job. I don’t work. I get paid to do things that I love to do. It that work? I don’t think so.

It sure doesn’t feel like it. Maybe I get paid to travel because the travel can be a bit hectic but helping people, the work itself, it feels like the reason I’ve been put on the planet. When you can tap into that, it’s powerful thing because you don’t ever run out of energy to do it and it never feels heavy. It feels you like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

That resonates with me. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I feel about my life is what you just described. Again, we’re all just human. To forget these things is the call to action and to be reminded. Socrates said, all learning is remembering. None of this is original, anyway, but we do have to remember things. I so appreciate you for reminding us of some important things and giving us a lot to sit with. Again, I want to want to express my appreciation for you and what you do in the world.

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I love the conversation. If we need to do another one and click down on any of those, let me know. I’m happy to do it.

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Closing Words, Reflection, And Episode Wrap-up

I love that conversation with Chad. He is a remarkable person. I don’t know how else to put it or I could use a lot of ways to describe somebody that’s been through what he’s been through and come out the other side. What I love so much is the fact that he has found his calling in life. He’s found that that place for his service for him to be adding value in the world. There’s literally nothing else in my humble opinion that we are here to do. This is this is what we’re all here for, to find that place where we can add value in the most authentic way and most effective way as early as we can.

Whenever we find it, it’s a blessing. If you’re finding that calling in your 50s or 60s, or beyond, there’s plenty of stories of people have done that and that’s remarkable. Chad found it after age 21 and had a tough time initially with his blindness with suffering from retinitis pigmentosa and losing his sight. He talks through what are some of the most profound changes in life. It’s easy to listen to Chad and think my life is blessed and I should have greater appreciation for my circumstances given what this man has dealt with and what others have dealt with that had also had profound change thrust into their experience and in this case, without warning.

That’s just a small piece of the puzzle here. I loved what he laid out for us, which is a framework for how it is that we developed that greater capacity to leverage change, to leverage adversity, and leverage unknowns and uncertainty as catalyst for the one thing that is responsible for our success. Every success story, be it a personal one or a team one or an organizational one. Every success story, be it a family one is based on the same thing and that is growth.

We don’t have healthy relationships because we haven’t experienced growth in those relationships. We don’t have a healthy body if we’re not experiencing growth. It’s our first calling. It’s the thing that we are doing from the earliest point in our lives and we lose sight of that. Early on, we know that that we can’t stop growth. We will grow no matter how you try to get in the way of it. You’re going to grow, but when we get a bit older or when things happen to us that take us down even temporarily. We can slower growth and maybe even impede it or stop it for a period of time.

I think that’s what Chad was sharing. That happened to him and it may have happened to all of us. I would imagine. It has happened to all of us at various points and it’s what you do in that moment. It’s how you find that the end point, the through line to get to that endpoint of service. I was so thrilled that as we wrap up the episode, Chad on his own answered a question that probably you were thinking that I certainly had in my head, which is, would he change anything? If he could, erase the blindness and go back to that point and do his life differently?

He volunteered that answer and it couldn’t be more moving to me to hear him say that he is in the place he’s supposed to be and he knows that and he wouldn’t change it if he could even and I believe him. Reading this episode, there must be not only people in your life that are dealing with some tough stuff or simply looking for another way to articulate how we move through things to get to better outcomes and how we help each other to do that.

There’s a lot baked into this conversation that you could share, whether it’s with work colleagues, friends, family members, or anyone that you think would just lean into some of the things that Chad share with us. Again, we’re all in need of a mental upgrade on a regular basis, if not a daily basis. I may be just speaking for myself there but I’m going to do myself the service of not talking and resting my voice. It’s a bit horse, so I’m going to go hydrate and take some recovery time. In the meantime, I want to say thank you again for being a part of this amazing expanding community

I want to thank Chad and his dog, Major for making our conversation possible. I wish him the best. For those of you out there that are inclined to do, we would love to hear from you. You can go to AdamMarkel.com/podcast. Leave a comment or you can leave a review. Those five-star reviews are very helpful to us on whatever the platform that you can consume this show on. If you take the moment to do that, we so appreciate it. It is how this community is expanding. It’s all algorithmic and we appreciate your help in making that happen. For now, anyway, I will say ciao. Be well. Be resilient. Be blessed. Take care.

 

Important Links

• Chad E. Foster
• Seeing Eye
• John Gottman
• Leader Dogs for the Blind
• Oracle
• Anderson Consulting
• Blind Ambition
• SRA International
• Medtronic
• HarperCollins Leadership
• Man’s Search for Meaning
• AdamMarkel.com/podcast
• Chad E. Foster on Facebook

 

About Chad Foster

Chad E. Foster is a trailblazer defying limitations with resilience and innovation. Despite going blind at 21, he’s a rainmaker, billion-dollar generator, and tech innovator. Graduating as the first blind executive from Harvard Business School’s leadership program, Chad created CRM software for the visually impaired, doing what tech titans said couldn’t be done. Thriving in a Fortune 500 company, he directed financial strategies that produced billions in revenue and best-in-class margins. Today, Chad breaks down the anatomy of resilience, empowering others to emerge from setbacks stronger, sleeker, and more resolute to succeed.