00:00:00
>> CHEN: Welcome to the Excelability podcast. This is a brand-new series of conversations on success with people who happen to have a disability. Together we’ll uncover the attitudes, habits, techniques, and practices that enable these individuals to achieve astounding success.
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>> WALKER: Holy cow, wait a minute. I probably was able to get successful at doing this because of my dyslexia. It’s the different thinkers, people with different perspective that change the world. There’s always a positive, and just make sure you’re spending as much time focusing on the positive as you are trying to deal with the negative.
00:00:59
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): My parents were right. I am gonna work in a factory the rest of my life. The only thing I think they missed was that I was gonna, you know, own the factory too.
>> CHEN: Hello there, and welcome again to the Excelability podcast. I’m your host, Jack Chen. Today we speak with entrepreneur and businessman Steve Walker. Steve founded and served as the CEO of New England Wood Pellet Company, a multimillion-dollar public company which he recently sold.
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>> CHEN (CONTINUED): New England Wood Pellet serves the energy needs of over 100,000 customers in the United States. Growing up with dyslexia, Steve’s parents told him that if he didn’t work hard, he would grow up working in a factory. In fact, that’s exactly what he did. The only difference is that when he grew up, Steve would come to own the factory. You can find information about this podcast and previous and future episodes at www.teamexcelability.com.
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>> CHEN (CONTINUED): That’s www-dot-team-E-X-C-E-L-ability-dot-com. You can follow us on Facebook at team Excelability or on Twitter, @teamxlability. Hey, Steve, thanks so much for being with us today and for sharing your thoughts and ideas. You’ve really had an interesting life, and I’m really excited to be able to have the opportunity to chat with you and have our listeners learn from your experience.
00:02:33
>> WALKER: Look forward to it.
>> CHEN: Cool. Let’s get started. Steve, can you describe your disability to someone who might not already know what it’s like to have that disability? Say, describe what it’s like in your day-to-day life and some of the impacts that it has?
>> WALKER: Yeah, dyslexia, it kind of manifests itself in different ways, I think, and for every person it’s different. For myself, it was pretty classic. Basically, you know, I have an incredible challenge with reading.
00:03:01
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You can just forget spelling, and remembering things such as names, phone numbers is kind of particularly challenging. It turns out that just about everything requires reading in our society, and I literally got right up to high school essentially not reading at all. I could kind of read. I could write some letters sort of, but if you look at my letters, you’re gonna find that I’m using probably about 1% of my verbal vocabulary in those letters.
00:03:34
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Like, I figured out a bunch of words I could write, and so really limits you.
>> CHEN: What’s that reading experience like, if you could help folks who don’t even understand the first thing about dyslexia? What’s it like to read for you?
>> WALKER: The way I like to describe it–’cause it is a bit confusing. If I take a test, it shows that I just have, you know, whatever, a second-grade reading level or something, but I think that’s oversimplifying it.
00:03:58
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): So the way I like to describe it, it’d be like if you took a piece of written material and just start turning the lights down to the point that you can read it but barely, and you’re probably gonna miss some stuff and make some mistakes, and if you try that, then I think you’ll feel what I feel. It’s tiring. It’s difficult, and you end up reading so slowly that you start losing track of what it is you’re even rea–by the time you get to the bottom of the page, you don’t know what happened at the top of the page.
>> CHEN: You’ve forgotten already.
00:04:28
>> WALKER: Yeah. You know, my brain is like–it’s one part of my brain being consumed by this, trying to–you know, it’s sort of like if you’re staring at the page and trying to understand it while the rest of my brain’s, like, out there, you know, pretty easily distracted, so I’ll be reading while thinking about other things, and I think everyone knows that that’s not gonna result in really comprehending what’s in front of you.
>> CHEN: So it’s the fact that–as you mentioned, that you get distracted. You’re thinking about other things. You’re not concentrating fully on what you’re reading, and so obviously that’s gonna make it even doubly more difficult.
00:05:01
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): What’s it like for someone who has dyslexia to begin to try to even spell?
>> WALKER: In my case and in most cases, I think, spelling, it just isn’t an option. Basically, your spelling is purely phonetic, and so you sound it out, and that’s what you’re gonna write out. You may think, “Eh, how bad can it be?” Well, there’s a lot of words I don’t get the first letter right, and if you don’t get that right, it really kind of throws readers, and so I find most people can get through my writing, ’cause I do occasionally have to communicate that way, but I certainly don’t do it to anyone that I have not warned or talked to, so assistants, people who work for me.
00:05:44
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): That’s a place that I might write a note, but I avoid it, and things like a check, boy, I–that’s bad. I mean, I’ve written probably, I don’t know, two or three checks in the last 15 years. I–it’s only when I’m stuck and something has to happen, and then–of course, now what I’ll do is I’ll google what it is I want to write, and it will just come up, or I’ll go on and send, like, a text to myself so I can get the spelling, and I just have to go letter by letter by letter and put it on the check just to make sure it doesn’t come back to me, which has happened in the past.
00:06:18
>> CHEN: To someone who doesn’t know who Steve Walker is, now, I know you started several businesses. Tell people a little bit about your business career.
>> WALKER: My business career started pretty young ’cause I like to include everything.
00:06:33
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, I literally started selling strawberries to neighbors out of my mother’s garden as a kid ’cause there was extra, you know, and she just was leaving them there. I’m like, “Hey, I’ll pick them and sell them.” I had no idea what money was or what the value was, but when you’re kind of failing at everything else, it was pretty cool. You know, I could go pick strawberries, put them in a wagon, put them in the little–those little green papery cartons and sell them, and people seemed really happy, and I felt like I was accomplishing something, so I think my business career sort of started by trying to escape the rest of my reality, but then that progressed up to then mowing lawns for many of these same folks that I was selling, as it turns out, highly discounted strawberries to.
00:07:14
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, cutting lawns, I got money out of it, but it wasn’t really money that I was looking for. I just needed a purpose, and I needed to cut lawns. I could, you know–you start with a poor-looking yard, and it ends up looking nice, and a customer’s happy, and kind of like selling the strawberries, it worked well, so I really like trying to solve problems for people, and when it hit its peak, which was a couple years after high school, you know, I had 12 fulltime people.
00:07:41
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): We were mowing approximately, oh, just about 300 yards we were taking care of, and then I also got into building tennis courts and stone walls and landscapes and a couple garages and never made money on any of the things I did that were new, and at this point I needed to make money, so I started to really understand what the value of money was, especially when you’re ran out of it.
00:08:06
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): This last company that I sold, you know, we were making this renewable fuel, and when we started up the factories, I mean, the pride, it was–well, I knew I didn’t contain it ’cause everybody around me just–you would think we were solving all of the world’s problems at once right then and there. I took a great deal of pride in putting together complex systems and getting them to work and then doing something right.
00:08:31
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): My way my mind works is, for all the challenges of being able to read, one of the things that I can do pretty fluently is sort of, kind of see the forest through the trees, if you will, just see the bigger picture and sometimes to a fault, and it’s just great to have a complicated system get up and running, and this last company also was doing a really good thing. I mean, we were creating a renewable energy source, ultimately to 100,000 customers.
>> CHEN: Can you tell us about the moment that you finally realized, “Hey, I’ve got dyslexia?”
00:09:04
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): What was that like for you emotionally and psychologically?
>> WALKER: Well, it’s happened a few times, and that may sound crazy. I mean, the first time was back when–you know, in school, and it was right around the third grade that I realized that I was really different. I mean, I realized that I was broken. I realized that I was mentally defective, which, by the way, even teachers referred to it as, like, a mental disease at the time and possibly still do occasionally.
00:09:31
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I mean, this has got to be fixed, but by the time I got into third grade, there was no–it was pretty clear this wasn’t gonna just go away. There wasn’t a pill for it, and from there going all the way through high school is this was–it was horrible, really. People kind of say, “Oh, I wish I was young again.” Well, I don’t. I don’t want to go through that again, not for anything. You know, you’re not able to do anything right, basically, so that was kind of a really demoralizing time.
00:10:01
>> CHEN: Do you have a particularly vivid memory of when you started realizing that you did have a challenge from your dyslexia or just that this is–this is gonna be a problem?
>> WALKER: Yeah, it’s, yeah, vivid to the point that I had to work through this one in therapy. It was–you know, I get those pieces of yellow paper with the light blue lines, and they have a dotted line and a line under that, a solid line under that, and you’re trying to learn, you know, your letters, and everyone’s in there spelling pig and jig and cat, and sitting in those classrooms, those are kind of like the first sort of quizzes where, you know, the teacher wasn’t really just talking at you.
00:10:39
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): They said, “All right, here’s what you got to write,” started saying words, and we were expected to write it down on the page, and I was just looking around. Everyone, like, put their pencils down, and all these letters were coming out, and they sure looked like they knew what they were doing, and I just looked at these lines and looked at my pencil, and then I would try to look over at what they were doing, and then I would get scolded at because I wasn’t supposed to be looking at what other people were doing.
00:11:04
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I was supposed to be looking at the piece of paper, but it was like staring into a black hole. I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I know I was supposed to, like, get letters, but, I mean, it was just like someone was talking to me in another language. I had no idea.
>> CHEN: I imagine that’s an incredibly damaging situation to be in.
>> WALKER: Yeah, it’s pretty damaging to say the least.
00:11:23
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I mean, fortunately I had well-educated parents that were determined to have me be well-educated and took this thing as a crisis-level situation, which, you know, had some good news to it and some bad news to it, and so I–you know, I spent quite a bit of time seeing professionals that were trying to, one, decode what it is that was wrong with me, understand what the problem was, and two, then come up with solutions to fix it. Yeah, that was not fun. I mean, look, when you’re a kid, all you want to do is be like the other kids, and I kept getting hauled out to these specialists, and they were, you know, psychologists, and, you know, I was old enough or aware enough to know that these were psychologists, and that was not a–you know, at the time that’s not a good thing to see.
00:12:10
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Like, this is–you know something’s really wrong with you. I mean, I think they all had good intention, the professionals trying to figure out what’s wrong and how to fix it, but, you know, there wasn’t a lot known about dyslexia then, and the teachers were certainly not trained and–still get thrown back into the classroom, but this time maybe the teacher knows that I have an issue, and they were a little less harsh on me, but that–you know, that again comes with a–kind of a sweet side and a sour side ’cause, you know, then the kids start picking on you because you’re getting special attention, and you don’t want attention, and so–and then we had this thing called the corner room, and I got in trouble because I just couldn’t do my homework, so detentions were so much a part of my life, I, you know, often would show up to detention after school, and they would say why I’m there, and I– “I don’t know.”
00:13:06
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): “Aren’t I supposed to be here?” and it was–I was more often than not in some kind of academic probation or detention or whatever. It was just endless.
>> CHEN: So do you do anything, or did you change the way you thought or anything at that time to begin to deal with it?
>> WALKER: I learned really quickly who could put that funny yellow piece of paper down and write the fastest, and I quickly became friends with those people.
00:13:33
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I hung around with I guess what you’d call the smart kids and figured that, you know, maybe this would rub off. Maybe they could help me. Maybe if I’m friends with them, something will change, and these friends are still my friends, and, you know, many are academics, professors, you know, amazingly successful surgeons and what have you.
00:13:56
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): These were the high achievers, so ironically, I got kind of put in with a lot of kids that were not high achievers, but my friends that I made were the high achievers, and, you know, while at my younger years, you know, it was like the boys kind of hung out with the boys and the girls would hang out with the girls, but I hung out with the girls because they, you know, were on a steeper learning curve, and I was like, you know, whatever the heck they’re doing, I want that, and then–you know, and then got to be very friendly with them, and I learned really quickly, like, hey, look, if I’m really nice to them, they’re gonna be nice to me, and so I would, you know, go after school and, like, rake their leaves that they were supposed to do, do whatever chores.
00:14:33
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I would do anything I had to do, and then they would do my homework for me, and we had the only problem, that their handwriting was so much better, so I got caught on that all the time, but, you know, I still definitely think I am and I was then an extrovert. I mean, I reached out to people. I solved the problem with people, which also, I think, gave me some really great training for trying to build and run companies.
00:15:06
>> CHEN: I know you’ve always been kind of into cars, and I know you worked in a factory in high school, and you were able to solve an engineering problem that no one was able to solve. Can you share that story and something that you might have learned from it?
>> WALKER: You know, just as my parents told me that, you know, “If you don’t go to college and all this, you’re gonna be working in a factory for the rest of your life,” so I–you know, I started really young at–with that concept, but of course, you know, actually, I didn’t mind it.
00:15:34
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I liked the whole factory thing ’cause it–you know, that worked with my brain, and guess what? You didn’t have to do a lot of reading, and a lot of the people I was working with in there didn’t know how to read either for various reasons, like not being from this–you know, English wasn’t their first language or what have you, and so I could identify well with them and got to be good friends with them, but they–yeah, they had this big machine this group was working on. You know, I was just fascinated by it.
00:16:00
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I had my own little project I was working on, but–and they didn’t really like me hanging around with them because these were a lot of engineers and pretty sophisticated machine, and I’m just, like, some kid that was supposed to be essentially sweeping floors, and I would spend the nights there, you know, and I had nothing else to do, so I would stay up at night sort of modifying this thing and playing with it, and then I’d put it all back together during the day. I was just fascinated by it.
>> CHEN: What did that machine do? What was it–what was its purpose?
00:16:29
>> WALKER: It was ultimately installed in a General Motors parts manufacturing plant. They were making brake shoes, and this was a time when they were trying to get out of asbestos, and they had this new material, and they had to bond it. They couldn’t, you know, rivet it the way they used to, and so they were working with various codings and chemistry to try to get this brake shoe to stick to the metal pad, and that was essentially what they were trying to solve through this mechanization. They were trying to–they had a hard time because any way they clipped it on, one, there were problems holding onto it.
00:17:05
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): There was all these different types of shoes. You had to have all these different clips, and yeah, I just–like, looking at this thing, I’m like, “Wow, wonder what happens? They’re trying to hold this semi-metallic thing on,” and I realized it was somewhat magnetic. You know, magnet, it would be attracted to a magnet, and I–so I played around with this thing, and I put all these magnets on it and realized that, you know, we didn’t need a clip. You could just position it and hold it without interfering with the chemistry and without touching anything, and I mean, I didn’t know for sure that was going on, but I knew darn sure I wasn’t scratching it.
00:17:39
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): That was one of the issues. These clips were–you know, you can’t break this polymer that was put on this, and it worked great, and so one night I just said, “Oh, heck with it. I’m gonna go for broke here,” and I got a bunch of magnets, and I put it on this conveyor belt, and I got the whole thing working, and the next day we–it was–you know, everyone showed up to work in the morning, and I had this thing working, and it was a really interesting–you know, I kind of assumed everybody’d be really happy.
00:18:06
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Well, the owner was really happy, and a couple people were impressed, and then–and a lot of people were really upset and upset that I touched their machine in the first place. I think also upset that I solved the problem, and they spent all this time and weren’t able to solve the problem. You know, some of them–one of them had quit that day, they were so frustrated, and I guess that was a turning point in my life where I realized, “Hey, maybe I’m really good at something,” even though there was some positive and negative, but, you know, hey, I was well trained in that at that–by that age, and my calling is machinery.
00:18:43
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): It is working in factories, and actually, you know, it turns out my parents were right. I am gonna work in a factory the rest of my life. The only thing I think they missed in their–when they were giving me their lectures in my younger years is that I was gonna, you know, own the factory too.
>> CHEN: Yeah, own the factory, I love that.
00:19:03
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): A sand pit and a mushroom cloud were in your childhood. What in the world was that about, and was there some realization that came out of that?
>> WALKER: Oh, I had a kind of a fascination with fire, which, you know, I think a lot of kids do. It’s–you get an immediate return on things. You know, you light things. Stuff’s happening right in front of you. You don’t have to wait. There’s no delayed gratification.
00:19:25
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): My parents shipped me off to my grandmother whenever possible, and she, you know, took me through some DuPont plant, and I had this little camera, and I–you know, I couldn’t read, but I was just fascinated, and they made gunpowder at this plant, by the way, and so I took a bunch of pictures, and then I brought them back to my network of friends and said, “Here, what is this stuff?” and the Google at the time was an encyclopedia set, so, you know, we were pulling books down, and they were reading off stuff, and we were figuring out what the chemicals meant and what they were and ultimately figured out where to get them, and so I started, you know, basically playing chemistry.
00:20:07
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I mean, the good news is, is things like gunpowder is actually pretty hard stuff to make, and so it–you know, it–it wasn’t like one day there was just this huge bang. I got pretty good at making it over time, so it starts as a fizzle, and it fizzles faster, and it fizzles faster, and then it turns into a little bit of a bang, and then you can start getting into big bangs, and yeah, I put together this concoction and decided to kind of go for broke here, and, “Let’s make a big one and see what happens,” and I was working through my coconspirator on this, and he and I discussed exit strategies and how to get out of this thing, but we lit the fire and, you know, walked away and stood and stood and stood, and nothing, and nothing, and nothing, and then all of a sudden, yeah, it worked, and–and, you know, saw this mushroom cloud.
00:21:01
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I mean, it was just like on the movies, you know, like, this nuclear bang, and yeah, that one made the papers, but, you know, I–that’s why whenever I see someone doing something that, you know, might not be a good idea, but I always like to try to think a little deeper, and hey, maybe there’s more going on with this young person trying to just–they’re just trying to learn, and that’s all I was trying to do, and ironically and ultimately, my last company I sold with 100,000 people with fires in their buildings and homes in a good way, you know, heating and creating energy and running power plants.
00:21:34
>> CHEN: Yup, no explosion there, right?
>> WALKER: Yeah, no, no that was–that’s controlled combustion, but I think, you know, there’s no question that sort of this fascination of fire may have played a role in this last business, and, you know, then you get 100,000 people paying you to do it, and it works out really well.
>> CHEN: Yeah, sure. I mean, it sounds like that at least gave you some satisfaction that, you know, hey, I can create something here and have fun while doing it, right.
>> WALKER: Yeah, absolutely.
00:22:02
>> CHEN: We talked about this a little bit. So in your business life, you know, your disability, would you say that it was more of a barrier or a driver of your success?
>> WALKER: Yeah, there’s two angles. The terrible stuff that I and so many other people go through to try to get through school really trained me in a way that is really great for business. I mean, learning multiplication tables, I–I don’t know.
00:22:31
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I got news for you. I don’t see how that helps you run anything later, but learning how to negotiate with friends to get homework assignments done, that is helpful, and so ironically, the fact that the system wasn’t set up for me made me better and trained me at a young age to get around systems, and when you’re an entrepreneur, and especially when you’re a disruptor, and that’s what I have done and continue to do, you know, you’re constantly having to work around the system, and so that’s one, and the other is, is just the brain is different, and I learned that my–you know, I got some real positive parts, and a lot of dyslexics have some talents, and one of them is being able to sort of see three-dimensionally and multi-dimensionally, I mean, you know, parts inside of parts moving, and, you know, I didn’t know that most people can’t do that.
00:23:25
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I mean, I can have a conversation with you and visualize, you know, a V8 engine running with every valve and camshaft and chain and all of it running all together with oil moving and everything, and I’ve trained myself since then to visualize sort of molecular movement, and so that’s gotten me into really understanding thermodynamics in a whole ‘nother way.
00:23:46
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): It’s the different thinkers, people with a different perspective that change the world. People–you know, if you’re just doing the same thing as everybody else, that’s great. That’s fine. That’s okay. You know, if you’re just kind of running the same old gas station on another corner of America, you know, that’s not gonna change the world, and I think anybody with any what we seem to call disabilities, you have a different angle.
00:24:11
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, we’ve got software now that does this stuff over and over that’s the same, and creativity, I think, is what we need more of in the economy and to solve a lot of problems, and kind of by definition, if you’re–you know, got a disability or you’re just a weirdo–I say that lovingly ’cause I definitely am one and was one, and I embrace it and love it now, but, you know, those are the ones that solve the problem.
00:24:40
>> CHEN: I really love what you said, that your earlier life really helped you to work around systems, and that’s really ma–what made you good at what you do, so that’s a phenomenal advantage that I think has helped you to get to where you are. You know, in business, one of the critical things to do is to do research and, these days increasingly, internet research, and I know you have a unique way of handling that, of doing Google searches.
00:25:03
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): Can you talk a little bit about that?
>> WALKER: Yeah, well, it’s great. We got this technology, and I can, you know, push my finger down and drag the blue thing down, and it starts talking to me, and that’s great, but it’s still a little more cumbersome and I would say on net slower than someone who can just read proficiently, so again, you find a workaround, and on Google, if you go up there and you hit images, and being–you know, it turns out a lot of people are really quick.
00:25:31
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, we–sort of our brains were designed to get images quickly and understand them and hold them. You know, picture’s worth a thousand words. Instead of searching sort of in the traditional way of looking through, you know, a bazillion web pages, I go immediately to images, and then I can scan images, I mean, really fast, like, just flip right through them and then hit them, and often that then leads me to the website that I really want, or it leads me down a path that is really helpful.
00:26:04
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, sometimes not, and it’s fast, and I’ve gotten and trained a lot of, you know, really proficient readers that work with me, like on this new company, to, you know, try that after, you know, your way fails, and I’ve had a lot of people come back and say, “That’s really cool,” ’cause you–it is quick, and, you know, as it turns out, most stuff in the world sort of has some visual representation to it. You know, good marketers–I mean, I would certainly tell anyone, like, get some good pictures on–of whatever it is you’re doing and get it out there ’cause I can’t imagine I’m the only one that does this.
00:26:39
>> CHEN: Would you say that your dyslexia enables you to do that much faster?
>> WALKER: Yeah, I think so. I mean, I have been tested, and, you know, my reading is abysmal, but then, you know, a lot of the other parts of the tests are sort of off-the-charts great to the point they–you know, I’ve literally been told, “We got to create another test to figure out where the lim–where the limit here is,” and one of them’s visual and being able to see things.
00:27:03
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Like, I–if I walk into, let’s say, a factory, and I can, without trying and without even thinking about it, put together all the building blocks in my brain, and I start seeing things sort of as a complete system versus, you know, a snapshot, snapshot, snapshot. In other words, I take my images, and I turn it into a running, working movie, and that’s incredibly beneficial in a lot of ways. It’s much more beneficial now that I know it’s something I’m good at, and this isn’t the way most people think.
00:27:36
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): It also has been important in the way I communicate to other people. You know, I would describe things, and I always thought I was shooting under, you know, that I was just being stupid about things, and people were kind of rejecting my thoughts and ideas at times, and then I realized, “Whoa, I’m, like, talking another language here, and they don’t understand,” so I’ve had to learn how to describe my thoughts a little differently because, you know, I realize I am good at thinking sort of in this multi-dimensional way, and not everyone is, and so you can’t describe it as the way I think it, and that’s been a challenge, but it’s certainly a lot less challenging than when you don’t know that no one understands you.
00:28:17
>> CHEN: To illustrate that, I’ve heard you tell a story about a certain board proposal that you never could get through. Could you just walk us through what happened before and after you were able to articulate it differently for them?
00:28:30
>> WALKER: Yeah. I wanted to take my last company into a slight tangent. I said, “You know, look, we need to develop a better press for–” you know, we’re making this fuel, and we needed a better press, and I said, “I got an idea how to do this,” and, you know, I was getting pushback. I was getting pushback for a couple years, and I was confused by it because to me it was like, this is kind of a no-brainer. I mean, we’re gonna invest a few million dollars in this thing, and we have a potential to save a few million dollars every quarter.
00:28:58
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, I was proposing it was about a 50% to 80% certainty we could do this, so it wasn’t, like, some, you know, long shot, hail Mary risk here, and they just didn’t get it. It then dawned on me. I’m like, “Maybe I’m talking over them, not under them. I’m making assumptions that they understand all the nuances here, and I’m just trying to give them a summary, and maybe I got to break this down into what I thought was baby talk,” so I break this whole proposal down, and I’m looking at this thing, and I’m like, “Oh, my God.” You know, one thing I can tell you about managing boards is you got to try to hit it right.
00:29:31
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You don’t want to insult their intelligence, but you also have to communicate to them, and so I tested it, and I went to my CFO and said, “Hey, look, you know, this is what I want to propose,” and he–you know, he was on my side trying to make this thing work, and he looks up to me. He’s like, “Now I get it,” and I just looked at him like, “What–get what?” and I thought he was gonna say something flippant ’cause I was worried this was just gonna be insulting.
00:29:55
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): It was just–you know, I was talking baby talk, and he, like, said, “No, this is awesome, love it,” and then we proposed it at the board and got the money and funding, and, you know, I got what I wanted, and the lesson there was, was that I was just–you know, it’s like showing the picture of the sunset to someone who couldn’t see it, and it just wasn’t working, and I had to break it down into pieces to explain what was going on, and then they immediately got it, and it was like we never even had a conversation about this thing before. I mean, it wasn’t like, “Oh, now we get it.”
00:30:30
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): They just said, “Oh, hey, this is a great idea. We really should do this,” and it was just a complete 180.
>> CHEN: Yeah, so they didn’t even realize that you were, quote-unquote, dumbing it down for them. They thought it was just a great new idea. I love it.
>> WALKER: And when I look back at it now and now that I’ve gotten better at this, I’m realizing that, you know, I wasn’t dumbing anything down. I just was trying to explain it the way I saw it, but the problem is, is that’s not the way a lot of minds think, so it was–I was talking in a different language to them.
00:30:56
>> CHEN: Yeah, again, getting back to this idea that your–you realized that your brain works differently and then having to translate that into the way that somebody else thinks about it, almost like here’s how one gear fits together with this gear as opposed to talking about the whole system as a whole and then not–and them not understanding that there were even gears involved.
>> WALKER: Exactly, exactly, and I–you know, to carry on with that, I was, like, showing them the outside of a transmission, and I wasn’t explaining how this was gonna work.
>> CHEN: Is there anything in the beginning of your career that you didn’t know that you learned later on that contributed to your success?
00:31:31
>> WALKER: About eight years ago, when I got a–kind of a totally bizarre call from the Kauffman Foundation, which is a big nonprofit that studies entrepreneurship and how businesses grow and a really substantial, very substantially-funded and large nonprofit, and I’ve followed them, and so I was a little taken aback that, you know, they found out that I’m dyslexic ’cause it just wasn’t something I talked to anybody about, but without getting into the story of how they learned that, they were very nice about it, very polite, and they said, “Hey, look, we just want to take you out, and we’re gonna have this–six entrepreneurs, and we’re gonna have about, you know, 20 scientists, and we just want to spend three days with you all expenses paid in, you know, this lovely place out in Arizona.”
00:32:17
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Yeah, I was like, “Oh, what the heck, you know? How bad could this be?” So I–you know, I did that, and that was kind of my reintroduction to dyslexia, but this time it was just so much more positive. It made me realize that, you know, maybe this isn’t all bad.
00:32:33
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Maybe there’s actually some real talent here, and maybe my success up to that time had to do with–it was because of my dyslexia, not because I found a way to beat it. It completely changed my attitude, and that three days out there, honestly, completely changed my life as I knew it, and all of a sudden I went from, you know, hiding this terrible thing that I connected mostly with my school and I found a way to beat it and work around it in what I call the real world, growing businesses and, you know, living life like anybody, buying a home and having a car and–you know, I just always found a way around it.
00:33:16
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): But now I, for the first time, said, “Wait a minute. There’s possibly a lot of good things here,” and then I started reflecting back on my life, and I was like, “You know what?” It’s just like, all of a sudden this enemy became my best friend.
>> CHEN: Yeah. I love what you say, almost like your dyslexia was an advantage that you had over other people.
00:33:35
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): I love that.
>> WALKER: Yeah.
>> CHEN: I love that.
>> WALKER: You know, today I emphatically believe that. You know, in school I would have done anything to get rid of it, anything, anything to get rid of it. You know, now you couldn’t take it from me. I wouldn’t sell it for any price. You know, I have a great ability to–or a better ability than a lot to see complex systems as a whole, and so what would happen to me a lot–and systems, when I say systems, it could be a mechanical system, but it can also be, like, the system of how a business works, and very often someone would come to me.
00:34:08
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, a lot of times I’d be like, “Well, no, I mean, that won’t work,” and I would know why, but I didn’t take the time to properly communicate that, and I think now what I do is I say, “Hey, that’s a great idea. Let–give me a day to think about that, and I’ll get back to you,” and then I can have a much more thoughtful response, and I’ve learned patience just to–I think when you’re sort of–feel like you’re at the low end of a totem pole and you’re being pushed around and shoved around, you tend to try to run harder to make up for time, and I’ve learned later in life that that isn’t necessarily going to get you to your goal any faster, and so I’ve just gotten more patient.
00:34:51
>> CHEN: Many young people who are at work have difficulty in deciding to tell their employer about whether they have a disability or not, whether it’s because they feel like the employer won’t understand or even if they’re able to explain it that they’re not going to be able to get the accommodations that they need.
00:35:09
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): What would you say to people who might be struggling with this kind of issue?
>> WALKER: Whether to let someone know about a disability is obviously a very case-by-case thing. It–when you come to the conclusion that this would be helpful for people to know what you’re dealing with, there’s two ways to do this, and I believe there’s a right way, and I believe there’s a way that just isn’t going to be beneficial.
00:35:33
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Focus on the positives. If I needed–let’s say I was working in an office situation, which I can assure you won’t happen, but if that was my job and I was just having a hard time reading and I needed to have, you know, let’s say a Dragon software on my computer so I could read–you know, have the computer assist me to read and to dictate and to write. One way you can do it is you could go to an employer and say, “Hey, look, you know, I got this problem,” and kind of starting right off there, there’s a n–there’s something broken that needs to be fixed.
00:36:06
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): The other way to do it is you just go in with a totally different attitude and say, “Hey, dude, I can do this better, I can do this faster, and they got this great software that I think’s gonna increase my productivity.” I mean, that’s what people want to hear, and you’re communicating the same thing. If you want to, at the same time, say, “Hey, look, you know, I’ve got a little more of a challenge, but with this software I can be even faster than most people,” you know, just show the positive side of this ’cause I think too often we’re just focusing on all the negatives, and of course, yeah, there’s negatives.
00:36:35
>> WALKER: Trust me, I know, but there’s all these positives.
>> CHEN: I love what you said about turning the way that you frame it into something positive. It’s, “I can do better for you if you’re able to do this small thing for me,” so I love the way you said that. Now, one of the things that the success of your business has allowed you to do is to fly a plane. Now, I know that there have got to have been challenges for someone who’s dyslexic to become a pilot, do all the licensing.
00:37:05
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): Can you talk about that a little bit and how you overcame some of those challenges?
>> WALKER: So school and testing is something that, you know, the moment I dropped out of school–I went to college just for, like, one semester. You know, I was determined never, ever to go back, but I–you know, I was–my company was kind of scattered all over the northeast here, and I was spending an awful lot of time. I said, you know, “Jeez, this would make an awful lot of sense to have a plane and be able to get myself and others to where we need to go.”
00:37:35
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I kind of did it backwards. I bought the plane having no license and then hired an instructor, and of course, you know, look, I was lucky enough, one, to afford the plane, and two, to afford a private instructor. I explained to this instructor my challenge, and, you know, we just started, day one.
00:37:51
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I’m like, “All right, here’s the deal, man. I really can’t read. I like to, you know, take things one bite at a time here, and let me just focus on flying this machine ’cause that’s what I understand is the most important, and then we’ll work towards communication, and then we’ll back into all these written tests,” that I dreaded so much, and then, again, like the Google searching with the images, I’m like, “Someone must have a video,” and so I don’t–you know, they, of course, the first day drop these huge books on you, which, you know, I bought just because I was expected to buy them. I never opened a page, but I found this great video set, and it really talked about flying, and it had all these great three-dimensional images and stuff that I could really soak into and really got, and then they also walked through the test part, and they did it in a video form, and so I just watched this over and over and over, and then I researched it.
00:38:44
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I figured out that they only have a total of 1,000 total questions in their system on the written test, and I knew I’d be all right on the flight test, which, by the way, is the most important one, but there’s numerous written tests, actually, I mean, ’cause I’m an instrument-rated pilot now, and I’ve had to go through a layer and layer and layer of tests.
00:39:05
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): So one, I got myself as familiar as I could with the way they asked the questions, and I just had to, frankly, work a lot harder than most would to just make sure I understand the terms right, I understand–I could read them and read them fairly quickly ’cause they do not, do not tolerate in flying, you know, and possibly–I can see the argument for this. Like, I’m not trying to dump on the FAA, but they are in–totally intolerant of differences to the point they will revoke a license if they find out, let’s say, you’re taking ritalin for ADHD.
00:39:38
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You will not fly, and I just know this ’cause a friend of mine was a pilot, and they found out about it, and they revoked his license, so ultimately just had to work a lot harder. It’s an un–you know, it’s a timed test. You go in there. You take–you’re on video. They read you the riot act that it’s literally against the law to cheat on this, not just, “We’ll kick you out of the class,” and so there’s no aids. There’s nothing.
00:40:06
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): I pulled through it. I did well on some of the tests. I did not-so-well but passed on some other ones. I had a FAA inspector that was really, really, really harsh on me, and this was a great lesson, and, you know, this is the guy that does the flight test, but then he has an oral test before, and he was just asking me a lot of, like, book stuff, you know, like if you have a–this problem or that problem, how many days do you have to report it to the FAA?
00:40:33
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): You know, the stuff that really isn’t about flying a plane and being safe, and, you know, I was bombing it, and he was frustrated, and he was getting all over me, and he literally stormed out of the room, and I was like, “Oh, boy, this is over,” and then he comes marching back up, and he says, “Well, your instructor is convincing me you know what you’re doing, and you just got something going on. Would you like to explain that to me?” and I’m, like, thinking to myself, “Okay, maybe I made a mistake not explaining this to him,” so I launched into this whole dyslexia thing, and well, guess what?
00:41:04
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): He’s like, “Me too.”
>> CHEN: Oh, wow.
>> WALKER: And all of a sudden everything changed. He closed the book. He said, “Let’s just go fly a plane.” I said, “Thank you,” and we got into there, and, you know–and he ended the test early in the flight test, landed the plane. He turned around, issued the license, and just said, “Sorry, and you’re awesome,” and turned around and left, and that was that.
00:41:34
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): The only change there was–is he got to know who I was, and all of a sudden it changed everything.
>> CHEN: That’s a fantastic concept. If you take the time to get to know someone, that can change everything. Hey, Steve, is there someone with a disability who you most respect, and if so, is there something that you’ve learned or that we can learn from that person?
>> WALKER: I can just think of so many. I’ve got, you know, one friend that is dyslexic and a quadriplegic.
00:42:02
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): This guy, you know, is an executive at a huge company. He’s got a great job with absolutely everything going against him. If I understand it correctly, Stephen Hawking, who, speaking of a disability, here’s someone that can move one part of his lip, and then this person in the wheelchair with dyslexia was on the team to create the device that–I believe it’s Intel Corporation that put this thing together to get Stephen Hawking reconnected to the world even though he had absolutely no speech at this point and just could move one part of his mouth, and I’m probably way oversimplifying this, but this is how I understand it, and I just like to watch somebody with, you know, quadriplegic and dyslexic go help someone that’s got some terrible disease that can only move one part of their lip be able to give–you know, speak at a–at conferences.
00:43:03
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): It doesn’t get better.
>> CHEN: Absolutely right. Hey, Steve, thanks so much for sharing some time with us today and sharing your rich life experience with us. I’ve learned so much. Any final thoughts you want to share about disability and success with listeners out there?
00:43:18
>> WALKER: Yeah, so I think, boy, anybody out there, especially with a non-obvious disability of any kind or difference, and I extend that to, you know, even if someone hasn’t been sort of labeled but knows that–you know, whether, you know, it’s anxiety or whatever the issue is that you feel you don’t fit in exactly right, take the time to think through how to describe what it is you feel and the way you see it to someone else, and the other thing is, is to–you’re quickly shown the negatives, but I can guarantee you every time there’s a positive, and I have not met anybody yet in my life–and I’ve met a lot of people with all kinds of different disabilities, differences.
00:44:02
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): Every time, you know, I’m just looking, always looking for the advantage, and there always is an advantage. If you’re, you know, unable to walk and you’re in a wheelchair, you know, you’re seeing the world differently, and yeah, of course, it’s really frustrating when you come to a set of stairs or a curb that doesn’t have a proper ramp or whatever, but you do learn things that the rest of us don’t see that can walk, and, you know, hearing, vision, whatever it is, you have a different angle, and the world is usually a lot hungrier for that perspective.
00:44:35
>> WALKER (CONTINUED): They just don’t know how to even ask for it ’cause they don’t see it that way. You got to, like, sell it a little and push it a bit, and the better you can describe who you are and how you do it and in terms that other people understand, I think you’re gonna have more success in describing–communicating what it is you want to communicate to the world. There’s always a positive, and just make sure you’re spending as much time focusing on the positive as you are trying to deal with the negative.
00:45:03
>> CHEN: Again, Steve, thanks so much. Really looking forward to our next meeting, whenever that might be. This concludes our chat with entrepreneur Steve Walker. Steve has shown us that using the practice of finding workarounds in your disability to teach us about finding creative solutions in all areas of our life, not dwelling on the negatives of disability but looking for the positive, and always looking for the unique gift and advantage that you bring to the table have enabled him to achieve incredible success.
00:45:40
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and that you’ve learned a tip or two for your own life. You can find out more information about team Excelability at www.teamexcelability.com. You can follow us on Facebook at team Excelability or on Twitter, @teamxlability.
00:46:05
>> CHEN (CONTINUED): Thank you, and have a blessed day.