Chad Sanschagrin: Author of Keep Telling Yourself
Episode 639
On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I’m joined by Chad Sanschagrin, author of the USA Today best-selling book Keep Telling Yourself. Chad is not only an inspiring author but also the founder of Cannonball Moments, a leadership and sales coaching company helping individuals and teams unlock their full potential.
During our conversation, Chad dives into the powerful stories we tell ourselves and how rewriting those narratives can lead to meaningful change. He shares insights from his journey as a coach, keynote speaker, and athlete, offering actionable takeaways for anyone looking to shift their mindset, overcome self-doubt, and achieve their goals. From the key mindset shifts outlined in his book to lessons learned through coaching executives and interviewing thought leaders on The Cannonball Mindset Podcast, Chad’s wisdom will inspire you to think differently about success and resilience.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in a limiting belief or wondered how to rewrite the story holding you back, this episode is for you. Tune in now on #TheKaraGoldinShow to hear Chad’s incredible journey and learn how to transform your life by transforming your mindset. Don’t miss it!
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To learn more about Chad Sanschagrin and of Keep Telling Yourself
https://www.instagram.com/sanschagrin_chad/
https://www.cannonballmoments.com/
https://www.keeptellingyourself.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Telling-Yourself-Create-Abundance/dp/1637746482
Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone. So excited to welcome our next guest to the Kara Goldin show. Very, very excited to have Chad Sanschagrin, the author of the exceptional and newly released USA Today best selling book. Keep telling yourself. Chad is not only an inspiring author, but also the founder of cannonball moments, a leadership and sales coaching company dedicated to empowering individuals and teams to reach their full potential. And he spent years coaching executives and teams delivering transformative strategies for growth and success. And he also hosts the cannonball mindset podcast, where he has shared dynamic conversations with people like Jesse Eisler and Gary Vaynerchuk. And me right? So yeah, the best Yeah. Best one yet no. But beyond his professional achievements, Chad is also such an inspiring athlete, Iron Man, marathon runner. I mean, what can this guy not do? And now author, I’m so thrilled to dive into his book, which is absolutely amazing. Keep telling yourself, if you actually are looking at the video here, otherwise, regardless, you need to go get a copy of this incredible, incredible book, which really puts anyone in the right mindset. So Chad’s journey in building a purpose driven life and business is absolutely memorable, and he talks so much about this in his great, great book. So very excited to have you here to talk a little bit more.
Chad Sanschagrin 2:29
Thanks, Kara. I really appreciate it like a surreal moment, because it was, it was seven years ago, six and a half years ago, that you came on my podcast.
Kara Goldin 2:39
That long, crazy. I flew
Chad Sanschagrin 2:43
to San Francisco, you know, got to sit in your courtyard, which was I still remember, is the best backdrop of any podcast I’ve ever been part of in my life. Was beautiful, and then built a relationship, and here I am, six and a half years later, getting to be on your podcast. It’s kind of a surreal moment. So thanks for giving me this. This what we’ve called cannonball moment.
Kara Goldin 3:03
Well, when I heard that you hadn’t written a book, I was like, wait what? I mean, it just seemed like such a natural right, that, and those are the the best authors, right where you’re like, when is this book coming out? Chad, so I was so excited to hear that you were, you were finally doing it. So, okay, so let’s, let’s talk about your incredible book. Keep telling yourself is such a bold and memorable title. First of all, what does it mean to you and how does it connect to the core message of the book?
Chad Sanschagrin 3:34
I think the idea is, you know, we, our life is predicated on these narratives that we tell ourselves, that’s all it is. Our lives are collections of stories, and we believe these stories that we tell ourselves, we believe them to be true, even if they’re not. We make our stories come true. And so, you know, for me, I didn’t realize this until much, much later on in my life. I’m 51 years old, and I didn’t stumble on this truth until I was in my early 30s, and so I spent 20 years of my life telling myself stories, stories of victimhood, stories of not enough, stories of all this detrimental things that was driving me towards a life I didn’t want. I didn’t realize the key to changing my entire life was by writing a different story, and it sounds so like Pollyanna, and people say, Oh, it’s not that easy. Well, that’s the foundation of it. This foundational because you’re you’re going to do what you feel, and what you feel is made up from the stories you tell yourself. And so for me, that was a big turning point. And so as I kind of charted my course, and I changed my story, and I didn’t do it on purpose was, like, in my early 30s, I was like, oh, you know what? I’m gonna tell myself a different story. Like, it wasn’t that conscious. It was just I surrounded myself at many what we call shift moments. See how I find truth moments and they I started being able to put two and two together. And, you know, the greatest thing a human being can learn is cause and effect behavior. Her, and I learned, cause and effect, that when I told myself different stories, when I believed different things about myself, when I when I increased the stakes of my stories, my life got better. And as my life got better, and I started putting myself in rooms with people like you like to think about it like, I’m I’m interviewing the founder of an amazing company, Best Selling Author, an amazing woman. Like, how, like, how do I get in that room? Once I realized there was a recipe to it, I felt like I needed to share the recipe, and then I got to work on building the book.
Kara Goldin 5:32
I love it. So you said that it was kind of not one specific moment, but there had to have been a moment when you said, I just got to change this thing up. And how did you rewrite the narrative?
Chad Sanschagrin 5:47
Yeah, yeah. So there was a, there was one moment, and I talk about in the book is, you know, I have these, what we call the shift moments, and I’ve had many of them. And I think we have these moments all throughout our life, and these are pivotal decision moments. These are moments that shift the trajectory of where we are life. And people change for one or two reasons, and that’s either desperation or inspiration. Either they get so desperate that they can’t continue on the path they’re going and they don’t know what to do, and they decide Finally, I’m going to change, or they’re inspired by somebody, or see somebody else that says, I want that, and they have this, this source of inspiration, and they fight through the tyranny of the how, and they fight the critic. And they change. For me, I found both. But the, I think, the most pivotal moment in my life that started to change was the moment I met my wife. Now that that sounds, you know, maybe like again Pollyanna, or maybe something that’s made for these love stories. But it really was, I went on a date with my wife. I met at her bar. I went on a date with my wife and my who is now my wife, and it was the worst date in the world. It was horrible. I had never been on such a shitty date in my entire and a bad date my entire life. It was absolutely horrible. The date started at eight and the date was finished by 828 30, like I was asking for the check at dinner at 830 and she was beautiful, she was smart. My wife is a doctor and a lawyer, so she has two different degrees. She’s a psychiatric evaluations of criminals. She’s one of the most brilliant women you’ll ever meet in your life, two different degrees at the same university at the same time. And so I went on a date with her during summer break, while she was in this midst of this and it was horrible. We had nothing in common. And I, you know, ended the date really quick, because, you know, it was horrible date. And I never called her left. I never called her. And I have a very strong faith. I have a very, very strong relationship with God, and I think God gives us opportunities, and we have to seize them. And a couple months later, I was in that same bar, and she was getting ready to go back to college, and I ran into her, and I asked her what I knew that I knew I didn’t remember where I knew her from. And I said, Hey, you know, how was your summer? She said it was great, except for I went on a date with this guy. He said it was gonna call, and he never called. And that guy was me, and I don’t know what happened or why it happened, but I think it’s a God thing. And I said, let me make up for that guy that was such a jerk, and let me buy you a drink. And I don’t know why. She said yes, but she did. We spent the night talking and in the middle, and I could probably after three or four hours of talking, sitting in this bar talking, I got up to go get another another beer, or go to the bathroom or something. And I dawned on me that the reason why the first date was so bad is because I had been telling myself this narrative that she was out of my league. I was telling myself the narrative She’s too smart, she’s too beautiful. She’s got this is This isn’t me. I’m not I’m not worthy of this type of person in my life. And I made a declaration standing in that bar. I could tell you exactly where I was standing in the exact bar at the moment it happened that this was a chance for me to kind of rewrite what I believed about myself. And I did. And she went back to Philadelphia to go to school. I drove back and forth to data, and 25 years later, she’s my wife, and that started the trajectory of me rewriting the story. I
Kara Goldin 9:11
love this so, so did you actually know when she said this guy, or did she did you know that he was talking she was talking about you?
Chad Sanschagrin 9:21
Right then it dawned on me right then that shit, that I was the guy that said he was going to call her and never call it. But you know when, when in that moment, in that moment when you believe you’re not worthy of this, you get, you realize that it’s such a powerful moment to say, to say to yourself, well, you know, why am I not worthy that? What’s caused me? Well, there, of course, I was worthy to worthy that. And then when I started dating her, when I started dating her, to this day in 25 years, my wife has never told me who I needed to become to be worthy to be married to her. But by elevating who I was around, elevating to somebody who didn’t drink and did. Party, and was was more focused on her schooling and getting what she wanted in life and becoming what she wanted to become. I found myself inspired to want to do the same thing. Was just I wanted to inspire myself to read. I wanted to inspire myself to think bigger. I wanted to inspire myself to and when I did that, my life started changing. So she never wrote the story. And that’s, I think what a lot of people think is parents think this a lot. Parents think, well, I can write the story for my children. No, you can’t. It’s not your job or your right to write your child’s story or anybody’s story. What you can do is give them the pen and facilitate the story they write for themselves. And that’s what my wife did. She gave me the pen and she said, Now write a better story. And for 25 years, I’ve been writing better stories, which has resulted in me being able to do the things and achieve the things and become things I want to become.
Kara Goldin 10:49
I love that you talk about the power of small, intentional actions. And I think you know, it’s one thing for for you know, you in that situation to say, Okay, I’ve got to be worthy of this person. But, you know, a lot of people, there are steps that need to happen on the way there, right? You can’t. People, I mean, it sounds good to just wake up and say, Nope, I’m going to be confident. But most people, I don’t think, are capable of that, even if they say, oh, yeah, I can, I can do that. They’re not, right? They see this gorgeous, you know, woman, or they meet or meet an executive that they think is so far above them that they can’t reach out to them, or whatever it is in the situation. So you talk about these, the small, intentional actions. Can you go through those? Yeah,
Chad Sanschagrin 11:44
I think these are the key. I think people think that you know to get where you want to get and become who you want to become, and live the life that you want to live, and live the life that you’re worthy of. That to your point, you’re just going to wake up and you’re going to just going to you’re going to grit your way to it. And this is, like, this is a word that is used so, you know, Angela Duckworth wrote this amazing book called Grit that’s been talked about over and over and over again. But what they don’t tell you is grit is not a technique. Grit is not something that like, you can’t grit your way to a better life. You can’t grit your way to become a better thing. Grit is finite. You can’t spend five years gritting your way through things. You just won’t last. You’ll burn out. And so grit is used for those, for those break the glass moments. What What does prove is repetitious behavior, small twins, over and over and over again. I’ll give you a perfect example. So I run marathons. I’ve run over 50 marathons in the last six years, seven years, that’s a lot of marathons every year. And you know, when I first started my six, seven years ago, I hired trainers like, I’m going to run a marathon. I My coach, I never run before. My coach said, All right, go out and run three miles. I’m like, three miles, or Yeah, three miles. And I said, three miles. I could, I could run 10 miles today. I’m not out of shape. He said, Just run three miles. And so I said, I said, Great, I’ll call you in a couple minutes. I leave my house at a half a mile. My lungs are burning at a mile, I can barely walk at two miles, I am dead and on the side of the road. Literally, I literally had to call my wife to come back and pick me up. I like, Hey, I’m on the side of the road. I’m dying. Can you come pick me up? I can run. I can run. I’ve done a 50 mile run today. Well, the way I got there was these small, incremental runs over time, and there’s small things. Everybody knows the power of compound interest. Well, you know what? Master the first model, then master the second model. They get up and just do small things. And this is, this is even, you know, Can I can I commit to keeping a pride journal? Can I commit to writing down having a gratitude journal every day? So people want the big wins, but they don’t want to do the small behaviors that equal the big wins or get you to become those things. And, you know, having owned this company for, you know, going on nine years now, I can tell you, it wasn’t one. It wasn’t created by grabbing these big clients and getting in room. You know, how many talks I had to give for free before somebody would pay me for a talk? It was, I bet it was 100 talks, 100 talks of me flying around the country for free on my dime to go talk to 20 people at a Rotary Club. And seven years later, you know, nine years later, I’m gonna speak at the Masters this year, in the Super Bowl. Well, I don’t say that to impress you, but to impress upon you the Master the Super Bowl doesn’t happen if I don’t show up at the Rotary Club. So I think it’s those small, intentional things. Social media makes it social media makes it look like it’s easy. Everybody can just go get the end result. What they don’t see is all the tedious behaviors that are tough to get the end result. So to me. Me, you know, fall in love with the process and divorce the outcome. Divorce this outcome, and fall in love with the process, beginning small wins. The outcome will take care of itself. Yeah.
Kara Goldin 15:08
And I think just, I think, keep telling yourself is also about believing it. I mean, if you don’t believe, right, you’re not going to get there. I mean, and no one else is going to believe if you don’t believe there’s
Chad Sanschagrin 15:21
a new saying. I don’t know He’s new. One of my favorite new artists, I’m a Billy Joel guy. He’s not new, right? But my favorite new artist is a guy named Noah Khan. And anybody that I’m obsessed with this guy, I’m obsessed with Noah Khan. I can listen to him every day, all day, and there’s a song that he has in this one of my favorite lines in any song I’ve ever heard. Is this song, and it’s, I got dreams, but I can’t make myself believe them. And so the idea is like, I think we all have these dreams, we all have these desires. We all have this, you know, this desire for abundance and for more. But we allow the critic and we allow the voice inside of our head to not believe that we can actually achieve it. And that was my biggest problem. I had dreams, I had aspirations, I had desires. I just couldn’t make myself believe that I was worthy of it, because the story and my mother, like I was raised by a single mother, she was amazing, like she’s the most supportive, unbelievable cheerleading person in the history of the world, and she would say, Chad, you’re worthy. And as a kid, you say, oh my god, Chad, you’re amazing. If you just applied yourself, you’re so smart. But my story of victimhood will always overpower somebody else’s story of Victor hood. For me like they you can’t I can’t take my story my mom can’t take her my story and make it mine. And so it wasn’t until I started believing the stories that I was telling myself of positivity, of worthiness, I was believing the stories of negativity. And it should have been like now looking back, you’re like, Chad, like, come on. What did how dumb were you? Like, you believed all the crap you told yourself. So if just logic says, If I can believe all the crap I told myself, can I believe all the great things? So why don’t you tell myself great things? Now it’s like now it’s easy to see that, but when I was in the fish bowl, I couldn’t see it. Yeah,
Kara Goldin 17:10
definitely. I totally, totally understand. So the in the book, you emphasize the importance of self awareness. So how can someone develop greater self awareness in their daily life? I
Chad Sanschagrin 17:27
think self awareness is self awareness is one of those, like, it’s like a door sword here. Self Awareness is fantastic, but man, does it hurt, because once you’re aware, now you’re aware see if I, if I live like when I was, when I was in this state of victimhood, I wasn’t aware that there, that that better even existed for me. So I was blissful. It wasn’t like I was in this victimhood. And then I realized I was in this victimhood, to me, this is just the way life was. And so I was blissfully ignorant to the possibilities of abundance. I was blissfully ignorant to the possibilities I could have more. But once you become self aware and you’re like I, you know, I think I was telling somebody yesterday, the worst kind of self suffering in the world is when you when you know you’re capable of more, when you when you’re self aware enough to know that you’re capable of more, but you’re settling for less. That delta between what you’re settling for and what you’re capable of that causes a lot of self agony. It causes a lot of self frustration. And so when you become self aware, everything changes. And I think the way that you become self aware is ask yourself amazing questions. The quality of your life is predicated on the questions you ask yourself, the challenge is, is most of us ask ourselves victimhood questions. They ask our question. They ask they ask questions of themselves that begin with the word why. And this is getting really tactical, but why is the worst question you can ever ask anybody, any other individual in the world, and it’s certainly the worst question you can ask yourself, because it’s the judgment question. Why did you make that decision? Why are you so dumb? Why can’t you figure this out? Why didn’t why? Why didn’t you show up? Why didn’t you work out today? Why didn’t they and all that thing, all that does is drive energy away from us. It’s not a, it’s not a it’s not a builder question. It’s a destructive question. And so when I changed my life, I decided, and I realized I was gonna ask myself builder questions and constructive questions and things that built me, and those are what and how questions, man, what can I learn from this? How do I get better? How do I figure this out? What was going through my mind when I made this decision? And now I’m really doing introspection. So if you want to become self aware, fit in a room and just write and grab a yellow legal pad and just write questions, non stop, questions like what now have you? Anytime I’m frustrated, anytime I might my emotions have gotten the best of me, I will literally grab my my folder and I will just start writing questions, not answers, just questions. And when I write the right questions, the right answers will come to me. I’ll trip over the truth of what I’m actually supposed to be learning. And so self awareness is amazing. Right? If you understand how to become really self aware.
Kara Goldin 20:02
No, I love it. So in your coaching company, cannonball moments too. You’re focusing on leadership and growth, and I felt like a lot of the principles that you were talking about in the book are things that you’re working with many of your clients on as well. But what? What have you seen as the most common limiting belief in leaders and teams that you’ve worked with, and how do you help them overcome it? I mean, you just talked about the what and how’s. But give us another example, yeah,
Chad Sanschagrin 20:39
I would say the biggest, the biggest roadblock and limiting belief that most people have is that the circumstance dictates their outcome, not them. I hear about the circumstance and your and your programs for this. You’re you’re hard wired. Everything around you in your universe is designed to to make it not your fault, and that’s because we’re surrounded by media and news that want to make it about everything else. Well, the markets this, and the markets that, and the economy is this, and the President’s that. And there are people who now, there are certainly things that will that will make it harder, there are things that will make it easier, but like, I spend so much of my time trying to convince people or get them to trip over the truth that they are the cause and effect of their life. And I think with Tom Bill, who said on a podcast several like, I don’t know, maybe it was 10 years ago, he said the single greatest day of my life, the most liberating day of my life, was the day I finally came to the realization that everything in my life is my fault. And at first, when he said that, I was like, wait a minute, that’s not true. Like, what? Everything’s your fault. Like, come on. Like, Tom, like, you’re, you’re a smart guy, but like, come on, everything’s your fault. And as I dive more, when I dive deeper into it, what I realized was, Everything’s my fault, on how I see it, on my perspective of it. And great coaches don’t fix problems. Great coaches fix perspectives. And so for me, it was about trying to convince these people that, yes, the market is tough right now. I get it. I get it, but, you know, and I won’t go deep into my faith, but my faith tells me one you aren’t guaranteed a storm free life, but you were guaranteed the ability to weather any storm that faces you. And once you realize you have that power within you, once you realize that I won’t be defined by the circumstance, I’ll be defined by my behaviors, I’ll be defined by my beliefs. I’ll be defined by my narratives, it is the most liberating day in your life. So now, for me, I can’t say, for me, I can’t say, Well, I can’t be successful. And this is why, one of the reasons I wrote the book, I wrote the book. You know, what’s interesting is a lot of people, they write a book. I listen to, I listen to a lot of podcasts, right? None as good as the Kara Goldin show, but on a podcast, right? And and I hear people that write books, and the number one question I hear people ask is, so tell me why you wrote a book. And the number one answer I hear is, wow. You know, people kept coming up to me, saying, When are you going to write a book? You really need to write a book. And maybe that’s true for most people. That is not true for me. You did say to me, Kara, several years ago, Hey, are you going to write a book? When you write a book, but you probably are one of the five people in my life that ever asked me if I was going to write a book. I didn’t write a book because people asked me to. I wrote a book because I felt that I had something to say and and that was the number one reason, and the number two reason, I think this is the point that I want to get to, is that I wrote the book to rip away the excuse that I couldn’t write a book, and because what happens is people want to latch onto circumstances. They want to say, well, I can’t do this because of that. The reason I ran a 50 miler, the reason I’ve run 50 marathons, the reason I ran did an Ironman, the reason I built a company, the reason I do most things is because, is because I want to live a life where there’s no there’s no excuses I can anchor myself to so I can’t say to myself now. I can’t write a book. I can’t say to myself, Well, man, I can’t get up and work out today. Well, I got up and worked out and trained for a full iron man for a year, right? I can’t say, Well, I can’t get on a podcast with amazing people because I got on the Kara Goldin show. I like the more you do things that stretch you and challenge you. Yes, your life will get better, but you’re also liberating yourself from excuses. And when I leave this earth, when I leave this earth, I want my my box full of potential excuses, to be fully empty. I don’t want any more excuses. I don’t want to be able to grasp anything. So when I leave this earth, it’ll be an excuse free life.
Kara Goldin 24:55
Yeah, I’m with you, so I love that, but that’s. A Yeah, it’s probably why you and I get along so well, because it’s you’re always setting goals and moving that bar up and doing, you know, somewhat crazy things. So
Chad Sanschagrin 25:11
it’s really a mindset of divine discontent. And what I mean by that is I’m I’m going to be discontent, probably until the day I die, and I don’t mean I’m going to be ungrateful. Now, there’s a difference between not content and grateful, right? So I’m grateful for the life I have. I’m grateful for the people that have in it. I’m grateful for the fact that I get to call you a friend. I’m grateful the fact that I get to surround myself with amazing people. I’m grateful for my health and grief. I’m grateful for a lot of things, but you know, gratitude is, is really the the is the kryptonite to growth. People talk about gratitude all the time now, and this will rub people wrong way. But people I love, I love the power of gratitude. But gratitude gets you to appreciate the here and now that what I have today I’m grateful for, and it’s enough. Well, for me, it’s never enough, and I’m not talking about like money. God created me, and God believed that your life was to be devoted to self transformation. And so as long as I’m on this earth, I’m on a pursuit to transform to the next version of me, version 2.0 version 3.0 version 4.0 doesn’t mean I don’t have gratitude for who I am today. I love who I am today, but I’m obsessed with what the next version of me is going to look like, because I’m going to be a better husband, I’m going to be a better father, I’m going to be a better leader, I’m going to be a better speaker. And when I become better, then everybody that I touch will become better, because I’m better for them. I’m better for my kids today than I was 10 years ago, and because of that, they’ll be better for their circles, and they’ll be better for their kids. And so for me, I can never stop the pursuit. So I’m always going to be grateful for who I am, but discontent. And that’s what I believe divine, because God created us to never be content with where we are. There’s always another version of who we can become love
Kara Goldin 27:07
that. So what is your wish for? The ultimate takeaway for somebody to you know, they close the book and they and they are like this is, we want to meet Chad. We want to hang out with Chad, first of all, because he’s inspiring. He’s motivating. He’s got me thinking. But what is the ultimate takeaway you want readers and listeners to remember from this book? Because I feel like you’re you’re also making people much more capable of, you know, being who they ultimately can be. That’s what I got from it. Yeah,
Chad Sanschagrin 27:48
yes, yeah, there’s a two. I’ll give you a two part answer, right? So, a really quick story. So about, I don’t know, probably 10 years ago, nine years ago, my wife and I and my kids were going on a trip. We’re going on vacation, and I’ve been flying a lot for work, but my kids and my wife obviously were not flying. And we get to the airport, and we were flying united, and the ticket agent said, we go to check our bag. The ticket agent said, Mr. Tan chicken, we have upgraded you to first class. And I was like, oh, man, that’s That’s awesome. So we have one seat, obviously don’t have four, but you’re more than welcome to sit in first class. So my wife is standing next to me, and she gives me this look, you know, like the luck. And I’m like, I’m like, Why are you looking at me like that? And she goes, you already know, I’ll take that ticket. And I was like, you can’t have this ticket. And she’s like, Oh, I’m taking the ticket. And I was like, No, say you travel all the time, Chad, I’m home with the kids. I will fly first class. I said, Kim, I love you way too much to to let you have this ticket. And she said, What are you talking about? I said, you’ve never flown first class. And she goes, I know I’m about ready to I said, No, you’re blissfully unaware of what first class is like. You actually think that center seat coach with with like stale pretzels is great. You You don’t know about the warm cookies, you don’t know about the unlimited wine. You don’t know what goes up on the other side of the curtain. And she goes, I’m about ready to find out. I said. The problem Kim is, we’re not first class people, we’re coach people. And if you fly first class, you’re always going to want to fly first class. And she goes, I’ll manage give me the ticket. So lo and behold, we go on, and she sits in first class. She finds out about the unlimited wines. I think at one point the flight attendant just left a bottle on her, on her, on her chair, right? She finds out about the warm cookies. And in 10 years since that happened, every time we fly, she asked me for flying and and the reason I say that first part of the answer is because I want every single human being on the being on this earth to know that they’re worthy of first class. And I don’t mean first class on a plane, I mean just first class in their life. I think people are just blissfully unaware of what they’re actually capable of, and I want to liberate them to think differently. And I think the second part of the answer I’ll go to this high school girl. Her name was Maddie Tom. Person. And 12 years ago, I’m giving a I’m giving a talk. And she was, happened, she was in high school, and her mother brought her to this talk, Maddie Thompson, and we go, and I’m doing the talk, and we’re, it was towards the end of the year, and I said, at the end of this, I want you to pick a word that you got from today that’s going to that’s going to shift the focus in your life. I write about this in the book. And this 12, we go around, there’s a couple 100 people there, and everybody’s holding up the word. And this, this, I think she was 13 years old at the time, 14, she holds up this piece of paper, piece of paper, and her word was capable. And I still talk to her. She’s now graduated from University of Michigan with Master masters in finance. She’s a brilliant, brilliant, amazing human being. And so I want everybody that reads this book to feel like they’re capable, they’re capable of dictating and changing their life to whatever they want it to be like, your beginning doesn’t have to dictate your end. And for me, you know, I don’t have a college degree, but yet, I coach billionaires. I, you know, the first time I was ever in a college classroom was this year when I gave a keynote to the University of Alabama business school. Like, like, if I say this, not to impress you, but to impress upon you that if somebody like me, who had written narratives of less than for years, if, if you decide and you believe you’re capable of having a first class life, a flight, a life of abundance, then all everything you need to do. It is already within you. You just have to do the work. And this is the work of reading the books, not just my book, but reading the books, surrounding yourself with people, but really deciding to pick up the pen and write a better
Kara Goldin 31:51
story. Love it. So Chad. Thank you so much. And everyone needs to get this book. Keep telling yourself so so awesome. And you can also check out Chad’s work with cannonball moments and his podcast the cannonball mindset. So, so good, so. And finally, if you love this episode, don’t forget to share it with other people, because Chad is such an inspiration. And in addition that we have many other inspiring guests three times a week. So this podcast is cranking, but thank you.
Chad Sanschagrin 32:29
Never get enough of Kara Goldin. I can tell you that so funny. So thank you so
Kara Goldin 32:33
much for tuning in and until next time. So thanks Chad, thanks Kara. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now you.
