From Plane Crash To A New Purpose, with Dave Sanderson

Dan Sullivan: Hi, this is Dan Sullivan. I'd like to welcome you to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast. Today's episode of Multiplier Mindset is with Dave Sanderson and Dave is from Charlotte in North Carolina. You know, a lot of entrepreneurs have great stories, you know, experiences that really changed their thinking and changed their life. But I think Dave tops off everybody else because he was on the famous airplane flight that landed in the Hudson River through a lot of skill on the part of the two pilots, and they got everybody off safely. They lost both engines. They got hit by Canadian geese, or they hit Canadian geese, and it knocked out both engines, and they couldn't return to the airport. They ended up in the water, and Dave tells the story. But what I really take away from this is why entrepreneurship is so liberating for individuals who are talented. And one of the greatest liberations that you get as an entrepreneur is that you get to be a human being in all situations. And Dave talks about his thinking and who he was in the plane crash. And he talks about if you get involved in a system where the only thing that matters is the work and the results and not your humanity, it's not very satisfying. It's not very, very rewarding. I mean, Dave didn't talk about it too much on his presentation, but you don't want to welcome those kind of moments into your life because you might not live.
 
But Dave, I think, really transformed his thinking. It's really simplified his thinking because the experience one day and the response of his manager the next day, I think, clarified something in his mind. You know, in many, many of our episodes here on Multiplier Mindset, they say very, very positive, complimentary things about the Program, The Strategic Coach Program itself. But the biggest thing that everybody talks about is the community of other entrepreneurs that they're with who are going stage by stage through learning all the thinking tools that we've created in Strategic Coach. And I think it's sort of a philosophical school. I went to a very unusual college before I entered the work world. It was called St. John's College, and it's quite famous for the great books program, and all you do for four years is read and discuss the great books of the Western world. And it's more than 2,000 years, 2,500 years of wisdom that has been accumulated and we went through that. And more and more I'm thinking that entrepreneurs are the individuals on the planet who get to be the most philosophical about their lives. And philosophy means the love of wisdom. That's what the term means, the love of wisdom.
 
And I think Dave is a very wise individual. And I think that he's got his fundamental principles all lined up together to make him just such an interesting person, but to make him such a valuable entrepreneur to other people. And it comes from the freedoms. He mentions the four freedoms, that what we focus on in Strategic Coach is basically that the motivation for entrepreneurs to be an entrepreneur in the first place is to have greater freedom in your life. And there's four freedoms, freedom of time, freedom of money, freedom of relationship, and freedom of purpose. And they all fit together. You can't have three of them without the other one. You need all four freedoms. And I am very admiring of how Dave has put his whole life together now, you know, obviously talented, obviously, you know, he's got a great passion for what he does, but he's really, really structured his life in such a way that he can be of extraordinarily value to a lot of other people. It's just a great story to hear.
 
Dave Sanderson: My name is Dave Sanderson. I've been in Strategic Coach now for three years. I'm in my third year Strategic Coach. And what I do is I'm an international speaker, I publish my own magazine called Moments Matter. I author books, I have four books that I've authored, I do webinars, I coach people, I do workshops for organizations, and really help people understand how to embrace their uncertainty so they ignite opportunity. So a little bit of a quick history. I was the last passenger off the plane crash called the miracle on the Hudson. And when I got back the next day, I actually went by my office. I worked for a company by the name of Oracle. I was a sales executive for Oracle. And I walked in and let everybody know I survived the plane crash because no one from the company had called me or even my wife. So I did not know. But they even knew that I was in a plane crash. And the response from my manager was, you're going to Michigan next week, correct? And that was the moment I realized that I was just a number. I had the largest things going in the country. I was in charge of the Southeast for consumer-packaged goods. And I realized I was just a number to them.
 
Now, they're great people at Oracle. I know if I would have pushed the issue, I could probably. But that was the moment I realized I got to do something else. I got to do something else. And for years, I was being pushed about doing something else, starting my own company, but I didn't have the, what could I do? You know, I didn't even know what I could do. But that was the moment that I had the momentum, but it took a couple years to figure it out. Because one thing I learned in my life is you got to have a game plan. And I also had a wife and four kids I had to put through college. So I had to put the game plan together. So it took me a couple of years. But yeah, that was the moment that I realized I had to do something and start my own opportunity. One of the things I tell people is I could have been your biggest advocate. They would just treat me right. They just treated me right. I could have been advocating for that company all over the world. But unfortunately, the person I directly reported to didn't see it that way. So but you know what? Everything happens for a reason and a purpose. Everything happens for a reason or purpose. Maybe that was the reason I had to go through a plane crash is to wake me up. And I think that's one of the reasons it happened.
 
First thing I want people to understand, I was not supposed to be on that plane. I was scheduled on a five o'clock flight. But I was working in a distribution center that day in Brooklyn. And if you've ever been or worked inside of a distribution center, they're usually 18- to 24-hour operations, because trucks come in and they got to prepare for trucks coming in. And we were always in technology. So we really wanted to see how this whole thing set up so we could hopefully set up a solution for them. So we started our day at five o'clock when the trucks started coming in. So we got done at 10 in the morning and I was in a three-day business trip. I'm like, I want to go home. So I called the travel agent worker and she put me on flight 1549. So I wasn't supposed to be on that plane. Then if you know the story, right, everything goes down. The Canadian geese hit it. We go into the river and the captain and first officer did an amazing job. But that was part one. Part two now is you have to get out of a sinking plane in 36-degree Fahrenheit water. And that's when everything started happening for me because I mentioned I have to have a game plan. I grew up in athletics and we always had a game plan. So my game plan was aisle up out. My thought process was if I survive, which was a long shot, at least I have to have a game plan to get out because the plane starts sinking in water immediately.
 
So when we got out, I got to the aisle, it was my turn to go, but something happened. It changed that, not only that day, but changed the direction and probably was the one thing that sort of pushed me. So I heard my mom speaking to me and my mom passed away in 1997, but there's something she would tell me when I was a child. Also, I heard in my head, it was, if you do the right thing, God will take care of you. And the right thing for me was, is you help other people first. I grew up in a small town where everybody helped everybody. Everybody knew everybody. So, I went towards the back of the plane to see if anybody needed help. We were about chest deep in the water back at the back of the plane and I got behind the last person and I started making my way out. And on the right side of the plane was 10F, the exit door. I'm like, I'm out. But then when I looked out, the boat was already filled up and the wing was already filled up and there's no room for me. And that's how I became the last passenger out because I stayed in the plane, 36-degree water for seven minutes, waist deep, holding onto the lifeboat so it didn't float out into the river because it had a very fast current and hopefully helping out other people to get situated. That's how I became the last passenger out of the plane.
 
I think no one really realized until the captain made his announcement as we were crossing over the George Washington Bridge. And he made his announcement, this is your captain, brace for impact. So I think most people thought, okay, we're just going back to the airport, right? No big deal. But we were 1000 feet in descending and the bridge is 600 feet up. So we only cleared the bridge by 400 feet. I think that was the moment. At least I know it was mine and other people's moments. Likewise, I realized this is not going to end up well. And first thing I did is I prayed. You sort of got to check in, right? So make sure that everything is sort of good with you and the big guy up top. So, because it does look like you're going to come back. I mean, you're going straight nose right into the river. Yeah, at that point, I think he say it was approximately 120 miles per hour. So, he cleared the bridge and then about 60 seconds later, you know, you're sort of got your head down and sort of thinking, okay, if I don't make it, at least I'm going to a better place. And hopefully my wife takes care of the money, right? That's gonna be left behind. That's my last, my last thoughts if he was hoping to pay off the house now, because that's been our big dream to pay off our house.
 
But yeah, and then you get to all of a sudden, you're up in the river is stone quiet. I mean, it was so quiet. And all of a sudden, you realize this thing sinking in the water, and you got to get out. And that's when things started moving. And the term I used with Katie Couric on CBS was, it was controlled chaos, where things were moving very quickly, but no one was lost their heads. No one was pushing people out of the way. But things were happening very quickly, because the plane actually went down in 24 minutes. And you didn't know that at that time, but you knew that you're already in water. The water was already waist deep where I was. I spoke the first time at my church the next week, and then I was getting asked to speak. One of the things you learn how to handle it. I did a TED Talk of a Queens University, and it was called Bouncing Back PTGS Post Traumatic Growth. How can you grow from a traumatic life experience instead of going into depression? And one of the things that I did was you got to get it out of your body. So I got the opportunity to speak and people were starting to relate to me because, you know, I come from a different perspective than the captain. The captain is up front. I'm a passenger just like everybody else. Right. So people can relate to my story. So that's how I really started the it started going.
 
But what am I going to do with it? And fortunately for me, I've had mentors in my life since 1984. And my current mentor, my mentor back started about 2014 is when everything started coming together. It was a member of Strategic Coach. His name is Don Barden. And Don heard me on a podcast while he was in Chicago, asked me to speak for his organization down in Atlanta. And at that point, he said, we got to do something together. And he and I started doing some things together. And he was a person to sort of give me the push, like, you know what? You got a pathway. You just got to take it. And that's sort of the push I had to start doing this. And so I started doing that. I started doing workshops for organizations and things like that. And then COVID hits. And then what are we going to do now? Right? What are we going to do now? And Don's like, this is a good time for you to start looking at maybe strategic because somebody give you some structure on what you're really going to do. You know, I said, Don, number one, cash flow’s an issue right now during COVID, number one. But number two, the challenge I was having wasn't with what I was doing. It was all these Zoom calls. I was getting distracted. I said, if I do this on a Zoom with Strategic Coach, all I do is be distracted.
 
So it was right after COVID when I joined Strategic Coach, because I wanted to be in person. I was waiting for it to be in person, because I'm a very connecting person. And can't believe the people I was talking to who are doing it on Zoom are like, it's good, but I don't have the energy. And that's when he was pushing me to do Strategic Coach. I finally said, I'll go all in for one year, right? All right, Don, I'll do it. And I got to see what this thing's about. And then it all started taking off for me. It really goes back to a promise that I made, a commitment I made in 1997. My mentor at that point was 90 years old. He was dying of lung cancer. And he called me to his office here in Charlotte, North Carolina. He said he wanted to give something to me. And I went to his office and he gave me his handwritten notes. He wrote down 1929. And these were the notes he wrote about how he was going to be successful. And he said, I want to give this to you, but you got to promise me something. I said, why? He goes, do not let it die with you. And he passed away in September of 1997. I had these notes, right? My second book's called From Turmoil to Triumph, because I really want to tell a story about how do you get to that seminal moment? How do you get there? Because all these moments, lessons add up.
 
And what came out of that is the lessons my mom and dad taught me were really the lessons that I didn't pay attention to until the mentor came in and really started giving me the insights, right? So one of the biggest lessons to me, my dad told me is, your word is your bond. Whatever you say you're going to do, you're going to do it. Right. And I have made this promise. So that's what drives me every day. And it's fulfilling the promise to teach the lessons he taught me over a 13-year period. And I've learned, of course, on top of that and to the next generations, because I was given a gift. I was given a gift of somebody back in the twenties, and I tell people, it's not new stuff. Is this a way that I can share to simplify it for somebody to be able to use it right now? Because one of the things I get jazzed about is, so I talk about how to compress decades into days. How can I take a concept for somebody and we can get it to a point where you can actually use it today instead of waiting, you know, for months to have everything come together.
 
And that's one of the things I love about Strategic Coach, because when I got in there, I was in overwhelm. I was in overwhelm. And Teresa Easler is my coach. I tell people the first session, I was just like, what am I doing? It's all over the place. But then things started coming together because, you know, I was getting little tidbits of information. But what really came together for me is I talked about how to compress decades into days. I could show people, but I wasn't able to be shown. Until a lady by the name of Elizabeth Fox, she's our Program Advisor. I would have these one-offs with Elizabeth, Elizabeth, help me through this, right, sort of walk me through this. And she was helping me understand how to put this together. And that's what really started taking off for me. So yeah, it came back to a promise. And all the answers came back to a promise of 1997 I'm fulfilling is what drives me and jazzes me, because I show people how to do this. And now someone's been able to show me so now I can actually do it on steroids, which is even more exciting for me. My mentor sort of kicked me in the butt, right? He'd been doing it for 20 years.
 
I'll give you some insight. What really got me over the edge, it wasn't Don, because Don was pushing me, right? It was his former assistant. He sent her to the Executive Assistant Program or whatever, right? And I talked to her, I said, give me the insight, right? And she said that one session, I guess she was doing the executive assistant session, I guess, helped her dramatically. She left the company, did her own thing. Now she's an entrepreneur. So after the first half of second session, I enrolled my executive assistant in that program. So now she understands at least my language, my thought process, where I'm coming from at least. So when things get a little shaky, you know, because every company's got stuff, right? She at least understands, step back, okay, all right, this is what we really need to do now, because she's going to see the program. She understands Impact Filter, she understands weekly plan, she understands this. So that was one of the greatest things that I did. It was really Don's assistant that pushed me over the edge.
 
First, number one, I think to all the lessons that I was learning came from my parents, but they were too close to me. Sometimes you need that third insight, right, from a different angle. And that's what my first mentor gave me. So number one, I think I was very gifted to have parents who had enough insight. And I tell the stories, I think that one of the greatest lessons my parents taught me, which has helped me, especially on the January 15, that day, was they made myself and my sister and brother make decisions when we were young, and have consequences for our decisions. Because when you're in a situation, especially an entrepreneur, you got to be able to make a decision. See, I think to be a leader in a company, you have to have two skill sets. First, you have to be resourceful. Because it's not about the resources that you don't have, it's about how resourceful you are with what you got. And the second thing is you got to be able to make a call, make a decision. And a lot of people are afraid to make decisions. Part two of that is this, fear. People are fearful, right? So what I tell people, how do you get over that? How did I learn that, Is the pathway out of fear is gratitude. If you start giving thanks, you know, something bigger than yourself, whatever that is for you, you can't go into fear. And if you're not in a fearful state, if you give gratitude, all of a sudden your mind opens up.
 
And more importantly, one of the things I talk about is successful people have first three parts of it. The really successful people are part four. This is what I really learned. First part is you got to have a passion. You got to have your mission, right? So you have to have a purpose. Second thing is you have to have some talent. You got to have some competency, right? You got to have that. You can do all that and take massive action and you'll get a good result. But what makes the difference in those people who are excellent or getting that result and people who are outstanding is having the right associations in your life. Because most people have associations, but they're not right. That's one of the things that Dan talks about. That's why I like writing about it now. It's about, yeah, there's four freedoms. Third freedom is relationships. Because a lot of us, you have a lot of relationships, but they're not the right ones and they can't take you anywhere. That is the key. And I realized that, and that's one of the great things about Strategic Coach. And Don told me this, and I was sort of, okay, we'll see, we'll see, right? But he was right. You learn a lot of skills, you learn a lot of things and strategies, right? But it's your groups that you're with that you get to talk to. And those are right associations because they're going through the same stuff that you're going through. It may be different levels, right? We're all different levels, right? I'm on my beginning of my journey, year three. Some of these people in there are 20 years, right? They figured it out. I'm 2x, I ain't 10x yet, right?
 
So it's that four step, the right association, but people have fear. That's the reason I think hold people back is they're afraid they're gonna make a wrong decision. You know, all you gotta do is be right. You know, my boss told me, my first mentor told me, you gotta be right 51% of the time. That's all you gotta be right. So I make a lot of mistakes like everybody else does. I love the folks in my workshop group because they come from so varied backgrounds and we're all at different levels. So we're all being able to communicate at a different level and we all are able to support each other in different areas that can help us all grow and more importantly contribute. I have a great community. Our team is tremendous. I mean, you know, I interact with, I have two guys from British Columbia I interact with. Unfortunately, the gentleman from Israel has not been able to be there because the situation in Israel. But he and I interact. The community is great.
 
But I tell you what, what's really interesting is I've developed a really close relation with Teresa Easler, my coach. In fact, I interviewed her this week because she's in my magazine, Moments Matter. I want her to tell her story. And it's interesting because, you know, I talk about Elizabeth a lot, because Elizabeth is the one who can put it together for me when I'm not there, right? And I can have that interaction, and she's always open. And how this even came about, I mean, she said, let's have lunch. I didn't even know you had a lunchroom. So where he goes, well, I usually eat with everybody else. So I said, you can go back there and have lunch. And all of a sudden, Dan's walking in and says, I can have lunch with you. And now I'm having a conversation, right? And asking him questions. He goes, I don't do that. My team does that. I don't do that. My team does that. You know? And all of a sudden, I'm going, it must be something here because he basically comes in and his team's doing it. Maybe that's the secret sauce, right? Maybe that's the secret sauce because I haven't got there yet.
 
So I think I love my community. I love the strategy. You just take one strategy every time and go run with it because, you know, they dump so much stuff on you. You can't take it all in because you just get overwhelmed. I used to take one concept and then take it, but having an opportunity to have a one-on-one with Elizabeth, right? And I talked to her and she said, okay, ‘cause I'll give you an example. It was a very important example. So I was hiring my first salesperson. Now I'm a salesperson going back 37, 8 years. I've got my mindset about salesperson, right? But I was interviewing two people. And I asked him both to do Kolbes. Okay, that's one thing that Don told me to start doing. So I start doing it. Everybody who comes on has to do a Kolbe. This time I did it differently. I gave him the Kolbe and then I got a call. Elizabeth said, Elizabeth, let's walk through these Kolbes together. Tell me what you see. And she sort of narrowed it down for me. And that's how I made my call on who I was going to hire. It's because she took the time and she didn't have to do this. But we walked through both of these people together.
 
And what's the good, the challenging you'd have, and this has helped me make my decision. This lady is now thriving. You know, she's now thriving because I made a very poor decision when I first hired my first person. I love her. And Don told me that she can't do what you hired her for. You hired the wrong person. You hired her because you liked her. And I had to let her go. It broke my heart. But she wasn't the right person for what I needed. That's why, you know, I do the Kolbe and that's why I talk about Elizabeth Fox because she's sort of my consigliere, right? She's like the person on the side, right? And I could call and say, okay, Elizabeth, give me some insights. And that's what I think the biggest thing I've got out of Strategic Coach. Yeah Kolbe A Index, which allows is a set of, I think, 25 questions. And there's no wrong answer, but it helps you understand how somebody thinks, how their mind processes information, what their strengths are, and what they may not be attracted. There's nothing wrong with either one. But like, you know, I'm a 7472. Right? That's where I am. So I think totally different than my system, my system, totally opposite, which is tremendous. right? Because she's analytical, she needs to be that way. So allows you to have people in your life and my son's taken it likewise, is to understand how does somebody process information and think so when things, when you have to make a stressful decision or something has to happen, you sort of know which direction they're going to lay on where they're going to spend their time, what's their strength. And so I need people around me who are not the same as me.
 
So the 10x-ing came in last year's session about how to 10x your business. And I can't really visualize that just yet. And though my mentors, and I think it's called Freeform, whatever the one Dan teaches, Free Zone, because he works with Dan, right? And he told me, he said, you're not going to be able to get there just in phases, right? So we've 2x’d my business since I started. And that doesn't sound like a lot. But you know where we started from, I had no associates. I have three now on my team. We doubled our revenue. Yes, our expenses have gone up likewise, right? But that's okay. But our reach now is now back in international. And that's where I really wanted to go. So one of the greatest things about this is, you know, I've been able to grow my team and help them with their purpose and missions because I know what they are is that we're on the pathway to 10x-ing, and I'm really excited about the pathway we're working in. That's why I love being around the team of Strategic Coach, because everybody's always positive, and everybody wants to help you. And I think that's what a lot of entrepreneurs are missing right now. It's an organization would say, you know what? Yeah, I know you're going through a challenge. I've been there. Let me show you a pathway. Because there's always a pathway.