- [Announcer] Welcome to TPGI's "Real People Real Stories" podcast, where you'll find interesting and diverse stories from folks working to make the world a more inclusive place. - Hey, welcome to "Real People, Real Stories" podcast, brought to you by TPGI. I am your host, Mark Miller, thanking you for helping us keep it accessible. Do us a favor, if you're enjoying the "Real People Real Stories" podcast, share it, tell someone about it, even link to it from your accessible website. Well, listen, thank you everybody for joining us again. We love you, we love our audience, and I'm really excited to bring you our guest today, Welby Broaddus, who we've spoken to before, he came in and spoke to our team here at TPGI. And once he did that, his stories are so much fun and so dynamic and he's got just a, he's had a great life and some great messages that go along with it. I knew we had to come in and chat with him and share him with all of you. So Welby, welcome, welcome, welcome to the podcast, it's great to have you here. And I also wanna welcome Dara, my co-host who you guys have seen here and there. So welcome Dara. Welby, can you just start off by giving us a little bit of background about who you are and particularly the thing I'm most excited about is that while everybody else was watching Netflix during the pandemic, you were writing a book. - Yes. - So I definitely want to hear about your book too. So tell us a little bit about who you are and about how this notion of writing a book came about. - Okay, wait. Thanks for having me, Mark. I appreciate you having me on your show today. Yeah, I'm Welby Broaddus, So I was, well, I don't know for sure, I either was born visually impaired or I became vision impaired while I was at the hospital, I know that when I left the hospital I was vision impaired. I just say that much. And what happened was, I was born premature and had to stay, my mom left, came home after a maternity stay, I had to stay in the hospital 10 extra days in an incubator. And what my research showed me, what I found out, actually I researched it for my book and found out that I think what happened is I was exposed to too much oxygen while I was in an incubator and it caused me to be visually impaired. And my diagnosis is optic atrophy and nystagmus. And optic atrophy is I'm severely nearsighted that I'm considered to be legally blind in both my eyes. And the nystagmus is I can't control the muscle of my left eye, so my eye tends to move on its own left and right. So it's hard for me to use my left eye. So it may use my right eye when I'm talking, when I'm seeing and talking to people. So when I got home from the hospital, you know, I didn't know this as a kid, but I always see a eye specialist, even today. If I go to a regular eye doctor, it's just like they can't do nothing for me, but it'd be good for them to be able to look at my eyes, but I won't get nothing out of it. So I always seen a specialist. But I didn't realize that as a kid. I had glasses and everything even before I was five years old. And I just thought I wore glasses just like everybody else. It just normal, some people wore glasses 'cause they eyes weren't that good and some people didn't. I didn't think it was that severe until I actually got into school. - So when you were growing up that young and you're starting to go to school and all that, you don't realize that you're different in any way? Is that's what you're saying? - Right. Yeah. So especially elementary school, you know, elementary school is, and let me go back. So I went to the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. I always saw an eye specialist and they suggested to my parents that I ended up going to a specialized school for the blind and vision impaired. And at that time, my brother, who's three years younger than me, he was just born. And my parents had just moved to this house and so they really couldn't afford for me to go to the school. So I ended up going to regular traditional school. And elementary school was fine because it's more hands-on, you know, you sit in a group, you basically play to learn, how you learn, things like that. I didn't realize I was different until I actually got into junior high school, middle school for some people. I'm telling my age, I guess. So when I got in seventh grade and junior high school, that's when you sat in a classroom setting, like the desk in front of a chalkboard or overhead projector. And I realized that I couldn't see what was on the board. And I couldn't see what's on the overhead projector. Now I would see some things or something I couldn't recognize. And that was going on. Also, what's going on now in middle school, that's when everybody's trying to find themself, puberty, things like that. So I'm starting to get bullied now. Get picked on, talked about, just so other kids can fit in and things like that. I was a kid that tried to pick on things like that. So all this was going on, my grades was dropping, I always had good grades in school, and so my counselor, and I wish I could find her today, I'm gonna throw her name out there if anybody out there listening Carol Sharon, I heard she's in California, but if I could find this lady, I would love to see her and thank her for things she's done for me. That was my counselor in junior high school. - Wow. And let me just go back. You're being bullied at this time, and is that based on your vision or based on the fact that you're not keeping up with your classmates or like, what was the premise of the bullying? - It was basically my vision, 'cause I would be in class, had a book close to my eyes, they would see that, but I would left and right. Kids would come in to say things like, "how many fingers I got up," and move their hand in front of my face and stuff like that. I got up called all types of names, Mr. Magoo, things like this, you know, and it was hurtful. But I endured it because one thing I didn't, you know, and some kids would try to, they think they would wanna fight me, because they think they could beat me, the blind kid. I could beat the blind kid and show myself, but my father would never let me, my brother just have anybody just bully us and jump on us. We was always taught to fight back. And I would fight back, things like that. - If it's any consolation, Welby, one of the guys I work with that is totally blind was a Brazilian jujitsu black belt, so. So maybe they should fight him. - And that's what I'm saying. Just because I'm blind don't mean I can't defend myself. And I'm gonna defend myself. So, you know. - Good for you. - It was basically 'cause of my vision that that happened. And so my counselor, she just basically, her own observation was going on, she talked to some of my teachers and found out what was going on and talked to my parents. And my parents thought it just me going from, from transitioning from elementary to junior high school, but in reality is I wasn't able to see the board, the overhead, some of my textbooks. - Right. - So my counselor decided, she set me up with a visual service for the vision impaired, which is VSBI now, this is through the state of Ohio with vocational rehabilitation services. And so they met my parents and my counselor, this is funny. So my mom tells me this one day, said, "hey, you ain't gotta ride the bus home from school 'cause me and your dad gotta come up there to talk with the counselor and the guy from VSBI. "Okay." Then I got nervous because, what are they gonna do for me? And all I'm worried about is how's gonna make me look in front of my friends, the other kids in school? I'm already getting talked about now. I was so nervous this day. So they had called me down in the office and they was all happy, smiling. So they had some visual aids for me, which is fine. They gave me their magnifiers and things like that. And then the guy said, they also got me talking books on casettes and records and a casette record player I could take home to listen to books. That was fine. Then he pulls out this bag, a replica of the books that got me, it was a large print, but back then it was like the books are now. This book was probably as big as a computer monitor. And the first thing I said, "you guys really expect me to walk in class with these big books?" I said, "they already talk about me now. They're really gonna talk about me." And everybody in the room expression just dropped because nobody thought about that. But my counselor, Ms. Sharone, she says, "well, I got an idea. Take these books home, do your homework and study with these books and just bring your regular books in class and you can just use those in the classroom." And that's what I did. So at that point, middle and junior high school, everything was fine. So when I got back to high school, it kind of got back to where it was in the beginning when I got to junior high school. My counselor never helped me. But what I learned myself, I started become more competent with myself being vision impaired so what I would do on my own, I would approach my teacher and say, "hey, can I get your notes on the board or the projector because I can't see it," and things like that. And I would ask for extra time. I would just ask for the things myself that my counselor should have did for me. So now let's fast forward to my senior year. You couldn't tell me back then, it was 1984, my senior year, graduated '85. I was going to Kent State University and I'm just gonna major in computer science. That was my plan. So I go in with my counselor. Now, this lady never worked with me as a vision impaired student at all. So she says, "what's your plans?" And you know, and it just rolled off my tongue because it is so what I wanted to do. I said, I wanna major in computer science and I plan to go to Kent State. And they rolled right off her tongue right back, "well, you're not college material. You should go find a job." So at that point she said that. In my mind, I said, "she just said I was not college material, I should just find a job." And so we stayed, we talking for a while, but I'm gonna tell you, I couldn't tell you what she said after that point. So when she was talking, it sounded like the Peanut's parents talking. Wa, wa, wa, wa, wa, wa. That's all I heard the entire time. But I left out of that room and I said, "I gotta go to college and I gotta graduate because this lady's not going to be right. I know what I'm capable doing and that's what I'm gonna do." Now the only thing that she didn't, there's two things she didn't get right by the whole thing. I didn't go to Ken State and I didn't major in computer science, but I did go to University of Akron and got two degrees. I got a bachelor of science in technical education, I got associate of applied business management technology. - Good for you. - Yeah. - I love the fact that your reaction to basically an adult, an authority figure, saying you can't do something was like, "oh, well now I have to do it," right? There's just no question in your mind. Like, yeah, you said I can't do it? That means I have to do it. - Right. - That's fantastic. - Yeah, I had to. - I mean, this makes total sense. - It does. - My mom and my grandmother, my dad's mom, they raised me not as a impaired kid, they made me as a person who happens to be impaired. So this is just a part of me, but it doesn't define me. And I wanna be defined on what I'm doing om society, how I make people better. That's always been my goal in life. And sometimes I don't even bring up that I'm visually impaired unless somebody might ask if I'm in a certain circle, things like that. And so that would, I would never use that as an excuse for me. It's just a part of me. And there's barriers to me that I, let me go, there's things I know I can't do, I'm not gonna sit up there and tell you that, "hey, I'm gonna go buy me a car tomorrow, I'm gonna drive to wherever." And I think that most people who are blind and vision impaired, like mean we don't put ourselves in position to fail because people already expect us to fail and people don't wanna give us a chance. So I definitely don't wanna make their job easy for them to tell me no. That's always a factor with me. So after I got into college, my first job was working in University of Akron and I ended up working in this program called Advancing Health Program. And what the program is, it was a welfare to work program that people who received government assistance to come to come on campus and get their basic skills up to either enroll in the college or help 'em find employment. And I taught basic math to the participants who came in. And also we ran a program with the Akron public schools. It was a pilot program that ran with the special ed kids. And it was a high school that was in the middle of campus. So those kids that went to, it was called Central Howard, they would come up in the morning and I would teach 'em portability skills to 'em, and then in the afternoon, they would do different jobs on campus, get their work experience, and I would go by and make sure they're doing the jobs right and things like that. So I was the liaison for the University of Akron and we had a liaison for the Akron schools. And one day this, this is how God works, things happen. He says, "I want you to come down and meet the teachers. I want you to meet the counselor to work with these kids." I said, "okay." So I walked down, meet the teachers, now going to the counselor's office. Guess who the counselor was? - I've got a guess. - We're both smiling. - Maybe somebody who told you you shouldn't go to college? - Yeah, my same counselor that told me I wasn't a college material, here I show up helping her with a pilot program that started with two degrees and I've worked with your kids. - How fantastic was that? - Yeah. - Did she recognize you? - Oh yeah, she recognized me, and people always ask me, well, did you tell her who you were? I said, no, she knows. The vibe in the room, she knew who I was. Now she may not remember what she said to me, but who knows. But she knew who I was. - Right. And then probably at that advancement and things, it's not necessarily even important at that point. - Oh yeah, no. - That I told you so is probably not what you were looking for. You had achieved what you had achieved and she knew it. Everybody knew it. That's fine. - Right, and I view it like this. She was the fuse that fueled me to keep on going to be the person that I am, because there was some struggles on the way that when I was in college that I thought that I wasn't gonna finish college. But that always came my mind. So I gotta finish. I just got to because I cannot let her know that I did not graduate college. - Welby, just one of the things I wanna say that I'm sitting here thinking about hearing your story before you continue, right, is that, you know, that's a really neat moment that you're talking about there where somebody says, "hey, you can't do this," and then you end up doing it. But going back even further, when you were being bullied and you essentially as a young boy needed accommodations to be successful in school, you know, like you said, you don't want to define yourself by your blindness. You're a person who happens to be blind, but obviously there's certain limitations, certain things that you can't do and certain ways that you're gonna need accommodations to be successful. That's what our business is all about. But the added element for me that's really interesting and that I hadn't stopped and thought about is that as a young boy, there's a whole social dynamic that you gotta be careful of too. And just the fact that you, yourself, and the adults around you recognize that and were very careful, and I think a lot of people don't think about this. They were careful with a young person who was trying to navigate all those social dynamics, they were very careful with how they provided those accommodations for you so not only could you be successful in the academics that you needed to be successful in, but it also gave you the best chance of being successful socially. And I think that's something I haven't heard in a lot of people's stories. And I think that's something that, it's a new thing for me, Welby. I talk to a lot of people who are blind and have a variety of disabilities, and that dynamic of the picture you paint of that young boy who's trying, who's struggling in more ways than one. and just the dynamic of having to deal with that is really, really interesting. I appreciate you bringing that to us. And I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I wanted to make sure. - I'm gonna say, one thing my mom, my grandmother always told me is, "you can do anything you want. You can put your mind to it, there's something you believe you can do and be honest with yourself, know what you capable doing." And my mom would never allow me, I would go and say, "well, I can't do it." "You can do it. You need to do it." "But can you do it for me?" He said, "you gotta do this by yourself because I'm not gonna be around you all your life. I'm not gonna be here all your life, you're gonna have to be able to do things on your own no matter what you're dealing with. We all dealing with something, but you need to work it out and you get help if you can't do it, but you gotta do things that you're capable of doing." - Yeah, it sounds like you had an amazing mom, right? - Yes. - And I'd like to dig into her a little bit more because what I'm hearing, like your attitude of, of I just, you know, I'm a person and all the things that come with that that happens to be blind, it sounds like your mom treated you as her child who just happened to be blind and gave you the same advice as she would any other child. And I think that that's a huge credit to your mom. And it's somewhat, I don't know if unique is the right word, but I think that when a person who doesn't have a disability or something as profound as vision loss, as a child that has something as profound as vision loss, they kind of get stuck in that a little bit, right. They all of a sudden, that's the biggest deal in the world. And I can see where they may start to define their child as being blind first in that case or whatever. But your mom didn't do that. To her credit, she really stepped up and parented you in a beautiful way. - Yeah. - Right? - Yeah, I commend her for that. I wasn't that kid who, I didn't hang out at the blind centers too often because that's one thing, there, it felt like I was being helped, coddled kind of, I guess helped out, things like that, versus allow me to figure out on my own because my mom, she really, she said, you know, I might not be around, your grandma might not be around, your dad might not be around. It might be just you and what you going do?" - Yeah. So you're not over coddled right? She's like, you gotta make it in this world like anybody else. I don't care if you got vision loss, you go do it. - Right. I was sitting around a cry some time like a little kid, like, "come on, mom, help me." "Nope." And she'd just walk off. - Wow. - Dara, you had a question or a comment? - I was curious, do you have an example in mind of something that your mom basically got you to figure out on your own? Like something that really stands out to you in that way? - I'm gonna tell you a story. And I wanted to put this in a book, but my editor, it didn't relate to what my book's about. - So this will go in the second book, is that what you're saying, Welby? - So I wrote a Kindle Villa right now about, his story is in there. I was eight years old and, and the street I grew up on there was kids everywhere. I was brought up with school kids of my age up and down the block. And we always hung out at my one friend's house, his name is Butch. We hung out and we'd sit in this stoop and we'd always be talking. And some of 'em had played baseball like the year before, and they talking, "hey, you guys should play with us, come out and play." And I'm like, "yeah, I'm playing baseball!" My grandfather played baseball, my uncle played baseball. I said, "oh yeah, I'm playing baseball." And like I said, I'm not even thinking about my vision gonna stop me from playing. I'm playing baseball. So I go down to my house, I get in, my dad's there, my mom's not there. I said, "hey dad, can you take me up to the Y and sign up for baseball. Everybody gonna, we gonna play baseball." And he said, "well, you know," and my father's more, I guess worried about me failing by my vision impairment than I need to try it. Which that would bother me, but I understand where he is coming from now. - Right, right. - So he said, "well, I don't know about you playing baseball, you know, you might not be able to be good. That might not be good for you." And I'm like, "what?" And so in my mind, like, don't every dad want his son playing sports? I'm telling myself. so mom came home, I could reason with her and I said, "hey, I want to try it out. I don't know what I can do." She said, "okay, you can go ahead and try it." For the first year of baseball, it was great. You know, I might have one hit the whole season, but I had fun. You know, my other friends, they would hit the ball, but I might have struck out, I knew I did. I might have one hit and I knew it was luck because I knew I couldn't see the ball coming down the pipe. But so what I did, I enjoyed it! So the next year we move up to the upper, like they call it the major league, upper league, you had to try out. So I go to that, go to tryout, I get picked for a team. And so the first day of practice, this is how things work. So our coaches hit the fly balls. They taught us how, you know, if you have ball coming, you call out, everybody run that way to catch the ball. Okay, I got it. Hit a fly ball, and I, at that time, there was no sports goggles back then. So I had wire frame glasses on. So here's a fly ball, and I could never see the ball come off the bat, but the sound would let me know where the ball would be in the air, 'cause I could listen. And then I would see it as it started to come down when it gets close. So I saw it coming. So this ball, I misjudged it. So the ball hit off my glove, hit my glass, and cut the left side of my eye. I had to get stitches. So, and this is before cell phones. So my coach had to take me to the ER, my bike was at the field, so my buddies had to get my bike take it to his house, and they had to call my house to find my parents. And they wasn't at home the time, so they came, that was end of my baseball career, because now I'm scared of a baseball for that fact. But what happens in that scenario is that I didn't know if I could play or not, but I wanted to see. And I had to see, because if I didn't do that, I would've beat myself up because I didn't give it a try. So now I know that that's not for me. - You're basically saying it mattered more to try it out than it did to actually like, be good at baseball or anything. It was more the idea of trying baseball. - And the thing about when that happened, I got picked on again. All my friends talked about me, "oh, you couldn't see the ball!" I go to school like the next day with about 15 stitches in my head. You know, they talking about me, I'd rather endure all that bullying and stuff like that for me, I tried it. That's the goal. My goal was I tried it and I know it didn't work versus me to sit back and let somebody, let my dad tell me, "well, you shouldn't, you can't play that because you're not gonna be good." I don't know that. - Right. - So I need to do those things. - Listen, Welby, I got a story for you. - Okay. - Right? My vision is fine. Right, it's fine. I got about one hit per season, my dad threw practices, I said, "dad, I'm terrible at baseball. We gotta practice," right? So I go out on the street with my dad and we practice and he throws up that, you know, that lob you're talking about. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Guess what happened? Hit me right in the eye. I had to go to the ER! My vision's fine! I don't think your experience was any different! I don't think it had anything to, I think you[re just like me, just weren't good at baseball! - United in baseball accidents. - And then my team, I was so bad, my team started picking on me! Welby, they bullied me. I'm not joking. That's not a joke. I'm telling you the truth! I finally, halfway through the season, it was the same thing. I did better, you know, when I was younger, and then when I got into the bigger leagues and I quit halfway through the season, 'cause my team was so mean to me! - Right. I get it. I feel your pain. I never went back. But I had to do that for myself. - Yeah. Yep. Well, you know, and I think that that's not a story, you know, that's not a story that only somebody with something like vision loss can tell us. I mean, that's a life story, right, for all of us where we've dug in and we've tried something and we just had to figure out. - Right. - Through effort and trial and error that maybe that wasn't a path for us. - Right. - Well it's like, you know, sometimes enthusiasm is more than, you know, your actual skills in the area. But enthusiasm's always a good thing. - Well, if you're not willing to try, how are you ever gonna know? - Exactly. - You know what I mean? Like sometimes it's about learning that lesson and being willing to learn that lesson. Otherwise you'd be afraid to try that thing that maybe you try and find out you're good at, you know? And I think that that's the real lesson is that you were willing to push the boundaries in order to understand what your boundaries were. - Well, that actually goes right into something from when I listened to another podcast you had been on, you talked about your first experience with getting praise for your writing, but you weren't super interested in writing at the time. So it didn't go a lot of places. And I want to hear about your experience with learning that you were good at writing. Writing is a mysterious art. And yeah, I wanna kind of hear about that experience of finding out that writing was something you had a skill in. - Yeah, so that was freshman year in college. It's English 111. I'll never forget English Comp. And I'm just taking English, 'cause you had to take it as a general studies course. Everybody had to take it. So our professor, I don't know, it was an entertainment paper. we could write about anything he wanted entertaining-wise and that's what we had to write about. So me and a couple of buddies, we had took this trip from Akron, Ohio to Virginia Beach. I think it was like Labor Day weekend. It was like Black Greek weekend there. And so we had to stop in the DC 'cause a couple of friends went to Morgan State, we picked them up and went on to Virginia Beach and had a great time. And so I wrote about that trip and so I turned it in and I'm not thinking of nothing. I'm thinking like, let me just get my B in this core credit class and move on. I'm not gonna do nothing with English. This is just something I gotta take. So about a week or so later, we had class and we had the leave, so the professor asked me to stay after. Now in my mind I'm like, "did I plagiarize something?" I said, "that paper was about me." I said, "what do you wanna talk to me about?" So he first thing out his mouth he said, "well, what's your major?" I said, and that was freshman year, so computer science. He's like, "oh, you ever thought about being a writer?" I said, "no." I said, "I said right up to here, I gotta take English all my life. Nah, I'm not being a writer. No." He said, "oh my, you're good." I mean, "you're great." Like you have the skills down already. You write very well. This per you wrote. I said, "oh, okay. I just wrote about what I saw, what I experienced." And so I never took that nowhere after that. I said, "yeah, this guy wanna be a writer." I would tell people that story. I said, "I ain't gonna be in no English class. I ain't taking that." They have to do all that stuff, nah, I'm good. So later on, yeah, I always wanna write a story about me, my vision impairment. And so this is how I ended up writing the book. So my girlfriend, she told me about this program at Georgetown University and I'm like, "oh, okay." She said, "you should apply for it. Yo wanna write your book. This is the opportunity." And so it is called the Creative Institute at Georgetown and it's a free program. You just have to pay for your editors. So I applied now and when I applied, it's like I'm pacifying her, and it kind of like pacify me. Least I tried it, 'cause I'm not gonna get accepted. So I filled it out. I get a call, a email from Professor Coster's assistant saying, "hey, you wanna set a meeting up with you." I'm like" set a meeting up?" I'm like, "what?" - What did I do wrong? - Yeah! - At those meetings, you're really happy when you didn't do anything wrong. - So I'm not saying that now. You know what I said there? I said, "I ain't trying to write no book!" I'm like, "okay." So I meet with him, I tell you what I'm write about, he goes, "oh, great." He gave me assignment on the phone. I need you to go find about 25, 30 people, successful blind people that's on YouTube or online and you gonna use those for your sub stories. So I said, "what?" Okay. So I did all that. So I go to class. So now I'm in the class. I'm writing a memoir. That's my original book I'm writing about me. And so when you go through the program, you work with editors throughout the process. So your first editor is a DE editor, which is distributing editor. And this editor's job is to make sure that you just write content, get stories, give 'em stories. You just keep writing stories. And so you meet with this, I meet with her once a week. So about three weeks in, I've done wrote a few things and stuff because so she keep me writing, how many words each week I gotta write. So finally, we talking. She says, "oh, well, I got a question for you." And she has a disability too. So they pair me with somebody who has a disability, basically to understand what I'm going through as a writer in my story. So she says, "yeah, you got some great stories here. So you writing a memoir, huh?" I said, "yeah, I'm writing a memoir." So her name is Joanne. Her question, "I got a question for you. Who's gonna read your memoir?" I'm like, "what?" I said, "what you mean?" She said, "you know, people write memoirs are celebrities, athletes, past presidents, people like that. You, Welby, are from Akron, Ohio, so who gonna read your story besides your family, your friends, maybe some people from Akron?" I'm like, "this is a great story." She said, "it's true, but who knows you to say, 'hey, I'll read Welby Boraddus's memoir.'" So she said, "you should write a book about teaching people with disabilities how to get jobs." And I sat back and thought about that for a second. I said, "no." I said Joanne, "because we already know how to, we already know those skills, pretty much everybody who has a disability has gone through some type of rehabilitation training to either get employment, to get in school, to show what what jobs best we can do for our disabilities. So we already know that." I said, "I'm gonna flip it. I'm gonna write a book to educate business owners, executives and HR professionals on the benefits of hiring us, the blind and vision impaired." So she, she even tried discouraged me, said, "well, you know, that's gonna be hard." I said, "it has to be done and I'm up for the task." - You said try playing baseball when you can't see. That was hard, this is gonna be easy. - Right, right, right. And there's nothing out there. There was nothing out out there like that. 'Cause I did research before I even did it. And I said, "there's no books even talking about us." She said, "well, that's what you wanna you do." I said, "yeah, that's what I'm gonna do." And that's what I did. - So you're kind of going toward this, like they always say, you know, to write for a niche where there isn't anything already. That's kind of what you were planning to do, right, to do something that there wasn't one of already. - Right. So I'm kind of like a rebel at some things, so I would go against the grain sometime and I felt like I know where she was coming from. Like the easier way was to write a book on how to get a job as a blind and vision impaired person. I get it. - But she's trying to sell a book, right. So she likes setting the path. - But the blind and vision parent people that wanna work already know how to go about getting jobs, that wanna work. So they can go get that training already from anywhere for free through any state in the country or US territory. Actually, that's a section of my book too. But yeah, so I decided to write this book, educate 'em. And even the people I interviewed for the book, like professionals in the diverse equity inclusion field say, "wow, nobody even, there's no material out there even about this population like this." I said, "yeah, so that's why I did it." - Nice. So let me ask you this. You know, you're talking about how, and I think this is the other way we kind of find passions is that we don't even realize our passions, but as somebody encourages us towards them, they become that. So do you, once you kind of got over your initial lack of desire to write, did you find the joy in it? I mean, when you sit down write, do you find that joy? - I love it. It's the best thing I've ever done, and I'm probably gonna continue writing. - Isn't writing great? I love writing. - Yeah, it's probably this is the, besides my having my son, the biggest accomplishment I think I did in my life. I really do. - And, it's amazing. 'cause I have a, I'm not gonna go into it deeply, but I kind of have a similar story in that I wasn't good at writing and, you know, my teachers and professors told me that in no uncertain terms. But I eventually turned into a writer myself. And man, did it feel good when I figured it out and started doing it. I had no idea because I struggled, you know, with those academics. I had no idea how good something like that could feel. So I can really appreciate where you discovered that. You know, and it's discovering passions like that is almost as interesting and important and all that as pursuing a passion, right. And I think allowing yourself to be open to discover those things and listen to other people is another kind of message I'm hearing from your story, Welby, you know? - Well, I'm actually, oh, sorry, Mark. Did you have something else to say? - No, no, I'm good. I'm good. - I was curious what, in the end, started to draw you in about writing? Was it just the accomplishment of completing something each day? Was it literally working with sentences? Like what do you find exciting about writing? - I think the exciting part, so this program at Georgetown, their premise is you write in a community. So you go in, everybody on a, it's this platform called Quip. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Quip? All my material is in this Quip. And it's in community with everybody. So like, let's say of us in there, all of us got our own folders. I can look in your folder, you can look in mine. - Okay. - So you say, "well hey, I got this guy you might wanna interview for your book." Or "Mark, I got somebody you might wanna interview. This guy might," - So like truly collaborative. - Yeah, because this is to show that if a person who's writing a book by their self, especially self-publishing, that's what they teach us how to do. You're never finished, but people who write together as a group tend to finish more because we got the support system one another. And so when I was doing this writing, you know, it was just like, it's something that I never thought I would ever accomplish, even though I knew I wanted to write a book. I thought I would never accomplish. And once I got started, it was like nonstop, even the bad part. Like I got writer's block at one point. I got COVID and this is before the vaccine. I was outta work for a month at home. But one thing I did do, I got up every day with my robe and pajamas on and got in front of my laptop and tried to meet my deadlines. And at that time it was when they look at your manuscript and said, "hey, are we gonna take your story and publish it?" And I had a deadline to meet or it was done. And I got up and had and had to meet with the professor on Zoom. I went in on my robe and he says, "what's going on?" I said, "I don't know, I'm sick. I gotta go get a COVID test tomorrow." And he said, "you look like crap. Wanna just cancel?" I said, "no, it can't cancel. Can't cancel. I gotta go through this." And I did. And I love the good about it. I tell you what, I love the good about it, the bad about it, everything, because I'm telling a story that needs to be told. And I like writing nonfiction, so I got it. I like put putting message out you that need to be told. And I realized when I was doing, those type of books I like to read myself anyway, about stories, self-help books, books that tell you about things going on. That's my genre. And that's what I write about. And I think that everybody has a story in 'em. I think everybody should at least write one book, 'cause everybody has a story to share that society may need. I do believe that. - That's great. What a great message. Well, listen, we're kind of coming to the end of the podcast here, Welby, and I'll tell you what, when you came and spoke to us and my team, you really won me over and you've won me over all over again. I absolutely love your stories and I love the way that you've just conducted your life and we all have unique situations that we're presented with in life and you've really done the best I think that you could with yours. And it's just so interesting to hear about it and it's so inspiring. Before we wrap up, is there anything else that you want to say or tell people or anything, any part of your story that you really want to get out there before we say goodbye? - I just want the business world executives, HR professionals, business owners, you missing out on untapped market of the blind and vision impaired community who can pretty much do any job that requires you the use of technology and pretty much all your operation system, your computer has accessibility technology built in. You just don't access it to get this population to chance. And if you don't have it, there's even places like state vocational rehabilitation service to get you programs like Jaws, Zoom Text and things like that to help these individuals be productive employees in your company. And especially now with all these help wanted signs all over the nation, there's an untapped market that you can tap into that your competitors not even thinking about. Trust me. So I just say give 'em a chance. - So basically you're telling managers and stuff that a lot of the tools they need to help accommodate people are already there basically. - It has to be by law. Everybody, any company, software company that creates operations system has to have accessibility technology built in. There's a lot of times employers don't even know that it exists. It's there. And if something needs something that's besides that, it's a minimum cost. And if you are a small company based on ADA guidelines, you can get exempt on that type of stuff and maybe get some assistance to pay for it as well. So to me, there's no excuse. I think the problem is the fear because of the fear unknown. I'm gonna say this one part. The difference between individuals with blind vision, impaired versus somebody else with another disability is that all our conditions are different within the blind or vision-impaired community. What I may need to just enlarge my screen, somebody else might need a braille reader, a screen reader, somebody else might need Jaw, somebody might need something else to be accountable. And that's the fear, because they fear the unknown. But it's still simple. - You know what, Welby, somebody should write a book so these executives know all this stuff, don't you think? - I got one! - Oh, you got one! Well, since you got one, can you tell everybody what the name of that book is and how- - Yeah, we can all look it up. - My book is titled "Leading Blind Without Vision: The Benefits of Hiring the Blind and Vision Impaired." You can find it on all online platforms that sells books, audiobooks, and eBooks. You go to my website Broaddus Bizsol, so that's B-R-O-A-D-D-U-S-B-I-Z-S-O-L.com. And my book is on my website as well. And if you want do some consulting service to onboard some blind and vision period employees into your workforce or want me to come in and do a training, because you can actually get certain credits now for my business. HR professionals, you can go to email me as well at broaddusbizsol@gmail.com. - And as always, we'll make sure all that stuff is in the show notes, so you don't have to sit there and write this down, particularly for you're listening in your car or while you're working or something like that. We'll make sure all that's written down for you and you can just grab it in the show notes. Hey Welby, really thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I think you're doing great work out there. We appreciate it because, you know, in our business, we're trying to help everybody be able to access information and do the same jobs as everybody else. So you're doing that same good work and we really appreciate it and we appreciate you being willing to share your story with us today. - I appreciate you guys, I appreciate what you guys do because you help us blind and vision impaired people play on equal playing field like everybody else. That's great. - Well, you know, takes a village, right? - It dure does. - All right, well thank you so much. This is Mark Miller thanking Welby and Dara, and reminding you to keep it accessible. - [Announcer] This podcast has been brought to you by TPGI, the experts in digital accessibility. Stay tuned for more "Real People, Real Stories" podcasts coming soon.