When we talk about the strength within you, what does that actually mean to you? I mean,

Momjiba, I mean, it's like...

It means that we all have a strength within us, whether it's something you learned in church, whether it's something you learned from your parents, whether it's something you learned from your friends, something you learned from teachers.

Maybe it's aggravation.

Maybe it's being irritated, frustrated, angry.

You're in pain.

Okay.

What will you say to that person right

Where would you like to start? What would you like to say? Kick it off for us in today's episode.

I was born and raised on a good size working farm in the upper Midwest, up in Northern Illinois.

We had a lot of hogs, chickens, lots of cattle.

We did a lot of agricultural spraying.

But I, by the time I, before I was five, by the time I was four, four and a half, I was feeding my own calves.

I was picking up eggs from a thousand chickens and sorting them between the brown and the white and the double yokers and making sure they were clean and packing 30 dozen case crates that my dad would take into the candling plant in town, which a lot of people don't even know what a candling plant is.

But but, you know, it was the life they say is your formative years are between, you know, when you're born and 17, 17 and a half.

No. No.

Yeah

... gets 100 degrees yesterday, and in the winter it's 35 below zero.

But, but I learned responsibility, I learned sense of urgency, I learned, uh, uh, you know, think ahead.

Think ahead, 'cause my dad was very, very big at that.

So I learned a lot of education and, you know, and it was, uh, um, seeing my father, um, and, and from his father and the-- and I think it's in our DNA.

What I learned was not only the value of money, but nothing comes for free.

And when I was in high school, starting when I was a sophomore, I got a-- high school got out at quarter to 4:00, and I started working in a small agriculture factory at 4:00 that made grain dryers and pickup reels for combines to go around like this.

Yeah.

Are you the first? Where does your entrepreneurial spirit come from?

Well, I think my dad had some, Lance.

I mean, he started, not only did we farm, not only did we do an Agsbury business, he also started a business that did what was called F&W, floor and wall tile, back in the 50s.

So he would go in and remodel bathrooms in the winter or when the weather was bad with a cousin of his.

And they would put in new linoleum floors, the old square floors that they had.

in dance halls and bars and such like that in our area up in, you know, in the small towns.

He started, there was nobody that worked on typewriters and adding machines.

and I'm an

So what did each one of those or any of those things teach you? Yeah.

I think it was my upbringing, David, that originally kind of pushed me in that direction.

And you know, it's not just that, I mean, four other times I should have been dead.

I mean, when I had COVID Delta five years ago, they told my wife to go home and make funeral arrangements.

I went in on a Monday, they didn't expect me to be alive by Thursday or Friday.

And then two years ago, I was in an accident going eastbound on Interstate 10, and towards the east coast, I was still in Texas.

And I got knocked across, hit the center median on a five lane interstate and went across one lane of traffic, then bounced across five lanes of traffic down the ditch.

You're just like, I just did it because it had to get done.

what advice would you give to someone who feels like giving up because life hasn't gone according to plan?

I don't know, first of all, that anybody's life ever goes according to plan because what is that plan? They don't know that plan until they keep moving forward.

And as you move forward, that plan develops.

I think some people's weight until a plan is handed to them or an idea or a job or a direction, but it's really up to them to get up off their butt and move forward and take the initiative and go ahead and try it.

What have you got to lose? If you just take small steps and it isn't going to work out, stop taking small steps.

That's real easy.

You just don't have to move that next little bit.

If someone listening today is going through one of the hardest seasons of their life, what's the first particular step that they can take towards hope and healing?

it

is what it is, you know? And so I went up and gave the paper, and he turned it in, and he graded it out, and he said, Jay, he said...

You failed the test, but I want to tell you something.

He said, I offered seven other people total the opportunity to come back and try taking this test again so they could pass.

Come back and take it again and just try it.

You're the only one that showed up.

One person.

Which version of Jay understands life the best? And what does that version know today that the younger versions couldn't possibly have understood? I

What led you to write that book, and what did you hope your readers would discover about their own ability to endure, adapt, and keep moving forward?

Mike, I have people telling me I should write a book about 35, 40, 50 years ago, you know, that people just didn't believe what had happened to me.

I didn't believe what happened to me.

And I had a gentleman here about two and a half, three years ago, and interviewed me and did a thing for LinkedIn.

And he was with a thing called the Pacific Institute.

And they talk about mindset and all that.

And, you know, and we went out for supper, and he came over and did the interview the next day.

Okay.

That's good

... and stitched up, and they put my foot in a- Kind of a walking cast.

They didn't really have a walking cast back then and, but it was kinda like that and- Mm ... and I don't remember what day that was, but the next day I was back at school again, you know? And- Yeah ...

I went to work that night and, and I worked an eight-hour shift from 4:00 to 12:30 at night and, you know- Wow ... and it, and it is what it is, you know? It's like- Mm ...

it's like I, I'm sitting here right now in a lot of pain- Mm ... from 15 back surgeries, but my pain isn't as bad now- Mm ... as it was before we got involved in our conversation- Right ... because now my mind's off of it.

Yeah.

It's not that I put my mind on the pain- Yeah ...

Mm-hmm.

[laughs]

It's like, "Why won't you quit? Why would you keep pushing forward?" I mean, after I broke my neck and I was told I would never move again, and, and if it wasn't for God, if it wasn't for prayer, or if it wasn't for overachieving, if it wasn't for a lot of things, I wouldn't have ever been able to walk.

And so I was able to walk with leg braces and crutches or a cane for about 17 or 18 years.

Then I had more brainstem surgeries and, and then I was on a walker for almost 18 years.

And then I had, my, my knees were going bad.

My left, my left knee's had 16 surgeries, been replaced.

The whole knee's been replaced three times.

It wasn't stubbornness for stubbornness sake.

What did life teach you about discipline and earning what matters?

First of all, everything matters.

And, you know, they say your formative years are from birth to like 17.

So I was raised by the time, I mean, before I was five, I was doing it.

but not as a regular little job, so to speak.

But by the time I was five, I mean, I was going down in the basement and whipping up warm milk with powder, or warm water and powdered milk into a 10-quart bucket, you know, with a nipple pail to feed the calves like they do all over, and collecting eggs.

We had about 1,000 chickens.

Jay, can you take us back to November 1969 when you had that accident? What happened and how did that moment start to shape you as a man that you became?