Finding Your Summit

In this technological age of social media and the internet, it is common to see people living a crazy perfect life. These three words has more meaningful for Dara Kurtz after surviving breast cancer. Her diagnosis of the lethal disease came at 2014 when she had two young daughters who had to process what the entire family was about to go through. Dara was able to defeat and crush cancer head on, but not without losing herself and not knowing where to go and what to do next. Dara shares her story of survival to inspire people and tell them that amidst all the chaos, they are still breathing and they are still alive, and that is a special gift.

In life, there are different things that hit you at different times, but what’s important is how you get back up when this happens. One of the hardest thing that can hit you in life is being diagnosed with retinoblastoma as early as 8 months old. Because of this rare eye cancer, Jake Olson lost his eyes. This setback however, did not keep him from living a life with amazing opportunities that led him to become a blind football player. But other than playing as the long snapper for the USC Trojans, Jake has also set-up a foundation called Out Of Sight Faith and is the author of Open Your Eyes. Learn more of his amazing journey as a kid who lost his eyes but never stopped playing sports.

Bouncing around the league for 10 years wasn’t an experience NFL quarterback Hugh Millen planned, but he was still grateful for it. His football career lead him to play with 93 pro ball players and he learned from coaches that went to the Super Bowl. But his beginnings as an athlete and a person weren’t as smooth as other star players in the league. His mother had seven broken marriages, with his first step-dad being a heavy-weight boxer who physically abused his family. Although these stings in life did bring him down, Hugh kept coming back up, grinding it out, and staying focused on his goals in life and sports. Hugh shares the moments of truth in his life that kept telling him to quit, but he didn’t and instead reacted positively to the experience. Learn why there really is no need to win every day, all you need to do is give yourself a chance to keep throwing the ball and keep throwing it hard.

Because his parents set an important example about work ethics, Rich Barton became focused on work and businesses and grew up doing odds and ends jobs like being an ice cream truck driver and a waiter. Even in college, he started an exterior house painting company. After graduating in college, Rich started working for Microsoft at a time the internet was just about to make a boom. He knew the connectivity to information that the internet offered was going to change the world; not just entertainment but global entrepreneurship like shopping and travel. Learn why failing to win makes you creative and how his constant setting of big goals for himself led to pitching Expedia to Bill Gates.

Kacey McCallister never wasted time and tears when he lost his legs from an accident when he was just six years old. His parents didn’t treat him any different from other kids who had to do their chores and go to school. What’s amazing is that Kacey found out that even after losing his two legs, he continually pushes himself to his limits to rise up to life and personal achievements like a Spartan Race Challenge and in the process, inspire others to do the same. Learn why the things that suck can make you a stronger person.
 


Resources Mentioned in This Episode:Kacey McCallister


Rise Up

Spartan Race

Kacey’s Facebook

Kacey’s Twitter

Kacey’s Instagram

RiseUpWithKacey.com

Kacey’s YouTube video

Having a vision of Vanessa Carlton meets Billy Joel, Danielle Taylor never let go of her love for being the singing voice of a Disney character and learned playing the piano. Before Danielle got her second LP The Chase she was told that she was good but she needed to grow to stand out and not be just another beautiful voice. Just like any artist, life happens and she actually became homeless three times. Danielle had to tear her ego down which lead into a succession of small successes. This launched her to a path of making her own music, singing her own songs and meeting the right kind of people who shares her goals. Learn more of her stories of singing Disney songs and making a phenomenal comeback in the world of music.


Resources Mentioned in This Episode:Danielle Taylor


Erich Talaba

Sirius XM

1440

DanielleTaylorMusic.com

@DanielleTaylorMusic

@DanielleTaylorMusic

@DanielleTaylor_

Known as The Captain, Charles Plumb piloted an F-4 Phantom and flew 74 successful combat missions against Vietnamese forces and became a top gun pilot. Listen to his stories of being a prisoner of war for six years and coming home as a war hero. Learn how he packed his mental parachute to survive the wars of his life.
We've got Charles Plumb, otherwise known as The Captain. The Captain is an original. He went to the Naval Academy in Indianapolis back in the day, and then went on and literally became the first Top Gun pilot and essentially helped start that program for them. He was the original Mav from the movie Top Gun, and ultimately went off into the Vietnam War. After 75 missions, he was shot down. As he was stumbling to Earth in his parachute, people were shooting at him. He was captured and ends up as a POW in what they call the Hanoi Hilton for just under six years; shackled, tortured, and the way that they communicated inside the jail cells. He's very open. He's very honest. He's straightforward. It was just an absolute joy for me to drive up to Santa Inés and go into his hangar to see his little plane inside and visit his man cave. He's got decorations and memorials, and just everything you can possibly think of from his long career. He's still out there making it happen. He public speaks throughout the country, throughout the world. It was really an absolute joy to listen to this guy tell his tale of what happened to him over the course of his life.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Charles Plumb

I'm No Hero

CharliePlumb.com

Being born with no arms and legs never stopped Kyle Maynard from becoming a competitive football player, a champion wrestler and a summiteer of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Join Kyle’s journey as he almost gave up half way, but thanks to his family, coaches and mentors, kept living his life with no excuses. Never stop thinking forward on what can be possible and what you can achieve through hard work and positivity.
It’s Mark Pattison back again with another phenomenal episode of Finding Your Summit, and I don’t throw that word around a lot but this individual is special. His name is Kyle Maynard. I was on Aconcagua down in Argentina climbing this crazy mountain, about 21,000 feet, and all of the sudden I see this guy crawling up the mountain and I didn’t know what was going at me. I'm sitting on a rock, taking a breather like, “Can I keep going?” He literally crawls next to me. This guy, Kyle, was born with no arms or legs, congenital amputee it’s called. Essentially at the elbow and at the kneecap, that’s where it ends. He is taking on these amazing challenges. He has been Oprah. He’s got two ESPYs for Athlete of the Year. He climbed Kilimanjaro. Talk about absolute inspiration.
We walked through this journey and he has got this whole mantra on life about no excuses; no excuses to go do things. If we all took that to heart, we’d just be better people. We wouldn’t sit around complaining. Look at the guy next to you, just an inspiration. I told him this as I was looking up his resume and I was doing some research on him, I was like, “I haven’t done anything compared to what this guy has done.”
He is just constantly forward thinking about possibilities and that’s the thing that inspires me and why this episode was so much fun to do. Phenomenal it is, phenomenal describes him. As always, please go in and rate and review on iTunes, Finding Your Summit. Just continued to pile up the downloads. People are so driven to hear about adversity because we all have it. There's nothing special I'm doing, it’s just the people are coming on and sharing their stories and we can all identify with these different things. On that note, let’s get after this episode and have a chat with Kyle.


Resources Mentioned in this Episode:Kyle Maynard


Kyle Maynard guesting in Oprah

ESPN

Waterboys

Kirstie Ennis

No Excuses

Kyle’s Facebook

Kyle’s Instagram

Seeing her parents suffer from cancer, Dr. Neeta Bhushan stopped being a kid when she was 10. Learn how she was able to let go of her knapsack of hope and start a journey of freedom, courage and compassion. Stepping in to greatness amidst adversity is a feat anyone can master and Dr. Neeta will give you the key elements to climb your mountains and find your summit.
We've got a remarkable spirit and her name is Dr. Neeta Bhushan. She is an emotional health educator and performance coach. She is a person that grew up in Chicago in a family, and she had her mother, her father and her younger brother all die within about three years and a half. All the expectations upon her to become a dentist, all the expectations for her to be the main caretaker once her mom died, she was the first person to die in that chain of awful events. Then she got into a very unhealthy abusive marriage which she had to get out of. This girl has been through everything and she is just a bright light that comes through. What she does now is help people in terms of their businesses, trying to find their way, their happiness. She's been in over 45 different countries and mentors people all over. Just a great back and forth dialogue with Neeta and what she went through and how she dealt with that. It's a happy story at the very end and she's in a great spot. She has a saying called "Step into your greatness." That's what we did. We talked about her greatness, about the things that she's doing for other people around the world.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Dr. Neeta Bhushan

Emotional Grit

The Book of Coaching

Former NFL Quarterback Tom Flick, has garnered a reputation around the world as an authority on leadership by helping organizations like Google, Starbucks, Boeing and the Pentagon develop leaders, lead change effectively, recognize opportunities for growth, and increase teamwork and organizational performance in a faster moving world.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Tom Flick

Tom Flick LinkedIn

Tom Flick Twitter