Transcript
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And welcome back to another episode of Life Changing Challengers.
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As always, I'm your host, brad Minus, and today I am extremely lucky, honored and privileged to have Dan McQueen on the show.
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Hey, dan, how you doing.
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Hey, Brad, I'm very well.
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Thanks for having me on the show.
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I am super honored to have you on here.
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Thank you so much.
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So Dan's a keynote speaker and he delves into changing your mindset into and looking at things in a different way.
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But of course, as the question is always up first, dan, can you tell us a little bit about your childhood, where you grew up, what was the complement of your family and what was it like to be Dan as a kid?
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Sure, so I grew up.
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I was born and raised in Ottawa, ontario, which is great if you avoid the summers and the winters because they're sweltering hot and they're freezing cold.
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I played a lot of road hockey growing up.
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I was a big hockey player.
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Every day after school we played road hockey for hours.
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Lots of fun.
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It was my brother, as we always didn't see eye to eye for a long time there, but my family is my mom, dad, brother and I.
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Everyone's still together now my brother's in San Diego.
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We grew up playing road hockey all the time.
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We moved to Vancouver when I was in grade six, which is quite a difficult move Not difficult, but like an adjustment.
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Right In grade six you're a bit uncertain and unconfident and you move into a new school, all the friends you built up.
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You're going to a high school next year and you lose all that.
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So I was a bit lost there for a bit, but got back into sports and made some really good friends there.
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High school was phenomenal Lots of great friends.
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In fact, I had my 20-year high school reunion last month, which was quite an interesting experience Nice, very cool to see.
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Went to high school in Vancouver, then went to high school in Vancouver and I went to University of Victoria for my university degree, which is awesome.
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Uvic is a great school.
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Victoria is a beautiful city.
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Really enjoyed that, made lots of lifelong friends there, lots of partying, studying.
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Of course, priorities are priorities on that.
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Then after university, I lived at home, worked for BC Adria, a little bit of energy conservation work and then I moved to Sweden for a master's in 2011.
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I moved there because I had a university or a passport from Austria.
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So I found out I've got a European pathway.
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You get free education in Sweden.
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So I thought that's a pretty good opportunity.
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So I picked up, moved to Sweden Malmo Sweden for a master's in leadership for sustainability.
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He lived in Sweden for a year and then after that, moved to London where all this kind of kicked off.
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All right.
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So let's step back just a little bit.
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So you said you had a brother and you grew up pretty close.
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What were the age difference?
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He's two years younger than me, but three grades younger than me.
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Okay, he's an 89, I'm an 86.
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So he's three years younger than me, but three grades younger than me, okay.
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He's an 89, I'm an 86, so he's three years younger than me.
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All right, so were you close?
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It sounds like you were.
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We're close now.
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We were close growing up as brothers.
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Do you fight?
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And we fought like cats and dogs and I was told that I was always justified in my beatings.
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He's a lot bigger than me now, so it's nothing to beat up when he's younger because he's a lot bigger than me now.
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So, yeah, we played sports together, we studied together, we went to parties and he went to UVic as well and went to Sweden as well.
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So we both had that in common and I've grown to have way good friends.
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Now he's on my back all the time, we chat quite often and he's a great dude.
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Cam McQueen, based in San Diego, california.
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Nice Love, san Diego.
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And you said you played sports.
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What sports did you play?
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So I grew up playing ice hockey and when we moved to Vancouver I couldn't get in an ice hockey team.
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So I moved into soccer full time and played soccer football till played high school soccer and then played soccer football until I played high school soccer and then played soccer even in London for a little bit Five a side Not the full pitch because my stamina and my endurance crapped out.
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But I played ball hockey in London as well.
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Loved playing hockey.
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As a Canadian you have to with right-handed passing, yeah right.
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From Florida.
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You must be quite into hockey as well, because Florida just won the cup.
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Right, well, yeah, so I live in tampa, that's the lightning, and we did win the cup a few years ago and then a couple years prior to that, but now it's the florida panthers have just gone crazy over the last few years.
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They're always in the cup, so it's nice to have it out here.
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Of course, I grew up in chicago and I played a little bit of hockey.
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I wasn't the greatest skater in the world, so that kind of changed, but I did play 12 years of soccer.
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So now you said soccer football.
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So do they call it soccer or do they call it football in Canada?
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Call it soccer, but living in London for 10 years, if you call it soccer you get laughed at in any pub or any room or conversation you have, so I call it footy.
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I call it footy now.
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It's a mixture of soccer and football.
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They say football is old, american football is old.
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No, it's like football soccer.
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We just played the Copa Cup so Canada just came fourth.
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They lost to Uruguay but they were up 2-1 with five minutes to play.
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Unfortunately they tied and lost in Trudeau's.
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But very good result for Team Canada, very proud of that.
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Awesome.
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I just had an episode with somebody I don't remember who oh Dan's story, he cause.
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He said that he actually played American football in London when he was in England and I was like really, he goes.
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Yeah, I played a lot of it, like it's getting popular out there.
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And I was like that was so totally shocked Cause I asked him the same thing.
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I was like is it soccer, is it football?
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And he was the same thing.
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You can call it soccer, but most people still call it football.
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Then it's football and American football.
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If you call it soccer in a pub, you get laughed out of the pub.
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Man, you learn pretty quick.
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You do that a couple times.
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I call it footy now Safe face, I remember meeting a girl at a party in London who was the head of the NFL in London.
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She's already a team in London for sure.
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I'm like there's no way you're going to get a team in London.
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The travel is excruciating.
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But she was convinced and as far as I'm aware the it's in the other conference.
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So they only play Tampa Bay every four years and then every four years they flop, they switch right, so one there'll be.
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So this next time that they play they're going to be in Chicago.
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The last time they were in Tampa, but the last time when they played they were supposed to be in Tampa for home and they ended up playing in London.
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Chicago is.
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Last time when they played, they were supposed to be in Tampa for home and they ended up playing in London, Chicago and Tampa Bay.
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I've heard the teams to endure for that.
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That's a lot of ask, but nobody did that.
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Yeah, yeah.
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So I guess now they're literally talking about putting NFL games Obviously they'll still do the London game and they're talking about some other places as well and putting it around the globe, trying to get more, more patronship for, for the NFL, which that's.
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I think it's great.
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The amount of money that football players make in Europe is crazy.
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It's nuts, but you just fill every stadium every time and there's a lot more games.
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It's amazing.
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It's.
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It's a passion thing and I watched the euro final england versus spain.
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Sad to see spain win but what very well deserved.
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They played a very good game.
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But footy in in london and in europe is massive.
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World cup is insane.
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That's a whole nother level of sports.
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I really appreciated when I was there because I used to play soccer, football, footy going up right, but I didn't miss my hockey because there was not much hockey content over there.
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So I got back to vancouver now watched a good Stanley Cup run by the Canucks.
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They did very well this year, very well overperformed compared to how they're expected to do.
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So I'm very proud when the course here this year.
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Awesome, awesome.
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So you played in college, or did you actually play on an organized league for the University of Victoria?
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No, I played intramurals, which was a run over Sunday game, but we won a few championships as a singles team, which is very unique because usually there's a whole bunch of mixed mash people they put together.
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We won three, four championship teams, which is insane for intramurals because you're playing after a good Saturday night, so you're playing pretty three sheets to the wind on a Sunday Right.
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But I really enjoyed playing and I really had a passion for the sport.
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I played center mid so I was quite enjoyed that element of the game.
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And now when I watch footy I watch as a center midfielder and just see how they react and move.
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And if I would do the same thing and suffice to say I don't always do the same thing and I'm not there first of all, so it's okay yeah, I was.
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I was a center midfield for a while and I was, and I played on the wing left wing for a while and I enjoyed it, but I I wasn't great or anything like that and I got to play.
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I got my introduction to rugby on the rugby club in university, so that was fun and I played the wing there too, because I'm small, but anyway.
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So you said you went to work before you ended up going to Sweden.
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I worked in Hydro for a little bit.
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I worked in BC Hydro, the utility company in Vancouver, working on the energy smart team.
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So like conservation and saving energy and doing events, which is really fun.
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But you work Saturday and Sunday so it was very much an abrasive adjustment as a young 20-year-old who was quite into the bar scene, going to work on a Saturday morning at some local event and you're just like, oh, my goodness, what am I doing with my life right now?
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You're a bit ropey from the night before and you're making it work.
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And it was a great job.
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Taught me how to be professional and make things work and make it happen.
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I really enjoyed the job.
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Calling for higher education and more adventure came over me.
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I decided to move to Sweden, so I gave up that job.
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So you mentioned that you also had an Austria passport.
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How did that come to pass?
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Yeah, my opa is from Austria, so we moved to Canada after the Second World War, met my grandmother on the boat and they had my mom shortly thereafter, so that was how my family started.
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They grew up in St Catharines, ontario.
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Okay, oh, so you're just able to pass that down.
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Started.
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They grew up in St Catharines, ontario.
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Okay, oh, so you're just able to pass that down.
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I don't know anything about that.
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So I got my mom to get her passport, because I knew that this could happen.
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But she had to get her passport first and then she got mine and she said well, you're just going to move away when you get your passport.
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I'm like mom, I won't move away.
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So I got my passport, I was applying to school in Sweden and I was gone with the next month.
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Nice, because it's free in Sweden.
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right, that's a great deal, because master's degree in Vancouver we're going to be a 20 grand, or I'd live in Sweden for a year and spend probably more than 20 grand on living.
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But like what an experience Sweden was, it was awesome.
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Yeah, I can't even imagine, can't even imagine.
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So you got your degree in Sweden and then you decided, and then you said you moved to England.
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What precipitated that move?
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Well, I tried to get jobs in Copenhagen or across the bridge, and language was an issue.
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I can't speak Swedish or Danish, and that is not always an issue, but for the jobs I was applying for it proved to be a pretty big sticking point.
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And where can I go in Europe?
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That's going to keep this party going.
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London is a pretty easy space.
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I speak the language.
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Moved to London, crashed on the floor for a few months in my friend's place, heidi Klassen Showed.
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Heidi Klassen Literally stayed on a mattress on her floor for three months, four months, and then went out with a buddy for drinks who worked at a tech company called Hootsuite oh yeah which is a tech company, saas company, based in Vancouver.
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They got an office in London so I applied for a job there as a customer support representative.
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Got a job there and off to the races.
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Yeah, I used Hootsuite for a while.
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It was an amazing program.
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I imagine it's probably still around, but it's got a lot more competition than it did back then.
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I imagine it's probably still around, but it's just got a lot more competition than it did back then.
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That was literally the only SaaS program that you could literally get your feeds from all your social media at the time.
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It's an OG social platform.
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Yeah, I worked in customer support and then moved into professional services, so that was more training and enabling and set up the account, which was great.
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I loved it because it was very much like you call my own shots, run training sessions, set up their accounts You're like the rock stars of the Hootsuite company.
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So I'd run sessions in front of the whole room and it's an open client officer and I'd run it from my desk so they'd all hear me.
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At the start I was a pretty crap trainer, to be honest, but I wrapped up and improved and learned from my failures and learn from my failures and eventually I was pretty good and pretty confident speaking in public, which pair, yeah, well, obviously, and that's, and that's funny.
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And it's funny.
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You just said that because I was just on, I was just on text, uh, a group text with a friend of mine and she has a podcast as well and she's just getting started and it's not really.
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She's got like 65 episodes or something like that and she's, she's, she's, she's frustrated and I was like we're just getting started, you can't let that happen to you right now.
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And she's runs a mindset podcast, which makes it worse.
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But I kept, but just like you were saying is saying hey wasn't, you were what you said, you were pretty crap.
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I'm still learning myself, but this is going to be episode 43.
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I'm I'm still learning myself, but this is going to be episode 43.
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I'm still learning myself and it just keep going at it and you're going to find your rhythm, and obviously you did, which is great, which is fantastic.
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Now here's where we get to the crux of it, right?
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So I haven't, I have not given any hint about this.
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So, and unless they, unless anybody has gone ahead and already researched, dan, here we go.
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So talk to me about your starting, of your symptoms before you first went to that first optometrist appointment.
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Yeah, so I started having headaches in London, like bad headaches.
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I was taking painkillers like candy for them.
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Head was pounding.
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Head was pounding.
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I was in Berlin the weekend before this happened and the next day I came back to well.
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The weekend I came back to London and my headaches were horrible, like they were raging headaches, and I went to A&E, which is accident and emergency or ER.
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They thought it was vertigo and they sent me home.
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And the next day the headaches were so bad I was in a tube lumbering towards the Nottenthal Gate tube station.
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Have you been to London?
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I have not.
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Okay, Well, I'm on the district line, which is a slow roll, meaning it's a slow train the trains are better now where there used to be the circus train to the gate, and my headaches were so bad my vision turned to just go spotty and starry, Ouch, and it turned to fate.
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Like it started to go creeping from the sides, it started to go to black.
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It was a race.
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Arrived in the Nugget tube station and the curtain fell, Stepped on the platform of my Nugget and I stood there blind.
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I couldn't see.
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Now I want to ask you, Brad, evil-sided person your whole life, step onto a busy tube station in London and suddenly you're blind.
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What do you do?
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What do you think?
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What do you feel?
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The only thing I could think is to scream for help, is just to ask somebody is just, can you help me?
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I'm blind.
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I probably would be doing that.
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I'm like oh my God, I can't see.
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Can someone help?
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me that's a good response.
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I didn't do anything.
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I stood there and I thought some more.
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The longest three minutes of my life passed and then my vision came back and I carried on that day.
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The next day I found myself back in A&E.
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I told them what had happened.
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There's something wrong here.
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I was blind on a tube station.
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This is not normal.
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What's going on here?
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Let's figure this out.
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If that was where to go, again sent me home, but on the way out they told me I could always get my eyes checked by an optometrist the eye doctor right.
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So next day the headaches came back with a vengeance not blinding, but not far off.
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They were excruciatingly painful.
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Found myself in Mr Patel's chair.
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He was midway through a routine exam.
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When he stops the exam, excuses himself from the room and comes back a few minutes later with a sealed envelope which he hands to me.
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He tells me to go directly to Moorfield Hospital, which I did.
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Well, brad, tell a lie.
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I stopped at home first to grab a Jack Reacher book by Lee Child, phone charger and a bite to eat.
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Then I went over to Moorfield Hospital, handed him that same sealed envelope.
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They ran the same test again, then escalated me up to Charing Cross Hospital.