“What seemed like an obstacle in the early days really, like I said, became, I think, a real great asset to my company and to me personally because we wind up communicating at a deeper level and forming great relationships. It’s just been a blessing.“
Isaac Lidsky – CEO of ODC Construction; Childhood actor; Harvard Law; Going blind and becoming a great entrepreneur because of it, Eyes Wide Open book
Segment 1: (Length :04:00) – General Updates; Introduction to Isaac Lidsky and his journey as an entrepreneur, How his blindness became the ultimate strength; Perception versus reality.
Isaac’s finer points:
I was a childhood actor. I grew up acting in Miami, did about a hundred commercials growing up and got some lucky breaks here and there and moved out to LA to do Saved by the Bell.
“I played Barton “Weasel” Wyzell, which I will never live down but here I was thirteen years old, world in my hands, phenomenal family that nurtured me and I loved school and it came easy for me and I had this acting career.”
“One day, went to the family ophthalmologist’s office with my three older sisters and he was clearly concerned about what he saw in our eyes and he sent us over to the research institute, a big university hospital in town. Went there for a day of grueling tests and at the end of it, was told that two of my three older sisters and I had a retinal degenerative eye disease that would lead to progressive loss of sight and, ultimately, blindness.”
“That was, to put it mildly, sort of a pivotal moment in my life. I went through a great deal of struggle and thought and trying to kind of wrap my head around but, as I mentioned in the TED Talk and talked a lot about it in the book, it really is kind of my calling to share the message these days that, in the end, the experience that I had of slowly losing my sight really was a profound blessing and it gave me remarkable insight into the ways we are in control of the reality that we experience in our minds.”
I kind of really saw this first hand with sight but it extends to all aspects of life and it really was ultimately a very empowering experience that has led directly to my living a very rewarding and fulfilling life and it's a vision that I'm really excited to share with folks these days.
“There were definitely some dark years and I was terrified and it was a source of anxiety and a lot of fear. Psychologists have a great time, “awfulizing”, which we kind of tend to make things the most awful in our minds when we’re afraid.”
“I went through some pretty awful years, really assuming without any basis of information that blindness was going to ruin my life. The reality was really anything but. Through this sort of vision that I gained, as I lost my sight, that I talk about, it really turned out to be, as I say, a profound blessing in my life and I’ve just been blessed to live the life that I want to live and it’s a constant effort.'”
We have this perception that you open your eyes, there's the world, seeing is believing, sight is truth, all that kind of stuff, when the reality is very different.
“Sight is this sort of vast, personal virtual experience that our mind creates for us that impacts and is impacted by memories, opinions, emotions, conceptual understanding of the world, all sorts of things.”
“As I slowly lost my sight and experienced a lot of very bizarre sort of visual effects and stuff, this sort of illusion really kind of broke apart for me and it was the proverbial peek behind the curtain into the way we, if we’re not careful, can create our own fictions and believe them and experience them as truth.”
“Fear, I think, really is in a lot of ways the most pernicious example of that. I think if we’re not careful, if we don’t hold ourselves accountable for every moment, as you said, we can start to believe this sort of awful and baseless reality that our fears generate in our minds and then it’s self-fulfilling.”
“If I had not had this realization about the way in which we can take control of our reality to decide how we want to live our lives and who we want to be, if I hadn’t kind of had that insight, I really do think that I likely would have lived sort of the awful reality that I feared as a result of my blindness when in the end, like I said, it really hasn’t been a sort of limiting factor on my life.”
The 'Eyes Wide Open' philosophy or vision is a lot of sort of questioning. It's a lot of asking 'Why?' It's a lot of saying, 'These are the assumptions people are making or this is the way it's always been done, but why is that so? Is there maybe a better way to do it?'
“I think, unfortunately we live in a world these days increasingly polarized, increasingly extreme and there’s this real sort of human tendency to want to see things as black or white or right or wrong and I am just convinced that all of life is nuanced and that’s really where there’s the opportunity in life and there’s the joy in life.”
Segment 2: (Length :08:00) – Talking with Isaac Lidsky; His role as CEO; Isaac’s approach to leadership.
Isaac’s finer points:
“In kind of assuming the CEO role of the current construction company that I’m blessed to work with, we would have these leadership meetings and get in the room and someone would have an idea or we’d talk about an issue and then I’d sort of say, ‘Okay, what do we all think? Do we agree or not agree?’.”
“There would be, often, kind of long silence and then I would say, ‘Guys, are you nodding your heads again? Remember I’m blind’.”
“It’s frustrating and I remember thinking, “Man, is this a limitation that I’m bringing to the table? Is this going to be a negative for my company? Am I going to drive these people nuts?”
“I remember sort of thinking, let’s go with this. It doesn’t seem too much to ask that we speak up so you say, ‘Okay, everyone presumably nodded their head. There was no objections so now we’re going to go around the table and just, as a matter of sort of formality or on principle, let’s go around and I want everyone to verbally say, ‘Yes, I agree.'”
I really, it's a convenient position for a blind person to take but I really do think that there's something profoundly different and important about verbal communication and commitment to words and accountability.
“Part of it is the whole notion of being vulnerable when you speak your mind, when you take a position. You’re putting yourself out there. You’re making yourself vulnerable and you’re making yourself accountable for your words. That’s, unfortunately, something that seems to be very hard for people to do but I think it’s absolutely critical to the success of a team in reaching its potential in managing a business.”
“In the book, I stress, I encourage the reader to try it. Blindness is something that’s very easy simulated. You can put a blind fold on or turn the lights off or all of the above or whatever but it might sound a little hokey and a little awkward and uncomfortable but I do encourage folks to give it a shot.”
“Have a leadership team meeting where folks are blindfolded and you have to communicate. Next time you have a difficult or important conversation with a spouse or with a child, just try it.”
What seemed like an obstacle in the early days really, like I said, became, I think, a real great asset to my company and to me personally because we wind up communicating at a deeper level and forming great relationships. It's just been a blessing to work with my team.
Segment 3: (Length :10:00) – Control is an illusion; Offering audiences the experience of blindness; His book, Eyes Wide Open.
Isaac’s finer points:
You've really got to embrace uncertainty and you've got to commit to it and, across the board, understand that we are not in control.
“Control is an illusion. Certainty is an illusion. Again, in this way that our minds create a virtual reality that’s very compelling and very believable, notions of sort of control and certainty feel very real but the truth of the matter is they’re illusions.”
“One of the things, when I talk with corporate audiences or other groups or whatever, one of the things I’ll do is I’ll ask folks to put a blind fold on. They’re sitting in a auditorium or whatever with a blindfold on, perfectly safe, no harm to come of them. I ask them, “How uncomfortable do you feel? How awkward is this?” Often people feel very tense.”
“I ask them to maybe pick something up off the floor or find something with the blindfold on and you can just feel that it’s palpable that there’s this sort of intense discomfort because it’s a unique experience, it’s unknown.”
I guess for me, what it comes down to is really this vigilance, sort of being zealous in being sort of hyper aware and accountable for every moment and for your thoughts and your feelings and your assumptions.
“Then I ask folks to compare how they feel in that moment to how they feel when they’re behind the wheel of the car going eighty miles an hour on the highway on the phone and trying to get the kids to quiet down in the back and changing lanes. You think about the feeling of being completely comfortable and in control and don’t even give it a second thought when you’re driving a two-ton vehicle eighty miles an hour on a highway but sitting perfectly safe, just because your eyes are closed or you’re blindfolded, you feel totally uncomfortable.”
“If you’re interested in any of this, the TED Talk or the book or my speaking or whatever, I encourage folks to check out my website which is just www.Lidsky.com, and you can pre-order the book at any number of retailers now and check out the TED Talk and all that kind of stuff.
Segment 4: (Length :03:00) – Hustler Thought of the Day:
Sight is just one way we shape our reality. We create our own realities in many other ways. Let’s take fear as just one example. Your fears distort your reality. - Isaac Lidsky
GENERAL NOTES:
Isaac Lidsky – CEO of ODC Construction, Author, Speaker
- CEO of Florida homebuilder ODC Construction (the state’s largest residential shell contractor, on target to reach $150 million in revenue in 2016) and a member of YPO.
- From child star (“Weasel” in NBC’s Saved by the Bell: The New Class) to Harvard graduate at 19, Isaac Lidsky’s future was bright — despite a rare disease that ultimately led to his blindness. As revealed in his first TED Talk (which has over 1M views), even as the disease advanced and his eyesight vanished, Isaac’s personal vision only grew sharper.
- A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School (magna cum laude), Isaac is the only blind person to serve as a Law Clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court.
- With mounting achievements, Isaac went on to cofound a successful tech startup; graduate Harvard Law School magna cum laude; clerk for Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor, and build an impressive legal career at a top global law firm.
- Yet Isaac’s surprising journey had just begun – after significant soul searching, he made several leaps of faith, meeting and marrying the love of his life, Dorothy, then having four children (including triplets), and settling in Orlando, where he now serves as CEO of ODC Construction.
- His debut book “Eyes Wide Open“ will be published by Tarcher Perigee in March.
- Check him out at http://lidsky.com | Isaac Lidsky Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
###
