134: Get Out of the Dumpster and Banish Your Limitations with Dr. Reggie Padin

Robert Plank: Dr. Reggie Padin is the author of an Amazon best selling book called Get Out of the Dumpster, a true story about overcoming limitations, and includes the story of how Reggie went from being a high school dropout, hauling garbage out of a dumpster by hand, to become a PhD, dean of a corporate university at a billion dollar company, a professor, an author, an executive coach, and a spiritual leader. Lots of cool stuff. Welcome to the store Dr. Reggie.

Reggie Padin: Thank you for having me, Robert, it's a pleasure.

Robert Plank: Cool. I'm glad that we have this cool story in front of us that I can't wait to unpack. The thing about this show and the people that I have on, lately I feel like I've had a lot of guests on and what's the most interesting part for me with anyone's story are the places they've failed, the places they've struggled. It seems like lately with my guests I've said where was your low point? Where did you struggle? I've been hearing a lot of, "I've never struggled. It's always come easy for me."

Reggie Padin: What?

Robert Plank: I'm thinking, "What are you talking about?"

Reggie Padin: Wow.

Robert Plank: I love the stories where people get stuck. Can you tell us a little bit about your story personally?

Reggie Padin: I'm going to go in a completely opposite direction because I've struggled a lot. The title of the book, Get Out of the Dumpster is an actual real life story. I was in a dumpster because of the choices I've made as a young man. Primarily the biggest mistake I made as a young person was dropping out of high school. I dropped out of high school, married very young, started having kids right away. It's a recipe for financial disaster when you don't have an education. It so happens that during that time we were experiencing one of the worst recessions ever. It was tough. I had to dig deep and dig myself out of that situation, out of that dumpster which was a big struggle. I'm glad to hear that people that have not faced struggled in their lives. I have. The good thing in what I've learned personally is it doesn't matter the dumpster you're in. I was literally in a dumpster. What I found out is we all face dumpster moments. It doesn't matter the dumpster you're in, you can dig yourself out. It doesn't matter the struggle, you can do it, you can get out.

Robert Plank: Cool, that's a pretty cool message. Tell us about a little bit what happened. You said that you dropped out of high school, you had the kid. What was the situation there?

Reggie Padin: It was a tough situation. Again, I made the mistake of dropping out. The only jobs that I could find without a high school diploma, without an education, was really as a gopher, as a janitor, doing odd things here and there. I ended up working for a company that I didn't know at the time was experiencing financial difficulties, in fact they were going bankrupt. When a company's going bankrupt they have to make cuts. One of the things they cut was the waste management company. I got a call in from my boss one day and he called me to his office and he said, "I need you to do something." In fact he didn't say I need a favor he said, "I need you to do this. Go get one of the company trucks and back it up to every single dumpster around the company and I need you to go in there and haul all that garbage by hand, place it in the back of that truck and drive it to the landfill. That became my job. Can you imagine? I don't know if you've ever walked by a dumpster in the middle of the summer, but it's not a pleasant situation.

Robert Plank: Sounds gross, yeah.

Reggie Padin: It was pretty bad. I was chest deep inside a dumpster. I had to drive it to a landfill which was not a very pleasant thing either, and get in the back of that box truck and dump it in there and leave it in the landfill. Day in and day out for an entire summer I had to do that. I had a wake up call. It was an aha moment for me, it was a moment of questioning is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? I couldn't bear the thought of providing that type of life for my children when I knew I could give them more. There's where I began to journey out of that original dumpster. I created a plan for myself, a long term plan, and found a purpose for life on what I wanted to do, and executed that plan. I've been working at that plan for over 20 years.

It's brought me to this point where I no longer have to do that kind of work. I work in a very good environment and I have a very good situation going on. Probably more importantly than all of that, now I have the opportunity to help other people come out of their dumpster moments. In my book I identified dumpster moments as anything that limits you from getting to the next level. We all have those limitations, they are self-imposed sometimes. Most of the times they're self-imposed, and that we need to overcome. Today I get to help a lot of people identify what those limitations are and devise a plan of action that will get them out of that situation.

Robert Plank: In that kind of situation what was the plan? How did you get yourself out of that?

Reggie Padin: You do a lot of soul searching. Whenever you hit bottom you do a lot of soul searching. I started looking for what was the teaching moment here for me? One of the things that I began asking myself in that situation was what is my purpose? For me, I found out pretty quickly that I was going to use that story and my experiences to help other people. My purpose became helping other people come out of their dumpsters. For me it meant I wanted to be a professor, I wanted to be an instructor, I wanted to be a coach. That meant I had to go back and begin the journey of going to school. I had to go back and get my GED and then go to college. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. It involved getting 2 master's degrees, it involved getting a doctorate degree. It was a very methodical plan to get from point A to Z.

That means, and this is where a lot of people make the mistake ... A lot of people, especially in today's age of instant gratification and what you see on the internet and television, seems like those are overnight success stories. When you look deep down, they're not overnight success stories. They've worked hard at it for many, many years. I devised a plan for myself that involved almost 18 years of formal education. Probably more importantly, with every step that I took my life got better, my income got better, the opportunities got better, I started meeting the right people and the right situation and going in the right direction, and my income grew.

Today I tell people, look, you look at my life and yes I drive the car of my dreams, I live in South with a multi-million dollar view, I have a pretty comfortable live, but you too can enjoy that kind of life if you want it, if that's what you want. What you have to do is make sure that you find your purpose, create a plan of action, execute that plan over and over and over again. There's other things of course that I mention in the book that help people achieve what it is that they want to achieve in their lives.

Robert Plank: I know that it might be kind of simplifying it here but what's the difference between now and then? When you say the difference is like before you didn't have a real plan and a goal, you were drifting through and being boxed into situations. What would you say is the biggest difference between now and your failure?

Reggie Padin: For me, it's mindset. That's what I tell people, that's the first thing in fact. It's chapter 2 of the book. You have to develop a different mindset. When I look at my life now and I look at that young guy in that dumpster. By the way, I'm not only by any stretch of the imagination. When I look at that guy back then, he had a different mindset, he had a limiting mindset, he had a self-defeating mindset, he had a doubtful mindset. He had a victim mentality, he made excuses, he looked at the problem and not for the solutions. Today the biggest difference is not that I don't experience those things, I still experience doubt and fear and insecurities and real life problems, stuff that I overcome. My mindset is different. Once you have that different, that winning mindset, that mindset that limitations to, can what I can ... Until you develop that you're not going to win.

With that mindset comes a different work ethic, it comes a mindset of execution, of excellence, of keeping momentum, of surrounding yourself with the right people, with the right situations, with the right crowd, with the right resources, but it all starts right there in your mind. If you can overcome that, that's what I tell people if you can overcome whatever limitations you have in your head. I tell people this, it's an illusion. Your mind can't tell the difference between sometimes between reality and what's not real, that's where you take action and say, "This is not going to be a limitation for me."

Robert Plank: How does someone start that process? How does someone get the ball rolling towards fixing all those little things, the limited believe, the self-defeating, self the victim, what's the low hanging fruit there?

Reggie Padin: The biggest thing that people can start working on is finding out what their purpose is. Purpose is going to give you the fuel that you need to make every other kind of change in your life. Until you find your purpose in life you're not going to have enough passion to work on any of those things, to change any of those. For me, of course the purpose, my motivation became my purpose is to be out of here and to help other people, of course help my family, help my children, help myself get out of this situation. That gave me the fuel, it was the catalyst to move me in the right direction. The other thing that you find is once you have your purpose I tell people there's nothing new under the sun. You have experiences out there. You have examples out there of people who have been able to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish.

In my case as an educator, as a coach, whatever you want to call me, motivational speaker, whatever you want to call me. There are already examples of that, of very successful people who have done that in the past. My job at that point becomes what is it that I can learn from these people that have already walked the path. I'll try not to make the same mistakes so I can learn the skills that they've learned, so I can to the resources that they've gone to. Back when I started the internet was non-existent. In fact, it wasn't even in its infancy. Today we have so many resources at our disposal that all you have to do is Google something and you'll find enough information there, enough tools, resources there to get you started going in the right direction.

You talk about a low hanging fruit ... You find out what it is that you want to do in life and then find great examples and mimic and follow those examples until you create your own style, your own way of doing things. That to me as been revolutionary, that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, the wheel was already out there. All I have to do is take those examples and apply them in my life.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. On one side of it it's like why put yourself through all the same problems that everyone who came before you had.

Reggie Padin: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Then you have to live your own life. There's that matter where you find the case studies, you find the role models.

Reggie Padin: Of course. I tell people, look, there are virtual mentors, partners, and coaches out there. When I first started I had no contacts. I had no partners, no mentors, nobody to really point me in the right direction. I had to do the research. Once I found the examples that I wanted to follow I read everything they put out. I went to their conferences, I went to their conferences, I would go to their workshops, listen to their tapes. This is back in the days where there were actually cassette tapes and VHS tapes, and you would watch them. Today it's even better. They can listen to podcasts. I tell this to people that make the excuse, "I don't have an education, or I don't have money for an education." You can actually go to school, you can go to Stanford right now for free. You won't get the diploma necessarily, but you'll get the knowledge, you'll get that. You can just go and take classes at Stanford or MIT or Harvard, or any of these schools, for free. There's no excuse. There's no excuse for people to really better themselves and to find the tools and the knowledge and the skills necessary to succeed.

Robert Plank: I agree with that about a million percent. I know you have your experiences and you have your book. You mentioned a little bit that you have a little bit of speaking ... Can you tell me about the rest of your business and how your message and your story and your training and you book all kind of relates to that?

Reggie Padin: Right now what I've given myself to is really to teach people, to coach people. I am the dean of a corporate university for a multi-billion dollar company. If you would want to call it my day job, that's what I do. Also, I work as an adjunct professor at several universities where I'm teaching. Primarily freshmen coming in, business skills and communication skills. What I'm really, really passionate about is to be able to take that to the masses. That's the reason why I wrote the book and put it out there for people, that's why I do these kinds of interviews, for people ... Whether it's my book or somebody else's book. If there's something that I say that can help one person overcome their limitations, I've done my job.

A few years ago I started the process of starting an online school that will teach business and technology courses. I'm going through the licencing and certification right now for that school. It's going to be completely online. Very affordable compared to other types of programs out there. That's what I do. Almost 24/7 I'm constantly looking for ways to help people come out of their limiting situations. I have a personal goal. My goal is before I check out of this planet earth I would want to help at least a million people overcome at least one limitation in their lives. That is my goal, that is my purpose, that is my life's mission, that's what I've given myself to.

Robert Plank: Cool. I think that's a pretty good goal and a pretty good message there. As we're winding this down today, is there, I don't even know how to ask this, but a quick exercise or a quick activity, something somebody could do today even in 10-20 minutes to just get over the hump or get one little thing fixed as far as overcoming their limitations?

Reggie Padin: I would be lying in telling people there's a quick fix here. There really isn't. You've been watching the Olympics and probably your audience has been watching the Olympics. These are people who are winning medals and they prepare over 4 years, maybe sometimes for a 10 second race. It's a lot of hard work. The reason why they prepare for 4 years for a 10 second race is because they have found their purpose, they have found their passion. What I can tell people is I can give you some exercises that you can do to find your purpose. Once you find your purpose you'll find the resources. You'll find the fuel that you need in order to get it done.

I tell people, look, get a piece of paper, a notebook, a pen, go to a quiet place. We live in such a noisy world. We live in a world where other people tell us what we are supposed to be and what we're supposed to do. Our parents, and grandparents, and aunts, and uncles, and ministers, and teachers, and so many other people have told us what we need to do. What is it that we want to do? What is it that we feel called to do? That's the other thing. Look, I've a very spiritual person. I believe that every person on this earth has a purpose, has a plan. Find out what that plan is and for that, in order for you to do that you have to quiet yourself and just write all, anything that comes to mind, those things that bring you joy, those things that bring you happiness, those things that bring you fulfillment, those things that bring you satisfaction, those things that motivate you. Write down all those things.

What you're going to see if you spend enough time. That's more than 20 minutes. You'll probably have to spend 3 months doing this, maybe taking one day a week, one night a week and doing this by yourself with nobody else around you. What you're going to find out is after writing and writing you're going to see some patterns. After you create those patterns you're going to see. In my case, what the theme that kept coming back was teaching people, helping people, teaching people, helping people ... My journey has taken me in different directions. I started as a youth worker and then I worked in the inner city and then I was a minister, then I became a professor and a dean of a corporate university. What do all those things have in common? They all are about helping people overcome things in heir lives.

I have felt satisfaction in doing all those things even though one door closed and another opened. They were all aligned with the same purpose because I started moving in that direction. That is probably the one tidbit that I can give people. Find out what your purpose is, the rest will take care of itself.

Robert Plank: Interesting. I like that. I like especially, I'm totally okay with it might take a few weeks or a few months, but I like the idea of don't just. It's one thing to write things down and list stuff. I like that you said see what, as you're making this list see what the connections are and see what the patterns are.

Reggie Padin: Absolutely.

Robert Plank: What comes up over and over again.

Reggie Padin: They will come. If you're patient enough. Listen, what do you have to lose?

Robert Plank: Nothing.

Reggie Padin: If you're in a dumpster anyway, whether it's a real dumpster or an emotional dumpster or a career dumpster or a relationship dumpster, whatever the dumpster is, what do you have to lose? You already, you've hit bottom. Find out, take some time with yourself, with your thoughts. You will be guided, trust me, you will be guided, you will find the connections. Steve Jobs talks about this when he gave that speech at Stanford before passing a few years ago. He says, "What you're going to see is you have to find what you love to do, and go through life. Just keep going in that direction of what you like to do. Then you will be able to connect the dots. You never are able to connect the dots looking forward, it's always looking backwards." My life took me here, here, everywhere. I've lived in so many states and I've done various things. Now connecting the dots looking backwards I've seen that yeah, it's all part of the same purpose, it's all part of the same plan.

Robert Plank: Interesting. That's a pretty good insight there. Along those lines, along the lines of people getting out of the dumpster and staying out of the dumpster could you tell everyone where to find out more about you and get your book and all that good stuff?

Reggie Padin: They can visit my website, reggiepadin.com. They can see more about what we do, or they can go to Amazon to get my book Get Out of the Dumpster. They're going to have the information there. Basically they'll see my page. The book is available right now on Kindle and on paperback. I encourage everybody, every listener to get it. I know that there's something in there for everybody.

Robert Plank: Listening to you I agree too. Thanks for coming on the show, Dr. Reggie. Everyone should go there and get a copy of the book or even get 100 copies. Lots of good stuff, lots of cool breakthroughs. Thanks for the awesome show, Doctor.

Reggie Padin: Thanks for having me, it's been a pleasure.