 Well it is now 3.30 and 30 seconds so I think we are going to get started we I'm sure are going to use the entire hour and I'm going to speak very little here I think many of you have probably done a little bit of online looking at at Brad and Brian's website to Blind Brothers so I'm not going to take any time at all doing that remember that if you would like to ask questions or pose a question on the chat please go ahead and do that I'd ask that you put your hand up if you're going to ask a question using the microphone and then just fire the question into the chat I'll be managing that for Brad and and Brian and and then we're going to be rocking and rolling here so the Brad and Brian welcome gentlemen you're unmuted and I'm turning it over to you we are just thrilled here in Alberta to be grabbing an hour of what I'm sure is very very busy time for the both of you so thanks for providing that for us and take it away no problem hello to our new Alberta Canada family yeah or we're so happy that you guys were we're so thrilled to be invited and so honored to be able to speak to all of you today it's a little bit of a you know it's a little bit of an odd format through a video cast but we're gonna make the absolute best of it the only thing we ask is we really are here as a we're gonna tell our story a good bit especially focusing you know I'm going to school and being a little younger and then talk about our business to blind brothers a little bit but what we'd really really love and appreciate is if all of you out there would be willing to ask questions if there's anything that you you are wondering Brad and I have been visually impaired now for 25 30 years and so we're out we're a plethora of mostly useful knowledge there is some useless stuff up there and frankly the questions are nice too because everyone outside the door just thinks Brian and I are having an awkwardly loud conversation with each other but to sort of start this off and you know we have sort of an outline of things that we want to go over but you know the main topics we wanted to talk about it's first of all you know who we are our experience of vision impairments and then as Brian mentioned our story so maybe to kick it off I'll just mention you know that Brian and I our brothers I know I'm way better looking than him it's hard to believe but basically at the age of five I'm five years older than Brian I started having symptoms of an eye issue in my center vision I failed the kindergarten eye chart and it started this year and a half long hunt through doctor's offices through lots of questions to try to figure out what had happened to my eyesight and it ended me up in a doctor's office with my mom and you know some of you will relate to this experience but you know the doctor walked in after doing a bunch of tests and said that I had a disease called Stargard's disease and if you don't know Stargard's it's a form of macular degeneration it's most common in a lot of folks grandparents we just have sort of a rare and juvenile form of it and you know the effect on the vision is that it really kind of destroys your center vision most the time with Stargard's but not always you keep your peripheral vision Brian I have decent peripheral vision and you know when that moment happened it was incredibly shocking for our parents you know for me as a five-year-old or a seven-year-old at that time I didn't have context on what that meant you know I didn't know how it affect my life I never met anyone with a vision impairment but you know my mom you know shrunk in the corner a little bit because she knew that this was going to be an obstacle and what she had pictured you know what our challenges would be without eyesight obviously was a big moment of concern for her knowing that she was gonna have a son that was visually impaired and mom you know when the way she tells this story is I'm sure what's happened to a lot of you is that she projected for the rest of our lives all of the things that we wouldn't be able to do oh my god they're not gonna be able to drive a date to prom they're not gonna be able to try I mean just getting a date was a challenge for me but at least that the driving piece was not the hard you know but or they're not gonna be able to play regular sports or they're gonna be picked on in school she was projecting so far in the future for two or three weeks and then you know we asked her recently about it and she actually said that you know it took her three weeks and then she noticed that Brad was the same kid that he hadn't changed his outlook on the world was the exact same he was still just a seven-year-old kid trying to figure out life and being the same seven-year-old kid and all that had changed was her perception of him and that if she that her new mission was to not allow visual impairment to dictate our lives it was always going to be another hurdle in our life that it was gonna be a challenge that we always had to overcome but it was one of many in the way she would phrase that to us was to say that you know Brian you may be our you may be of worse eyes than the other kids in school but you might be a little bit taller or you might be a little faster or you might be a little smarter or you might have better hearing I don't know if any of them are true but they were great to hear as a little kid to boost the ego up but that was but that was her big philosophy that if you are this is just one thing you're dealing with and and it's going to help you in the future to be able to take on bigger and better problems and we've really really tried to adopt that yeah and you know one of the things we wanted to talk about is like what what that was like in us for school you know Brian and I have been really lucky to have great people around us resources we've been fortunate to get a good education but certainly there was a lot of confusion in those early years about how we would tackle school because I think there's some very unique challenges maybe even more so in school than there are once you kind of realize what your strengths are and choose careers that cater to that strength so you know one of the first times that I remember having trouble in school was in first grade where you know kindergarten we didn't have a black board and in our first grade we had a we had a blackboard and my mom you know made me promise her that if I couldn't see something on the board I would get up out of my seat and walk to the board to go see it and that along with a litany of other tests and trials was sort of how we originally attacked school because it was a guideline I mean we had some people around us that could give us some but you know these can be very rare and very different and so it started this trial and error process of trying to figure out what worked for us for examples of things that we tested were you know which seat in the classroom let us see the board the best so that we didn't get glare on the chalk board how big did the teacher have to write in the classroom you know could we taught the teacher about making sure that she was you know speaking through the note that she was writing she used a different color chalk that made it easier for us to see and you know some of these were things that were useful these were things that we tried but you know I think early on before we even knew it we realized that the spirit of trying things to figure out what worked was really the most important part and you know just to finish that story you know I remember that first day and first grade going up to that board and you know I'm sure a lot of people can relate to this one of the first times in my life that I felt very different because none of the other kids had to get up out of their seat so I remember walking to the front of that board turning around and feeling all the eyes of the other students on me and being very confused about about that feeling and then you know certainly what starts soon after that is kids coming up to you and saying can you see or how many fingers am I holding up and you know that was a moment that you know made me feel very different you know obviously as a side note and probably a lot of people watching this know the answer to how many fingers am I holding up is always two for some reason that's what everybody does but we just started to realize that that we needed to try at things tweak things make iterations and then it also started this series of little challenges and little moments that over time would build your problem solving and resilience skills and it's it's interesting because when Brad and I went to school you know especially elementary and middle school years and years ago the technology was so much further back I mean I had a pocket magnifier and large print textbooks like audiobooks were not even decent back then there was still on cassette tapes and none of my textbooks for digital and anything so you know even today it seems like there's been such a technological boom that's allowed the playing field to get leveled with you know smart boards and projecting to iPads that you can hold close a lot of textbooks being on computers where you can zoom in or use screen readers or even you know some of the new eyewear glasses and things that allow the technology for you to you know bring the board closer to you and a lot of it actually simply just came down to determination to do the work I mean in fourth grade it wasn't the determination wasn't 100 percent there but you know the technology now allows Brad and I to run a business that we otherwise probably wouldn't have been able to if it was large print books and magnifiers you know 10 years ago and you know not to cut Brian off as I do often throughout the day but you know so that I would say that that really categorized our elementary school experience was trial and error a few awkward situations here and there trying to navigate sort of the practical issues as it relates to vision impairment now if I were to think about sort of middle pause there see if there's any questions oh sure yeah I don't know if there are I just are there any questions Rory I just want to make sure that there that we're not steamrolling anything I also think I'm not seeing I'm not seeing a hands up and nothing has come in on the on the chat but one thing does occur to me uh guys and Brad it's uh from what you were uh you were talking about that point at which kids realized in elementary school that you in fact had a visual impairment and you know we're doing all of the the great four type things like that you referred to what did you guys do to sort of mitigate that to sort of maintain your social uh track you know in in those early elementary years that's a great question because that's the next that's actually uh exactly what I was gonna mention next which was you know after elementary school came sort of middle school and high school and that point that you bring up I would say it was really the crux of uh the challenge for that age because at that age that's what you care about you know you care about your social standing you know you care about uh you know bullies and teasing and fitting in and it is definitely a bumpy process but I think that we learned some very very important lessons and you know and I and we'll talk a little bit through those the first thing the the first thing that happened to me and I and I think and Brian will share his thoughts as well is you know when kids start to uh start to tease each other more or they try to socially isolate somebody they will find the thing that is just obviously different about you you know Kevin has big ears sorry Kevin uh you know uh you know this person is short this person you know is overweight and for Brad and Brian it was you know Brad and Brian can't see you know and when that happened it's one really confusing and two you know very emotional you don't have uh insight as to how to deal with that so I'll tell you what what sort of happened for us when I first started getting teased in middle school or in high school I got I felt isolated and I felt sad you know I felt it was unfair I attributed the teasing to something that was wrong with me which was my eyesight I felt different um and that was the case for a little while and then and then that sort of morphed into a different emotion at some point I started to get angry about it somebody might tease me about my eyesight and this is probably kind of maybe closer to high school somebody might say something to try to take a dig at me and I wanted to sort of attack them back and you know and and and that you try out that idea for or I tried out that idea for a little bit but I think what we inevitably realize is that the person who is making that insult or taking that position is it's really more about them a lot of the teasing and the bullying that goes on it's so you know they could have fixed my eyesight 100 percent and these same people would have found something else to say there's a lot to say just so you're aware but we so but basically that's just to say that the the thing that deflates that energy the fastest is non-reaction non-reactivity you know when somebody says something to try to hurt you they're trying to get a reaction out of you you know take take who take your favorite celebrity the coolest person in the entire world you know if I went up to baracko you know Barack Obama Richard Branson you know not to be political we could pick Donald Trump we could pick Justin Trudeau and I said anything to them in the nature of anything that any bully had said to them hey you have big ears hey you're short you're tall you're fat it's not even going to hit them they are it's it's going to be water off their shoulders they're going to look at you funny laugh and move on with their day and I think as Brian and I learned that really it's not about you it's about them that's the way that we approach those issues yeah yeah one story that kind of highlights this is uh when I first got the high school I went to a different high school in middle school and not many people there knew me so I didn't want to be the blind kid anymore I was just really tired of it and so my first day I just you know I went to class and I sat in the back of the room and I just tried to keep my head down because I thought I could just fake it and maybe I would figure out later on what to do about how to learn in school when I couldn't see the board but I just didn't want for a day to be the blind kid and that first day in my first class my it was a physics class and my physics teacher just calls on me and says Brian can you do the problems on the board and I said sure yeah what problem just because I built these strategies to not have to always be getting up not have to always be telling everybody that I was visually impaired I was embarrassed by it and I kept saying oh what problem you know what what numbers is it multiplication division like which which thing and eventually he's like hey stop playing dumb it's division just do it and I kind of ran out of excuses I ran out of things to say to try and trick the world and so I had to admit which was terrible I don't admit that I couldn't do it because I couldn't see it because I was legally blind and instead of owning my visual impairment I now signaled to every single person in that room to my teacher and most importantly to myself that this was something that was meant to be embarrassing that I that I was embarrassed so you should act odd about it as well but as sad as that moment was for me it was actually an unbelievably good thing because I realized that nothing ever could be worse than that situation nothing could ever hurt more than sitting right there and so I thought hiding it has caused all the pain well what's the opposite of that is just being super open about it and being light-hearted about it and just be saying that this is something that I'm diagnosed with and if that changes somebody's opinion of me then whatever I don't care this is this is who I am and this is who I'm going to be so I might as well own it and that's a really hard realization to make and it's even harder to put into practice and it took me probably you know I'm still working on it today but it took me a few years to really master it but to my best piece of advice to anybody out there who's visually impaired or has a loved one who's visually impaired is that is just that it's not going to change eventually it will because the science is amazing so there's always hope but it's not going to change tomorrow so the best solution that you have is to accept it make it a part of who you are and then move forward and be grateful for it in some ways because that's the best possible way to deal with it and that took me all of high school to to come up with and to work through and it was a really and there was a lot of bumps in the road and I still got angry people who called me blind I still got sad about it I still got hurt by it but every time it happened it was a little bit less because I was like yeah whatever so what I am and that was a big revealing moment for me great answer to the question that I posed earlier guys fabulous thank you and you know basically I think one of the things that's just going on right now in the world that we live in is as technology improves as you know as there are increasing numbers of opportunities for the types of lot lives you can live and jobs you can have and you know we've gotten to know like someone like Molly Burke extremely well who's a blind youtuber and you know you're just fascinated by the opportunities that exist in the world and more and more and more the big risk to something like a vision impairment is that somebody doesn't feel their full sense of self-worth or their full potential or their full sense of self-esteem you know so you know and it may you somebody like you know it's funny people will have different views on this this is just Brian's and I's particular path that we took but you know what we encourage is basically make sure you are putting yourself out there in front of those challenges over and over again because over time even if you're as dumb as Brian and I you will figure out what your lane you will find your your solution you will find what resonates true for you and that's how we approach middle school and high school and learn some of those lessons and then you know Brian and I both applied and went to you know college at the University of Virginia and and you know a lot of and the kind of big piece of advice from that period in our lives is still trying to achieve and I maybe I'll go back for a second you know one thing one question we usually get about you know middle school high school especially about kids that age is should they play sports or should they be should the parents put them into that harder class or whatever and our philosophy always and this comes down from our parents is to give it a try if it isn't going to immediately hurt you like our parents you know weren't really pumped on us becoming professional skydivers or airplane pilots but you know when I said I wanted to play football or lacrosse or Brad wanted to swim we were a we were encouraged to try it you know we maybe we're not going to be the best player on the team we maybe we're not going to have the strongest academic performance in that class but what you come to find is the amount of things you think you'll fail at and the amount of things you actually fail at are are a lot the amount of things you think you're going to fail at is a lot smaller than you would then you'd suspect originally and what that did for us is it grew our confidence it said wow I didn't think I would actually be good at this oh I am maybe there's something else that I don't think I'm going to be good at that I actually might be I better go try to see if I can if I fail whatever cool I realized I was that at it I already thought that so now let me go on to the next thing and that was a big boon of confidence for us and that kind of carried over into our college years and the only big piece of piece of the thought there is you know a lot of major institutions you know our college you know a workplace you know schools in general have a lot of assistance and sometimes people feel that it's a little tough to ask for help when they need it and that's something that we were we became we like to think experts that is realizing where we were deficient realizing where we had a problem and ask and crying to come up with a solution and then asking for help to get that solution rather than just trying to gut your way through every single thing it's really beneficial to say hey I need extra time on tests okay you qualify now I get time and a half that's fantastic hey I you know it'd be great if I could have you know the notes given to me by the professor I can't see the board yeah no problem now I don't even need to go to class that was the best part now but that's the but that piece those asking for help moments are crucial and we're some of the best things we ever did you know and I'll just wrap it up with sort of what we think are like three really great takeaways as it relates to school and growing up with a vision impairment one trial and error right there's going to be solutions and new solutions coming out every day that make you more effective and trying them and experimenting with new ideas I mean it took me a long time to move from to start using like text to speech and it's incredibly valuable it was actually a friend who is cited perfectly cited that used it that made me actually use it because I didn't grow up with it it took me a long time to be willing to experiment with it but trial and error find the tools and the styles and the formats for things that work really well for you number two leverage your resources there are people there are you know there's resources set aside in school and your in your government and basically take advantage of them to the fullest extent possible they're there they will help you it's going to give you in certain circumstances like when we could get like two times you know twice the extra time on tests you know sometimes that was actually you know more than we needed and actually helped us you know and and don't be afraid of finding those things and using them because life is about problem solving and it doesn't matter you know you want to make sure you're using all the tools in your tool chest to get there you know another big resource for us are other people you know we have no problem all day all the time asking people for help and it's not a sign of weakness it's what we use in our business today hey how do we create an email marketing campaign well let's ask someone who's done it really effectively you know all the way down to if we can't see a menu in a restaurant we ask the waiter for the recommendation other people can be in a tremendous resource so trial and error leverage your resources and then three what we touched on embrace challenges the fastest way to build up resilience to find your strengths is to embrace those things that put you outside of your comfort zone and just to kind of cap it all together this is because we think education is so critical especially if you're visually impaired we saw it ourselves growing up through you know elementary school middle school high school it's easy to fall behind in certain settings you know I couldn't tell in third grade or whatever when we learned how to tell time that was kindergarten kindergarten I guess I maybe I was in the delayed program but you know when we learned to tell time I couldn't see what they were doing and I kind of sat back and chatted with my friends and didn't really worry about it and it actually like it took me like an extra year or two to learn how to do it because I had missed that moment in time no pun intended to learn how to do that and you know for somebody who's visually impaired there's unique challenges in school but you cannot let that be an excuse for sacrificing what you learn because that's what you're going to use for the remainder of your of your life to make sure that you can get ahead and I guess we'll pause there for a second before we get into our to the story about how we started this business which is really fun but I'll pause there Roy if you have something to add well a number of things have been certainly running through through my head as you've been been talking you've referenced technology a fair bit uh what kinds of technology are you guys using now or have been using you know sort of effectively in the last while I know you talked about text-to-speech anything else yeah I think text-to-speech you know Apple products have kind of become our go-to for a lot of this stuff the zoom function on the iPhone series is super helpful to do text-to-speech and speech-to-text as well as on our MacBooks we use a lot of the highlight text-to-speech and zoom abilities which you know sounds so trivial but at the end of the day they are unbelievable because I remember as some of you may the windows magnifier the little bar that's out at the top of the computer screen that almost did nothing and I went through all of high school never forgot I read my AP economics book with a pocket magnifier word by word because I didn't have a better tool at the time you know we've seen some so we've seen some folks uh using you know a bunch of different apps obviously like joys and screen readers are great or you know the acrobat readers are another another great tool that I use for most of my college experience but technology comes so far and you know I got to be honest we haven't kept up with it in the same way because it hasn't been as necessary for us from a strictly educational standpoint excellent thank you you know some things that we yeah no it's we actually get you know approached by a lot of these companies that are working on very innovative solutions all the time and you know I think one of the things that's a little tough into spaces things are so personal curated depending on you know what your level of function is and what your particular preferences are you know two things that I think are really fun if you get a chance to experiment with them I don't know if they're practical for everybody but just two really fun apps one is called um Seeing AI it's a Microsoft app it's really fun because you can take a picture of somebody and it'll tell you how old it thinks they are uh it can tell you like the scene in front of you how many people are in front of you it can read handwriting it's a it's a free app it's called Seeing AI it's really cool I also uh we have a friend named Sumon who started a company called IRA AIRA.io and it connects you to a vision orientation specialist through the camera on your phone so if I wanted to find the exit from a room I hit my IRA app it opens up to uh to a somebody who's connected to me um wire over wi-fi tell me where to go and it's sort of again you know it's not necessary for us because Brian and I still have decent mobility but uh but it's just fascinating to see these things emerging excellent thank you very much I've gotten a couple of questions guys in the in the chat that I'll uh I'll pass on to you one of them um addresses the teacher the visually impaired so the the specialist professional who comes into the school to support the classroom teacher uh did you guys uh can you talk about those folks and uh many of many of the folks that are on the webinar today are in fact teachers the visually impaired so maybe just talk about your experience there and uh any any words of advice around that yeah wonderful wonderful woman named Ricky who we're still friends with she was a absolute angel uh and I think I started seeing her when I was in first or second grade all the way up through probably sixth grade-ish sixth or seventh grade and you know what we spent a lot of our time with and it was we spent a lot of time learning braille uh you know because that they weren't sure how far our vision was going to go but on the other side she taught me how to type like I was the first kid in my like second grade or third grade class who knew how to type and she taught me you know she one thing that she did that was always so great is she took cues from my my parents and took cues from my teachers and took cues from everybody that this visual impairment thing was not to be an excuse and that was really something special where she was never hard on me but you know I she'd be like oh did you end up doing that homework that you were supposed to I'm like no I couldn't see the problem she goes I don't know if that's 100 percent true Brian I know how well you can see and I know that you can see that and then you know it just made me be accountable to you know different people who weren't necessarily my parent or my teacher she was really good at being a third party person who was helping me a lot with visual impairment as a as a technical skill but also as a life skill that hey you know I know that you can do that hey I think you should go do that and you know she instilled a lot of very good values in that way yeah I think you know I think the few people that we worked with they really modeled good behavior and life skills for us you know when we were having an issue that came up in school they would be an advocate for us at the school and then we could see you know and that taught us that it was okay to be an advocate for yourself you know so you know it felt like it almost at some level felt like like a bit of a mentorship or just like a warm a warm person that was felt they felt like they were on our team they were empathetic but they also kind of they also were invested in your your growth and building yourself in problem-solving and they served a wonderful role in our lives because we had we up until that point we we hadn't really met many people that empathized with the things that we were struggling with you know they were I mean our parents were great parents and they gave us the right you know and we took our cues from them you know certainly we had good teachers that weren't vision orientation specialists but to sit down with somebody that you knew had met with you know dozens if not hundreds of people who have faced a similar challenge to you as a kid you know that person is a somebody whether you like it or not you really got to look to for cues because they just by nature of their role have an expertise and a wisdom about what you're going through that you may not have so we were very lucky to have very warm supportive genuine people who taught us you know practical skills as well as advocacy skills as well as held us to a standard as well awesome that's that was great great answer thank you very much something else that sort of came out of that was your vision guys ever to the point where braille was considered for you in school no so Brad and I learned braille we got grade one and we got grade two and then and then you know they kind of realized their vision had had plateaued so we I didn't continue to learn it I mean I still we still have it but not great too that is tricky stuff but I would say that no we never used braille in school as a learning device awesome thank you yeah and and the reason but just to clarify the reason we learned it is because we have a degenerative disease so they weren't sure how quickly or dramatic the vision loss would be so that's that's what sort of inspired us learning it at that age great great and then another question that came up and this one is a really poignant one for for teenagers who are seeing all of their friends moving in on the driving world and knowing that you probably were never going to get your driver's licenses any any words of wisdom around you know working with those kids yeah it's actually it's actually one word uber it's amazing they you know they drive for you you don't even need to bother with it at this point you know it's funny that's always everyone's biggest concern and if you talk to anybody under the age of 15 their biggest concern is always getting their license if they're visually impaired or not but I think if you talk to anybody over the age of 17 or 18 they don't really care about having their license and if you and most visually impaired people who didn't get their license in our 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 don't really miss driving I mean I we're talking to a lot of people who think oh yeah that'd be nice but you find friends who are willing to be your driver you now have uber and Lyft and all those apps that get somebody for you when your friends can't and uh you know it's a it's a tough thing in that moment but once you I don't know once it's once you're already past that point it feels less important yeah I would add that um I would add that yes it it sucks right yeah everyone is getting to do this cool thing that you might be limited to do uh the way that you know we kind of dealt with that is one uh we had a lot of friends who could drive um and and frankly you know it was something that we tried our best to to turn into a situation where it became less and less of an issue you know uh when we went on to college you know we didn't really have to drive anywhere in college we were on a campus that was very accessible when we were kind of finding deciding where we wanted to live after college we both moved to big cities you know where public transportation helped us out it's and truthfully the kind of amazing thing is that nobody is going to be driving like one team 20 years I mean I mean it's amazing how quick technology is moving and you know you know it's not the best answer there's no magic fix to it I would just say uh the practical advice is find friends who can drive you know maybe uh argue with uber to try to get free credit uh in your city or um and and put yourself in situations where driving becomes less and less of an issue um to the extent you know that that you can I mean and other than that you know we certainly were disappointed that we weren't able to maintain our license but that that's how we dealt with it great great answers thank you guys and we'll take one more question I'm not even sure based on when you finished school if this is going to be something that uh that you're going to be able to offer any advice on but I'll throw it out there anyway and this will be the last one before we move on to talking about uh about the business and that's from a from a teacher who works in an online environment any tips for students who have a visual impairment who are taking online courses so I'm not sure if that was a thing when you guys were in school or not give them all a's I think that's really the best thing you could do uh you know I think that's really the answer I didn't I I oh my classes were kind of in person uh but I truthfully it should be easier truth truthfully you know there should be some big advantages there I mean in the sense that depending on the platform I know sometimes there's weird you know there's weird things on these platforms but ideally you're teaching on a platform where somebody can use their text to speech program really well what's great is that you know they can record the audio uh I mean that'd be helpful for anybody I mean the lecture by nature of the fact that it's um that it's uh um you know on audio it's going to be easy for them to hear it might be easier for them to play back certainly I can imagine a situation where it's like a math class and you're trying to demo something you know on on a presentation or on sort of some sort of live stream that's tough you know some of that would be tough in person yeah it would be tough in person you know it what we always tried to do what we tried to do and this really applies to a situation where you're and this was really true in math classes at least for me is is it was really hard to follow what was being done on the board uh I always had to either meet with the teacher 10 minutes or 15 minutes either before the class or after the class so they could contextualize the lesson or if they could they would give me some sort of handout that was large print or print or blown up um you know I think it's probably going to be somewhat platform for specific and subject specific but certainly uh what what's awesome if your low vision is that it allows you to sort of zoom in to see people I mean I can zoom in on like Roy's face when he has his camera on easier than I could have seen it easier than if he was right here in person um that might not be a great specific answer to the question but that's that's been our experience no that was a good answer thank you very much so it's 413 now we we've got about 17 minutes left so I think we'll launch into uh some talk about the Two Blind Brothers brand great um so this brand has been the greatest adventure uh of our lives thus far and we'll give you a little bit of background on it um you know in the summer of 2015 oh shoot I'm I'm sorry I just gotta take this one second I'm going for this call oh yeah I think I think Brian has a call and uh like all younger brothers he leaves me hanging by myself to do all the work uh like he does in our business normally um hopefully he'll be back in a second um uh but uh so basically the story on Two Blind Brothers is Brian and I were um walking around in New York City one day I was working at an investment firm Brian was working in sales uh for a data company and we walked into a Bloomingdale's store and you know if you're blind or you're visually impaired shopping can sometimes be a pain and sometimes and keeping track of people can sometimes be a pain and on this particular day Brian and I lost each other in the store I find him a half an hour later outside the store and we had both bought the exact same shirt and we're like first of all we played rock paper scissors and he lost so he had to go return it because you can't wear the same shirt as your brother unless you run a clothing brand and you we inevitably wear the same shirts all the time um but in that moment we were trying we were kind of laughing about why that was and you know just the way that Brian and I shop is you know well like kind of like touch all the clothes to see if we like the feel of them and then we'll do the work to figure out the brand the price you know the size we'll get the health and the sales associate and it was that attention to touch that led us to the same shirt and both him and I just loved these soft henley three button shirts and at that moment we thought you know there's no way we could ever like leave our careers or or actually go think about starting a successful clothing brand it's like one of the you know our clothing company is probably one of the worst businesses you could probably go out and prospectively start it's just super competitive and and the margins aren't great and then because you're a brand you're constantly fighting for attention but we had a lot of friends in New York City that worked in the fashion space and they offered to help us work with a manufacturer here in the city to make a few hundred shirts and the idea would be this would be a fun side project for us and we would sell the shirts to our friends we'd make a little website and we are very close with a national organization actually it's in Canada as well it's called the Foundation Fighting Blindness and they fund all the research for not just our retinal eye disease but but many many others we've been close to them since we were young and we thought this would be 80% it would be a fun project for us to do and 20% we were doing something good to give back and but it was always meant to be a side project and then what happened is we had a friend make a video on our story and he did a he was a Starbucks barista but he had a passion for doing video he did a two-minute video on our story we put it out on Facebook and it went crazy and then all of a sudden and this was in May of 2016 when we launched the brand then we started getting these media inquiries we would you know the first really cool one was a local news station so that they wanted to come interview us Brian and I both called in sick to work to do the interview and that started snowballing up until January of 2017 when we were on the Ellen DeGeneres show we got a random call from one of their producers on our customer service line and then after we all fainted and fell on the floor we did several interviews with them over the course of the month and that was a huge inflection point for us so after that a lot happened we had the support from Ellen other NBC Nightly News which is a big show here in the US covered it we got some big support from Richard Branson of you know Virgin Airlines Virgin Galactic action cutcher the actor gave us some support and our heads are spinning in this moment but it was at that time that we decided this is such a rare opportunity in life to be given this type of momentum on something that was very personal to us something that we thought you know could make an impact and something that we enjoyed and that's when we decided to go all in to professionalize the company we hired a few people and we've been sort of rocking and rolling ever since to date we've been able to donate three hundred thousand dollars to the foundation fighting blindness we've had a chance to meet all kinds of amazing people who faith who who dealt with blindness and vision impairment even much more successfully than Brian and I have governor David Patterson who is the first governor of New York who is blind Eric Weinmeyer who's climbed every mountain the tallest mountain on every continent who's blind Molly Burke the cool young youtuber and just tons and tons of fascinating people so it's been a really fun adventure but the point I want to make about it though is that a lot of what helped build that company were the lessons that we learned in school and it just so it hits you over the head like a like a sack of potatoes if Brian and I never got comfortable being called the blind kid you know by that those kids in middle school and high school we would have never been comfortable naming our company two blind brothers if we never had that experience of figuring out in first grade or high school or college how to problem solve and deal with something that didn't have an obvious solution we wouldn't have been able to tackle some of the issues related to the entrepreneurial problems that come up with any startup you know one of the tools that we talk about a lot I mean and this is unique to Brian and I is we can't recognize faces and one of the skills that that taught us through high school and college and and in my dating life in New York City is that you have to we've we've sort of made the decision that if we don't recognize somebody right away we try to take as much ownership of the conversation as possible you walk up to me I don't know if I've met you before I don't know if you know that I have a vision impairment you might be an important person and maybe the first conversation I want to have with you is not telling you all about Stargardt's disease so you know I say hey how's it going what have you been up to what's new oh yeah how's the holiday season been any travel plan you know and you just take a lot of ownership and and it's those skills that have helped us do things like you know give speeches or you know riff off the cuff on a on a webinar or you know chat with the junior producer on the Ellen DeGeneres show and and we've just been fascinated by this phenomenon that the obstacles in your life not all of them you know no one's I don't think it's wrong for somebody to say that like every challenge you're ever given is a good one but most of the challenges in our lives are the things that unlock our potential because the problem solving and resilience and reaction to challenges it's those mindsets and skills that are so helpful and for entrepreneurship it's those are the critical skills so that's the story of two blind brothers and how it relates to our experience coming up as as students fabulous I have one question the the the first little video that that you skipped out on work for and was on the six o'clock news did your bosses see that yeah so it got really really awkward because about every other week we had to do an interview and I think our bosses thought we were dying you know it's like it's like somebody's taking many many doctors visits like you're kind of like a little too polite to ask what's going on and then what happened is when then the ellen segment aired you know that was the biggest one by a mile that we had ever had and we knew that walking into the office the next day was going to be a rough day luckily we had some very understanding people around but the first thing that was hey can I see you in my office and when the door shut I was terrified Brian and I both shared our own stories and and we both thought we were going to get fired and the and and Brian's boss was the funniest he goes so I saw the segment yesterday congratulations but I'm going to have to revoke a lot of your paid time off and you know we we worked out some deals we still do some residual work outside of Two Blind Brothers we've worked out some really nice deals with you know our former companies at some level and it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be fantastic thanks from anyone else we had one question earlier that I'd come up Brad and it was about orientation and mobility skills and and training do you guys use white canes or identification canes or any of that stuff we don't you know one of the things about Stargardt's disease is for all not not all Stargardt's people but but for us you know we've been lucky to keep a lot of our peripheral vision which is you know which is you know more important for mobility than center vision sort of the opposite of a disease like retinitis pigmentosa we have met a number of Stargardt's people who do but they generally use it as you know to identify themselves especially if they're in a new environment so Brian and I don't use them some people with our condition have them but but Brian I do not excellent anyone else somebody just posted on the on the chat that they love the the comment that you made most of the challenges in our lives unlock our potential she said a lot of that unfortunately it is like the truest thing in the world you know if you want to get better at something you know you have to put yourself outside of your your comfort zone you know and even in small ways we see that every single day when Brian and I had to do our first interview for Two Blind Brothers I was shaking in my boots I was terrified you know we didn't know what we were going to say we were worried about how it was going to come across on camera and there is nothing you could have said to me to make it better the only thing that made it easier was literally doing it another 10 times and that's what really what's helped us a lot and we really encourage that for anybody anybody vision impairment or or else wise you know you're going to learn so much about yourself if you put yourself outside of that that comfort zone our brains are very lazy about wanting to learn new things and it they kind of need to be put through some discomfort to get there you know obviously you know nothing that is going to have a permanent that failure doesn't affect you in a permanent way but it's so so it's so true and and usually most people can think of an example of something where you know one of the harder things that they had to do actually ended up teaching them their greatest skills right right we've got a comment that Angela made I was going to to say to you that we hosted the Canadian Vision Teachers conference here in Alberta last May and Molly Burke was one of our keynote speakers and and Angela says we exported Molly Burke to you guys oh yeah yeah now she's a big LA superstar and that's right she was on the YouTube rewind video I mean we yeah I mean yeah that's that's funny it's a small world you know it's a small world but you know I I like to I like to look at somebody like Molly as an example of a few things you know are all of us able to be you know multimillion subscriber YouTube channels no and do we want to be it probably not but I think her success is an example of how different the world is than it was 20 years ago where you know that wasn't a realistic career you know and technology has allowed her to level the playing field to to find the thing that she was good at and sort of double down on it I mean one anecdote that Brian didn't get to share is you know I worked originally at an investment bank and I was horrible at my job because it was so excel intensive and and it wasn't that I couldn't do it but I was so much slower than a lot of the other people I worked with and you know I did my best to find the areas of the job where I could you know leverage my strengths but my brother kind of saw that saw how I was having trouble there and immediately decided that he wanted to go into something where he could leverage his interpersonal skills better and he went into sales selling software to to banks and credit unions at this company at first at Oracle and then at a company called SNL Financial and he was literally the best the top sales guy of a class of 400 people his first year and it and it just underscores that you you know you really got to try a lot of different things to find out where your strengths are because just because you struggle with one thing doesn't mean you're going to struggle with everything and we all have those things that we're better at than most yeah for sure well Brad we are coming right up to the end of our hour we've got one more question here Angela asked that she tried shopping during black Friday sales and apparently you guys don't ship to Canada any plans to change that oh man I am you know Angela you gotta you gotta hit up so here's the problem with shipping to Canada not to make this the pen ultimate question of the talk but it's usually not a pleasant experience for the customers because one they got to pay expensive shipping and then number two oftentimes they'll get hit with this 5% to 15% tax when it arrives so what we have to do is we actually got to start manufacturing and set up a distribution channel in Canada to solve that problem but that that's that's the reason we've turned it off is because people weren't having a good experience with the shipping and the duties on it well we're going to be coming to New York with our grandson to see Harry Potter and the cursed child in the upcoming month so I can I can you know collect all of the orders and go down to the store I will have a suit I will have several suitcases ready to fill out of your garage then it'll be it'll be perfect perfect well with that Brad I'm going to say thank you very much for taking the hour this was awesome there are all kinds of comments in the in the chat here about how much folks enjoyed this and yeah thank you so much and all the best to you and Brian as you guys continue on your path you know and I and I want to end it by thanking you guys I want first of all thank you for thinking of us and inviting us you know the the magic of the success of the clothing brand is only because of the community in this space I mean there's 11 there's at least 11 million people in the US that have you know a retinal eye disease and a lot of people who know somebody like that and I'm sure the numbers are similar in Canada as well and you know basically this community has lifted us up and it's put us in a position to meet interesting people to enact a mission that we care about and it's been one of the most rewarding experiences of our lives and to you know to the students I would say you know leverage your resources challenge yourself try as many things as you can to find out what works for you for the teachers I want to thank you personally for the craft that you've decided to dedicate yourself to it made an incredible impact on my brother and I and you have an enormous effect on on what it does for a young person to have that guidance and we're just we're just really grateful and we're here for you guys if you ever need to get in touch with us or you ever want to talk email us it's hello at twoblindbrothers.com and just and mention you know are the customer service team is right here in our office and you can reach us you can you can reach us anytime for anything that you guys need if we can be helpful fantastic and with that I will thank you again and wish you a merry Christmas and the same to to everyone who's on the webinar today take care everyone good night yeah and if you ever run into my brother again give him a hard time for bailing on this it was probably our we had an emergency call with our production facility um that I think was supposed to come in later but if you ever encounter Brian just make sure to tell him that uh that I'm way better than him for closing us out and he should he should stay I was wondering if maybe that was a distributor a potential distributor from Canada calling I wish it was I I wish it was uh we have uh 13 000 um inquiries in our customer service inbox right now so it could have been one of many wow probably probably a problem and not uh and not necessarily a good message just because everybody wants their orders by Christmas but um but we yeah but we really appreciate you guys you want to thank you again and please stay in touch you bet take care bye now take care