Daren Falter: Failing My Way to Success
Daren Falter is no stranger to failure, and talks about setting goals and priorities in the right order. He shows us how to succeed despite the challenges of dealing with Parkinson’s disease.
In this episode, Daren talks about:
An event early in his marriage which changed his perspective and goals
Prioritizing the most important things in life and doing those first
How God sometimes uses failure to move us forward
Financial hardships
Physical challenges
Climbing Mount Rainier with Parkinson’s disease
The importance of Visualization in achieving goals
You can connect with Daren Falter on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or you can go to his website, Darenfalter.com
Here is the transcript of today’s episode:
Daren 0:01
The one thing I've learned about adversity is it's not something that you're supposed to avoid or try to get over or under it. You go through it to become who God needs you to be. And you go through it to become who you were meant to be.
Tamara Anderson 0:23
Welcome to Stories of Hope in Hard Times, the show that explores how people endure and even thrive in difficult times, all with God's help. I'm your host, Tamara K. Anderson. Join me on a journey to find inspiring stories of hope and wisdom learned in life's hardest moments.
My guest today is an author, entrepreneur, adventurer, speaker, and trainer. He's a co-founder of Yoli, a health and wellness company in Washington state in the United States. His best-selling book, “How to Select a Network Marketing Company” has sold over 50,000 copies in seven countries and three languages. He is also a husband and a father. I'm pleased to present Daren Falter. Daren, are you ready to share your story of hope?
Daren 1:17
I'm ready. I'm here. My company, Yoli, is actually in Salt Lake City. I'm in Washington.
Tamara Anderson 1:23
That's what it is.
Daren 1:26
When I started my company, I told my partners, I said, “I'll fly in. I'll commute here for a while. But I'm not leaving the Pacific Northwest because this is my home.” I love it here. I won't leave my mountains.
Tamara Anderson 1:40
That's awesome. So Daren and I met a number of years ago at a Premiere Author training with author Richard Paul Evans, and we became quick friends. We've seen each other at numerous author training since then. But we've just developed a friendship and I thought it was time that I brought Daren on the show because he has such an incredible story of hope. Now, Daren, you had an experience early in your marriage that seemed to set the tone for what you wanted to do with your life. Would you mind sharing with us that story and why it changed you and impacted you the way it did?
Daren 2:16
When I was a young husband, my nephew, who I’d spent a lot of time with riding horses and doing bedtime stories, he was about seven or eight years old. He was playing with his father, with the horses, and he had his hand tied up in the lead rope. And the horse spooked.
Tamara Anderson 2:39
Oh, no.
Daren 2:39
That drug him underneath. And he went for quite a long ways. By the time his father got him, his body was badly damaged. He held his son while he took his last breath. I was a young father. I had twin daughters that were just like two years old. They had to stay home from the funeral. We didn't have any money for travel, didn’t have money for really living, we were barely making it as was. This was my wife's side of the family. So she decided, Okay, we're going to take your credit card, put a plane ticket on there, and she's going to go to Utah and be with the family. So she did that. It was a beautiful experience. It was very spiritual, it was very moving. She got her closure. I didn't. I didn't have any closure on that because I wasn't there. I didn't experience any of that.
That experience haunted me for years and years and years--still does, that I didn't have the opportunity to go when I needed to go. The thing that's amazing to me about a lifestyle where you have time, freedom, and the money to move is when you need to move, you move. When you need to go and you need to take people with you and stay for as long as you need to go you do that. Because you say so you. You have that ability to do it. If you need to stay there and take care of people and then cancel tickets and change them over to somewhere else. It's not about boats and planes and automobiles and lifestyle. It's about the freedom of movement to go when you need to go and the freedom to stay when you need to stay as long as you need to stay. No job, no boss, no person is going to say that you can't. You have that freedom and that's a powerful thing. I vowed to myself, after that happened, that I would never put myself in a situation ever again where I didn't have the power to move and go and be at the funeral, be at the wedding, be at the graduation, be at the important things in people's lives. And take anybody and everybody with me that I needed to take.
Tamara Anderson 4:56
What a powerful motivator to a young husband and father, that this is the reason I want to be successful is because I want to have important time to connect with people when they need me. It was like you wanted to be God's light to the world, you wanted to help others when they needed help, that's beautiful.
Daren 5:22
Sometimes we get blocked, because we're not in a situation where we can. Sometimes we take privileges that we don't earn, like putting things on credit cards that we shouldn't. We're just not there, we're not in a position where we have the freedom to bless other people's lives. It's kind of like when somebody is receiving charity from someone else and then they're spending all their days serving people, but they're not taking care of their own household. You have to be personally self-sufficient first, before you can reach out to other people. It's a it's a god given principle. It's a powerful motivator when you realize that that freedom can be taken away from you, because you don't have the means to go when you need to go.
Tamara Anderson 6:16
Wow, that is such good advice to think about. I had a really interesting week, this last week, where I didn't accomplish some of the things on my to do list. When I sat down and reviewed my week, I was kind of down on myself, “Well, you didn't get these things done.” God prompted me, He said, “Write down what you did get done.” And I wrote it down. I went to a doctor's appointment with one of my children, I went to this with a couple of my other children, I went on a date with my husband. The things that I was accomplishing, were things that are more important, those relationship based things, right? It wasn't just something to do on the checklist, but it was these connections that really matter.
Daren 7:14
That’s what they say, all the success gurus say that before you go to bed at night, you make a list of top priorities in your life. The most important things in your life, absolute most important things for your life, your business, your relationships, you just list them in order. Then you hit the first thing first, the second thing, second, you go through that list. When you get to the sixth thing, and all of a sudden your day’s gone, and you haven't done it, they say procrastinate that. Because you've done well. The thing is, you don't go to the sixth thing the next day. You make the new list and hit it from the top again. You may never get to the sixth thing. That's okay. That's how you have success. If you're putting the most important things for what you consider as success in your life first, first things first, you'll never fail.
Tamara Anderson 8:13
Because you're living life in the right order.
Daren 8:18
It's kind of like the analogy where they put the rocks in the jars? And the gravel, it's that kind of thing. You're putting those big rocks in. Sometimes you don't get to the small stuff.
Tamara Anderson 8:32
But as long as you're getting the right things done, the big stuff.
Daren 8:36
Big stuff first. All the other stuff, typically, will work out its way in and out properly if you get the big things in there first.
Tamara 8:49
So one of the reasons I wanted to have Daren on the show is because he's been through some really challenging times. Daren, why don't you talk to us about adversity and some of the adversities you have encountered in your life and how they have changed you and blessed you, at the same time.
Daren 9:08
The one thing I've learned about adversity is it's not something that you're supposed to avoid or try to get over or under. You go through it, to become who God needs you to be. And you go through it to become who you were meant to be. That's what life is all about is the hardships that we have and the and the person we become through the process of dealing with those hardships. So with that said, what are my hardships? First of all, I'm going to share with you some of my financial hardships, my physical hardships, and my emotional hardships. I'm going to be pretty vulnerable.
I started out in my adult life with a dream that I wanted to have an above average income. I wanted to have a better than average lifestyle. I wanted to travel. I wanted to have time and freedom. I saw people around me doing that, but I didn't know how to do it. I saw people, even as I got into my mid-20s, who were doing that, who were having this incredible success. Some of them were younger than me. I thought, “Well, if they can do it, I can do it. But how come I'm not doing it? What's the secret?” I really struggled for about three or four years to try to figure out how to how to live an unorthodox life, how to make money through an unorthodox career. The adversity that you go through is mainly the people telling you that you can't do it, the people around you that don't believe in it, the people who are traditionalists who want you to work a regular job. My mom was saying, “Why don't you just get a regular job?” She says, “Go to college, get a job. Get a degree and get a regular job so you have something to fall back on if this other thing doesn't work out.” I'm saying to myself, and to her, “If I go to college and get a degree and have something to fall back on, I'm gonna fall back.” If you have something to fall back on, you're gonna fall back.
So I kind of had this attitude of, I'm not going to have Plan B, I'm just going to have Plan A and I'm going to work it until it works. You could call it plan ABCD. Just keep going. But it was always Plan A for me, from college age on. I bailed out of college about the first year. I just decided I was going to be an entrepreneur. I was going to be in direct sales. I was going to make money through marketing, independent distributorships, through network marketing. I really struggled. I struggled with that for several years. Something magic happened at some point where, I guess, God said, “You struggled enough.” He threw me a bone. When you find your first little success, you realize it worked. It gives you so much hope, and so much determination, and so much excitement that you just push through to go to the next level. I could go on forever about all the heartaches, pains, and things you go through to get there. But the bottom line is, if you just commit to yourself, when you're failing in life, to just get up every time you fail, just get up, brush yourself off and keep going. I do this analogy, I can't do it right here because we're not in front of an audience, but I do failing forward. I'm really good at taking a fall, like falling on stage, or falling off a step. The other day, I fell down three flights of stairs. Or three steps, not three flights of stairs, three steps, because I forgot they were there. I landed on my back looking up. I'm still a little bruised, but I feel pretty good. I mean, I take the fall well.
So I demonstrate that on stage, I fall down, I get up, I fall down, I get up and I do that like eight times. They're like, “What's wrong with this guy?” By the time I finish my last fall, I'm all the way across the room. I'm like, “I'm falling and failing forward.” When I get up, I'm about three feet farther because I'm a tall guy. That's how I've made it. I failed my way to success. It's amazing because the first time I did that, I tried seven different distributorships in an industry called network marketing, direct sales, multi-level marketing. I failed in every one of them until the seventh one. It took me seven tries to get it right. On that seventh one, I had tremendous success. Then I failed a bunch more on the next try and found another one. On that last try I had tremendous success again. Then I did it a third time. So I have had three different major successes in my career, and probably three times four, so 12. I've had 12 major, just absolute failures, just total failures. So my average is one in four.
Tamara 14:55
That’s not bad, actually.
Daren 14:56
Every time I put my heart and soul into a business opportunity, I've succeeded one in four times. It's that fourth time that they'll get you. I realized and one of the things that helped me with that career, I got to the point where I'd failed so many times, and I had looked at all the criteria for success, that I said, “Okay, I'm not gonna pick another direct sales company distributorship until I've looked at every other company.” If you want to get into the best, you got to look at all the rest. So I looked at over 200 different home-based distributorships That was one of my problems. Anybody that’s ever gotten into a home based business, usually, it's because you go to a business opportunity meeting, and they just pitch you on this amazing thing. The thing you’ve got to realize is that the opportunity is probably not quite as good as what they're pitching.
There’s this story, I don't know if you've ever heard this before, but a man dies and goes to the pearly gates and St. Peter says, “Okay, here's the deal. I can let you in to heaven right now. But I have a policy, I need to show you the other place to make sure that you're making the right choice.” So he goes, “Okay, well, let's get in the elevator.” They go down, down, down, down, down, down, down, open it up they’re in hell. They look around and everybody's dancing, singing, eating some good food, there’s a live band. It looks pretty good. So he goes, “Well, it looks good.” Peter says, “Well, let's get back in the elevator. Let's have a discussion.” So they get back in the elevator and the doors close. He says, “So yeah, I like the billowy clouds and the angelic music in heaven and everything. But if I had to choose right now, I think I choose this place. I like the live jazz, I like the dancing, the food's great, the people look really interesting.” So Peter goes, “Okay, is that your final choice?” Yes. So he opens the doors, he steps out, doors close. All of a sudden, everybody's screaming, there's fire and brimstone. People are panicking. There are people running around, these demons are poking people with their sticks and saying, “Get back in the cage, get back in the cage.” What happened? He goes, “Oh, were you just here a few minutes ago? Yeah you were at the opportunity meeting for hell. This is this is reality.”
That’s the whole story. It kind of encompasses what some people see at these distributorship opportunity meetings. They go there, they see the best of the best, but they don't realize all the hell they have to go through to get to their success. I went through the process of breaking down and looking behind the curtain on 200 companies. I narrowed it down to five. Then I chose one. When I chose that company, that was the company where I became connected with Robert Allen, who was Richard Paul Evans’ business partner for a while. That's how I ended up meeting Richard, through Robert Allen. I got involved with that company. Sure enough, over the next two or three years, I rose to the top of the company. I had my first really successful opportunity where I went through the roof with my income. I went full time, I made a six figure income after that. Then I became a top leader in that company. The interesting thing is, of all the companies that I looked at, those five that I chose that I could have joined, all five are still in business today. That was in 1994. I got involved in 1994 with this particular company, I worked until 1998 as an independent distributor, and I quit because there was stuff going on and I stopped building. I kept the distributorship but I stopped actively participating in 1998. I still, to this day, get a weekly check. All I have to do is buy a couple hundred dollars’ worth of product and I get a weekly check 20 years later.
Tamara Anderson 19:39
So perhaps one of the lessons then there is when you're setting a goal or looking to do something, make sure you do your research. That really pays off.
Daren 19:53
Here's what's interesting about that. That adversity led me to my success, but it also led me to just heaps of success because my friends all said, “Hey, you've done all this research on these 200 companies, write a book.” Robert Allen was, at the time, encouraging people to write books. Richard Paul Evans always talked about people writing books. I had friends tell me, “Write a book.” I did all this research and I put it into a book over the next few years. By 1998, I published my first little booklet called “How to Select a Network Marketing Company.” Then I did a second edition a few years later, a third edition, fourth edition, fifth edition. Now it's coming up on 2021, it’s in its seventh revision. I'm not going to ever revise it again after this, because I'm so sick. I sold over 50,000 copies of the book in seven countries in three different languages.
The whole idea of writing a book called “How to Select a Network Marketing Company,” was that I wanted people to think of me as the go to person if they're looking for a company. What it became was a recruiting funnel. People came to me all the time saying, “Daren knows which company’s the best.” So they come to me and I just have them join my company. I didn't feel bad about that. The thing you’ve got to realize is I looked at all the companies and chose this one. As a matter of fact, for a while I created this binder. It was called “Working Smarter, Not Harder: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly of all the Companies in Direct Sales.” Basically what it was is a manual of every single company, like 100 company profiles, corporate management team, compensation plan, product line, everything there is to know, the good and the bad and the ugly. That's how I organize: Herbalife, here’s the good. This is why I love it. The bad, the ugly. That way, it's objective. I did the good, bad, and the ugly of the company that I was involved with. I said, “Here's the good. Here's the bad. Here's the ugly part that I don't like. But it's so much better than the ugly parts.” I was very objective about it. That really served my career well. That's kind of how I got over those first years, then eventually went on, built another business with a network marketing company where I became in the top 20 distributors, out of a million distributors, with a couple of my buddies. Then in November 2009, I started a direct sales company with three of my network marketing distributor partners. That's what I've done to this day. We're 11 years old on November 6. That's been a wild ride.
Tamara Anderson 23:03
So business successes and failures, the biggest lesson is just keep going, do your research before you join any company or go after it.
Daren 23:16
And I will say one more thing about the business piece. Please, never join a company. You don't you don't pick companies. You choose people. You don't choose organizations. You choose the people behind the organizations, you look for people, it's always people. This next part is all about people as well. It's about people that you can rely on and count on.
Tamara Anderson 23:42
It is so important to have good people that you can rely on and count on at any point in life. I know that these financial challenges were not the only challenges you faced in your life. Before we dive into the physical challenges and diagnosis you received, let's take a quick break. When we get back, would you mind telling us about that and how those physical challenges taught you even more?
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And we're back. I'm talking to Daren Falter, who is an author, entrepreneur, adventurer, speaker and trainer. We've been talking about financial hardships and an important lesson he learned when he was very young and married. Now we're on to physical challenges, because Daren has had quite a challenging road, and yet he hasn't let it keep him down. Daren, why don't you tell us a little bit about that?
Daren 25:48
You bet. The company that I own is called Yoli. As I was building Yoli, I started having some physical issues. I started having some issues with my breathing. I had this pneumonia for a while, got over it, but I just couldn't get back to feeling like I was 100%. My breathing was off. I was wheezing a lot, I thought maybe I have asthma. So I go into the pulmonologist and he does a few tests and says, “You have a paralyzed diaphragm on the left side.” So my left diaphragm is completely paralyzed. The left lung lobe is completely healthy lung tissue but it doesn't pull down to fill there like a normal lung. So it just sits there without any activity. The right lung does all the work. He says, “There's really nothing you can do about it. Just live your life and exercise.” I was a mountaineer my whole life. I've been backpacking and hiking, and around 40 years old, right when I was starting with my Yoli business, I started climbing mountains with my climbing buddy. We climbed a lot of mountains, mostly in the Pacific Northwest Washington area. All of a sudden, it was really hard to do because I couldn't breathe at altitude.
So I trained for a whole year, because we had this goal of climbing Mount Rainier in one day. We wanted to climb Mount Rainier. It took me a year, but after a year of training hard on the stair machine and running and doing all these things, I didn't notice my lung anymore. I think I built up this mega lung on the right side. So that kind of went away. It was still hard to do, but I compensated for it. Then all of a sudden, I started having issues with my gait, walking. I had trouble keeping a rhythm. My left leg wanted to drag all the time. I dragged my foot. I had a funny kind of stance, my left arm always wanted to come up and hang here instead of swinging freely. It just came up and got really stiff. I had this thing called frozen shoulder for a while. I was starting to have a little bit of tremors. I didn't know what was going on. I thought maybe I had a stroke they didn’t know about.
So I went into the neurologist. He was nervous to diagnose me. I think he knew what it was, but he didn't want to say what it was. So he sent me up to the University of Washington to a specialist up there. The guy looked at me, he didn't even do any tests or anything. He didn't do any taking any fluids out or any kind of brain scan. He just watched me. They said, “You’ve got Parkinson's.” Really? Yeah, he just said, “It's observational.” I said, “Wow, that's pretty amazing. Doc, you’re just looking at me. You're watching me walk.” You’ve got Parkinson's, that's a bold statement.
So then I got a list of the symptoms. He goes, “Here's your symptoms.” I looked at it and I said, “I could have diagnosed myself, I got all those things.” It was kind of a shocker. But it was also good to know, because then I knew what to do about it. I didn't know how many treatments there were. It got worse and worse and worse. It started getting to the point where I was having trouble walking in stores and carrying things and my balance was off. I was having trouble climbing, couldn't climb. As soon as I started getting treatment, and taking medications, and the nutritional supplements, and the diet that I was referred to, I had a lot of improvement. It was a challenge. The funny thing about it, is I tease all the time. One of the things I like to do when I'm in a group of people, this is pre COVID, I'm in a group of people, and if somebody bumps me on the arm, or bumps me while I'm walking, or when I'm standing, I can tip over, or I take a step because I don't have very good balance. Which is not great for a mountaineer. I would say, “If I reach out and grab you on the way down, I take no pleasure in it, it's just a survival technique.” I always get people laughing at that. I'm going to grab you on the way down because I'm always falling and trying to reach out to grab somebody's shoulders or their arms.
There's the thing called restless leg, that's really a challenge with Parkinson's. It sometimes causes me to be claustrophobic in small places, I can't move my legs, I can't stretch them out. I get claustrophobic. I get anxiety, like on an airplane sometimes. One time I was sitting at the bulkhead, first class, and I couldn't stretch my leg out. I got panicky and I stood up real fast and smashed my head on the top because I'm tall. It was just like this vicious cycle of problems. The stewardess saw I was in distress, she says, “Are you okay?” And I said, “Could I move to a non bulkhead seat?” It took care of the problem. But restless leg is a big issue with Parkinson's tremors, the stability issue, the just chronic fatigue, you're always so tired, you have to take naps.
Tamara Anderson 31:39
Do they know what causes Parkinson's? Daren?
Daren 31:43
It's the lack of dopamine naturally produced in the brain. It causes you to not have enough dopamine. You can supplement with that. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Awakenings with Robert DeNiro and Robin Williams.
Tamara Anderson 32:00
I’ve heard of it, but I have never seen it.
Daren 32:02
That's your next movie. By the way. Now, these people had a special type of Parkinson's. It was another disease. They had all had a childhood disease that they overcame. Then in their later life, they had Parkinson's combined with that. It was this thing where they were sitting there, comatose. They're sitting there, not doing anything in like a wheelchair. Then they throw a tennis ball, and they catch it. Like they haven’t moved for days, for weeks, for months, and they throw a tennis ball and they catch it. They go, “Oh, something's going on here.” Then they started experimenting with this dopamine drug, like we take for Parkinson's. They just become awake again, they become alive. They don't have any symptoms. People that haven't talked to their loved ones in 30 years, when I get dopamine in my system, all of a sudden, I seem pretty normal, and I get the right amounts and the right combination. Then when it wears off, the other day, I was in the store, and it kind of wore off and I got stuck. I was like, hopping, to try to get the checkout standards. Everyone’s like, “What's wrong, this guy's going to attack us or whatever.” People look at you funny.
So they are doing experiments with new drugs and new testing and the little implants that you put in the brainstem called Deep Brain Stimulation. So there's a lot of different things on the horizon, even the Tesla, what's his name? Elon Musk. Elon Musk has a little chip he’s been playing around with inserting into pig brains. They're responding to it. I meant to get the little pig brain chip one of these days and do some amazing things. I will say it's a real challenge with Parkinson's. The thing that has taught me, I kind of feel like if God came down and said, “Daren, I'm going to take away your Parkinson's, but I'm also going to take away the things that I gave you in exchange for that.” I would say, “You know what, no, I'm good.” Because there’s a couple of things that it’s blessed me with. Number one, it's given me a tremendous sense of compassion for people. I can sit down with somebody, they see that I'm tremoring, they see I'm having some problems, and when you are vulnerable like that, and you talk about your disease, people come up and they say things to you they never would have told to anybody else because they become vulnerable. They let their guard down. It becomes a gift to be able to connect with people, instantaneous connection. It's like a superpower. I don't want that to go away. The other thing it has given me a gift of is, I think of my life now in a in a way that it's sped up. Everything I do has a sense of urgency that I have never had before. I've gotten more done in the last year than I've gotten done in the last five years. Because I know I may not be able to do some things in my later life that I plan to do. And so my bucket list is gone.
Tamara Anderson 35:19
The most important things, right? Put it to the front.
Daren 35:23
Yeah. So that's huge. I've been condensing and speeding up my bucket list. It gives you a whole new perspective on life. It gives you a whole new outlook, and everybody I've talked to who is proactive with their disease, who's active, who wants to make something of their life and do something remarkable with their life, they've said the same thing I said. It's like a huge gift. Richard Paul Evans talks about his Tourette syndrome as a gift. He, he didn't feel that way when he was a little boy when he was getting teased and bullied. But now he realizes that it was one of the greatest things that ever happened to him.
Tamara Anderson 36:04
It's true. It's interesting, you say that you talked about that instant connection with people. I have found that to be true as well, having kids on the autism spectrum, people that I don't know very well, they see me with my kids, they'll come up and they'll tell me all about their challenges as well. I think it's just nice to know, “Hey, that person has problems. They'll get it when I tell them about my problems.” So I think I think that's part of what it is. We want to feel understood. When we see somebody else having struggles and challenges, it almost gives you permission to share that.
Daren 36:50
Yeah. I had people coming up to me at a conference I was at. I was speaking in front of like, 3000 people and I told my story about Parkinson's. This lady came up to me afterwards and she said, “I have MS. But I haven't told anybody. I've had it for two years. I was diagnosed two years ago, I haven't told my own family, I haven't told my own kids about it, and I'm ready to tell them now.” Disease is considered by a lot of society as somewhat shameful, or, to some people, it feels like you're less of a person. You're scared that you're going to lose your job.
I had somebody in my company, since it's a health company, Yoli is nutritional supplements, we’re all about wellness and health and living healthy lifestyles. There's a woman who got cancer, it was a distributor. She dealt with it in natural ways. She had complete, 100% remission after a number of years. 100% but in the process of going through it, she did do some chemotherapy and some radiation and stuff and lost her hair. She said, “I thought I was gonna get kicked out. They're gonna kick me out because I'm not a very good spokesperson, if I'm promoting nutritional products, and I got cancer.” She bawled about that, I thought, “Oh, my goodness. Nothing could be further from the truth.” But you feel that way, if it's happening to you. You feel you're gonna get kicked out. I've got Parkinson's. My Yoli products are not a cure for Parkinson's, obviously. They help manage it, but I didn't want to get kicked out of my own company. You get those insecurities happening when you get a disease. People, a lot of times, don't want to talk about it. But I, from the very beginning, I've always felt very comfortable talking about it, and volunteer that information almost immediately with people. It helps them to understand why I behave the way I do, some funny movements and why it was funny.
Tamara 39:01
Yeah. But one of the things I love about you, Daren, is that you have not let this challenge stop you or slow you down. Would you mind telling me a little bit about Mount Rainier and why it's been calling to you your whole life and what you decided to do about that even with Parkinson's?
Daren 39:24
Well, Mount Rainier has been calling to me my whole life because I live right by it. Every time I leave my neighborhood, there it is. It's just looking at you. My dad was a mountaineer. He climbed some mountains earlier in his life. Not a huge mountaineer, but he did climb some mountains. He climbed Mount St. Helens before it blew. He climbed parts of Rainier. He didn’t summit, but he climbed other mountains too. I always was really interested in in climbing Rainier, I thought, you know, it's a big challenge. It's a big mountain, but I kind of chose that a little late because my diagnosis for Parkinson's happened and it was like three years later. And so I decided, “Okay, I'm going to get in shape and I'm going to do this. I've got the lung issue, I got the Parkinson's issue, but I think I can do this.”
So me and my buddy signed up for a climb with some guides on Rainier, and was on the Emmons side of Emmons glacier. They require on that particular route to carry 55 to 60 pound packs, because you got to get a bunch of gear up to the main camp, and then from there you summit. That alone, if you've ever put a 60 pound pack on your back and done stairs, it is the absolute worst workout in the history of workouts. If you're not puking within 10 minutes, there's something wrong. I mean, it's just, it's worse than any boot camp I've ever done. Stair machines are crazy. But that's what I had to do, I had to get to the point where I could do two hours on the stair machine with the 60 pound pack. Then I thought I was ready. So I go on this climb, and I got up to camp Sherman, we spent the night there, you get up at midnight, basically, and start your summit in the dark. I got up about halfway to my summit. I was I was crossing this very narrow ridge, that was kind of a pinnacle. You're crossing and everybody's doing really well. They're just stepping in the steps behind the person in front of them. I had my ice axe, which is supposed to give you stability against the side of the hill, in my left hand, which is my Parkinson's affected hand with very, very low coordination. If I could have just reached over with my right hand and done it the awkward way, I would have been just fine. But they wouldn't let you, the guide said, “You got to do it this way.” So I was kind of waffling a little bit. They're like you cannot fall here. This is a do not fall zone. They're really adamant about that. I said, “Yeah, I'm not gonna fall, but I got Parkinson's.” They saw me wobble 234 times, they said, “That's it, we’re turning this guy around.” I said, J”ust give me a chance,” and they wouldn't. So they turned me around, and sent me back down with the guide. I just got down, and I thought, “I did everything I could to train for this climb. I don't think I can do it. My body's not gonna allow me to do this. I have the will, I have the fitness as a determination I just don't have this the balance.”
So I sat there, kind of shed some tears in my camp tent, looking out at the mountains through my opening in my tent and then I just decided, there's got to be a way. So I went to talk to the guy that brought me down. He told me that I needed to train up again next year and go up the other side of the mountain, it's a lot easier. It doesn't have these narrow gaps of precipices and crevasses to cross on ladders and things. It's an easier climb on summit day. That's what you need to do. See if you can maybe get some help with your guy, just let them know your situation ahead of time. So what I decided to do is put together my own team of people that I knew from my company and from my friends to make sure that everybody knew my situation. So everybody was okay if we went a little slower, had to take one part of the section of the trail a little slower. And so we did our first team Yoli summit team. We got up there to about the same place, about 1000 feet higher than I did the year before. Same thing happened. I guess the point where I was was very windy that year. I was walking a very narrow footpath and I was just stumbling too much because of my Parkinson's and I turned myself around and said, “I'm putting the rope team in danger. And I'm just going to turn myself around.”
So I did that. And lo and behold my whole group about a about an hour later turned the whole group around because the winds got to the point where they were 50, 60, 70 mile per hour winds up there before the summit. When we were walking out that day, we were hit with 80 mile per hour gusts. One of my guides had been up Everest twice said he'd never been hit with anything that hard. There's little bits of sand that hit in the face and it feels like BB guns shooting you in the face. I got little red marks. It was a crazy year. Nobody summited in the whole team. Lots of failures on the summit day. So that was number two, strike two. I trained the first year doing 30,000 feet of real mountains to climb. It's like going up Mount Everest three times and back. The next year I did 50,000 feet of real climbing, that's going up and down Everest five times. So the third year I said, “I'm going to do this.” So I did 100,000 feet of real climbing to get ready for that climb, which was 17 different climbs, all equaling about 10 times up and down from base camp Everest to the top and back. That's the equivalent. The difference between Everest and Mount Rainier is that the base camp of Everest is 3000 feet above the summit of Rainier. That's the base camp. That's where you start from. So it's just the higher elevation, but it's the same distance.
So I trained up, put together my Yoli team. This time, for whatever reason, the weather cooperated, and my body cooperated. It was funny because I got up near the summit. I didn't know I was near the summit, because they don't tell you, I think it's a psychological thing. Keep going, got another push, got another push, here's a 10 minute break, get your stuff on, we're going for another push. I get up and all of a sudden, one of the guides is on his knee taking pictures. I thought, “Well, that's weird. He's never taken pictures this whole trip.” As I walked past him, I realize there's no more mountain, it just goes down into a crater. And I realized, I'm there. I started bawling my eyes out. You couldn't tell because I had my goggles on and had all this headgear on and my helmet. But I pretty much couldn't talk. And me and my buddy who had been trying to do this for years, we walked through that summit cone together, you walk across the top of the volcanic crater. Then there's an actual summit at the far end that you walk up another couple hundred vertical feet. Then you take your picture, and you're there. And we did that. And it was just surreal.
I still couldn't believe it. Then walking down is just like skipping. That’s the one thing about climbing with me. People always say, “Oh, the climb down just as hard as the climb up.” It's not for me. I can run down mountains, I'm so good at going down. It’s uphill that gives me a hard time with Parkinson's. So going down was a breeze. You climb all the way to the base of the mountain and go out that day and go home. So it's a long day. It's like a 20 hour day or something. But I was just on cloud nine, I didn't even feel it. Then here's the interesting thing. The next year I went up and failed again. But this time, I had a whole group of teammates, three of which had never summited. My two sons, who trained with me all year to go, and my climbing partner Katie Johner, who had tried several times and didn't make it, and my climbing buddy Grant Drees, who climbed with me all the time they all summited. A few of the Yoli distributors summited, so I felt good about that. I got up to a certain point and my body just stopped wanting to move, like I couldn't take another step. It just wouldn't function. But I was all smiles, you know, I had no regrets. That was my ratio. Remember in business every four times I try and get one. I had to keep that ratio. So there you go.
Tamara Anderson 48:39
Yeah, so let me ask you this. What have you learned from failing? What is the biggest lesson or the biggest lessons that you have learned from trying and failing? What could you share with us?
Daren 48:55
I guess the easiest thing that I learned is just as simple as that. Just keep getting up. I mean, there's nothing that can stop somebody who won't stop after failure. You just get up every time you fall down. You learn something, and you just can't get discouraged about it. I almost quit. I wouldn't have had that summit, I wouldn't have had that experience. But I decided you know what? I made a big deal about it the second year. All these Yoli people were pulling for it, “He’s going to summit! That's gonna be great.” Then I didn't, and I just stopped talking about it because I was so disappointed in myself and so upset I didn't make it. I thought, “Well, all I got to do is train and do it next year.” When you finally do succeed, all the losses, all the failures, just slip away. It's like they never happened. You're never gonna get to that unless you keep trying. You got to keep pushing, keep trying. I've never met anybody in my career, in my industry that hasn't always ultimately succeeded in the end, if they just kept trying. Like for 10 years, just keep trying to stick with one company, keep trying for 10 years. I've never met anybody who didn't ultimately summit their mountain, the mountain they wanted to climb, if they just kept trying every year. It happens, it's just gonna take more time.
Tamara Anderson 50:20
That is awesome. So let me ask you, you've obviously been very, very successful at setting goals. And here as we approach 2021, what advice would you give to someone who is perhaps wanting to tackle a big goal? How do you obtain that, Daren? You've seemed to have really figured out a pattern that works for you. How would you break that down for other people who are desiring to set goals?
Daren 50:51
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a key to that what I do. Goals are great. I like to write them down and post them like everybody else does. Written goals are important, but I do something even more powerful than that. I call it visualization. Visualizing very specifically, very concretely, exactly what you want to accomplish. If it's summiting a mountain, you're seeing yourself doing it real time, walking over the crest of that cone, getting into that inner crater, taking pictures with your buddies, maybe doing a blog, a vlog from the top or something. Whatever that summit looks like to you, you visualize that over and over as if it's already happened or it's happening now. You have summited Mount Rainier, you are a mountain climber, you are successful in your pursuits, if it means becoming a Yoli diamond. That’s one of the designations of leaders in our company. You sleep, breathe, drink, eat it. When you get up in the morning, you brush your teeth like a diamond, you have your breakfast like a diamond, you drive your car to work like a diamond. Maybe you're confused, because where's my Mercedes Benz? You know, what's this two tone, what's a car I used to drive? I think I used to have a Honda Civic that was like 30 years old. I call it two tone because it was rust and blue. Like a spider web crack across the front. I never could fix one of the doors. When I first was a young adult, the door would actually fly open when you go around the corner. So you'd have to say, “Hey, hey, grab that door, it's the passenger door. And then link arms.” That's where you start.
I think that the key to all this is that you have to really focus in on visualizing specifically what you want, and getting it into your heart. Written goals are great. But Robert Allen talked about visualizing your dream home. When you create a dream home, you have to know every single detail of that home, or somebody else is going to choose for you. If you're okay with that, that's great. But if you don't have the details of every single aspect of that dream home you're building, then somebody else is going to decide it. So if you're doing a financial goal, what kind of car are you going to drive, when you're financially successful? Go down and test drive that car, go sit in it, get a feel for what the leather smells like, what the steering wheel feels like, visualize yourself in that. What will happen is that vision that you have in your mind is like a magnet to your goal. It pulls you every day, subconsciously, to the people and the circumstances and the opportunities that will bless your life and get you to that goal. It's remarkable. I'm sure that you've probably had some experiences like that in your life when you visualize something so specifically, and then it just manifests itself in your life.
Tamara Anderson 54:24
That's true. So visualize it. Obviously, you talked about planning to work really hard to get yourself physically fit for that goal. So you're breaking down, okay, if I need to do this, I need to break it down into bite sized segments. This month, I'm going to do this and then break it down by day. Today I'm going to do this. Is that how you did that?
Daren 54:54
Yeah and it was easy to do because summiting a mountain, a person who's in shape to summit a mountain doesn't whine about getting on the stair machine with a pack of their back and walking for an hour. Because that's what summiteers do. That's what guides do. That's what people who are in great shape do. I'm a diamond. So I do the things that diamonds do. The diamonds don't complain about making 100 phone calls a day. That's what they do. You start mirroring the successful behaviors of people that are there already. The visualization is not I’m visualizing this so I can become it. You're visualizing it as if you've already done it to the point where when you achieve, the downside of doing this, is when you achieve that goal, you think, “Well of course I'm a diamond, I've been a diamond for a year. I'm now a blue diamond, or a triple diamond.”
Tamara Anderson 55:52
What's this Diamond Award? You know?
Daren 55:57
When I answer, you're always like one or two steps ahead of what you're really getting. That's the only downside, is sometimes you're a little disappointed.
Tamara Anderson 56:07
When you finally get it.
Daren 56:08
You finally have to say, “Oh, wait a minute, I'm a real diamond. I'm not just a diamond in my mind anymore.”
Tamara Anderson 56:16
That is awesome. No, I love that. It kind of goes back to that that good, old book, “As a man thinketh, so is he.” If you believe you can do it. So that is powerful. Now let me ask you a final question before I let you go. Were there any Bible verses or stories that inspired you, or motivated you, or helped you as you were going through your hard times to keep you moving?
Daren 56:54
Well, I have some favorites. The one that comes to mind all the time is in Matthew 5, as a part of the Beatitudes. I believe it's Matthew 5:14-16, or something like that. But it's, “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father, who is in heaven.”
Basically, it's you are the light of the world. You're an example. The whole reason that you're on this planet is to do something significant, so that you can bless the lives of other people. There's a book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey, where he talks about the seven habits. If we had more time we could go through all those habits, because they're great. He has another book called “The Eighth Habit.” A lot of people don't know about that book, because it wasn't quite as popular. “The Eighth Habit” is probably the most powerful book of all of them. You need to go through the first seven habits first before you do the eighth habit, but the eighth habit is to find your voice. Find the reason you were put on this earth and then for the rest of your life, help other people find their voice. That's the habit. That's kind of part of that “let your light so shine.” You need to find what your light is, what your specific purpose is.
The thing is people worry about it and fuss about all the time. God doesn't care what you do for a living. I believe this is my thought. I don't believe that God cares what you do for a living. He doesn't care. Specifically. A lot of times, people like to put words in God's mouth. God wants you to be rich. God wants you to do this. You can't speak for God. God speaks to you in a still, small voice. God wants you to be honest, and ethical. He wants you to be loving and serving, and service oriented. He wants you to do good on your own, without thought of reward. He lets you make a lot of your own choices. And as long as you're doing those things, and being honest and ethical, you got a lot of freedom in what you choose to do. You'll run into challenges in any career of trying to stay true to that those principles and beliefs. I think there's so many things that we can do in this world, so many things that God would approve of. If He doesn't, He doesn't force us to do anything. We get lots of choices. But I'm just so glad that I chose the path that I did because I had to be in a career where I had the freedom of schedule, freedom of time. I couldn't work in a cubicle. I couldn't work in a job. I had to do something different. I had to have something where I could, one weekend, be working on a charity and another week I could be writing a book. Another week I'd be traveling, another week I could be working with kids. I want to have the freedom to do whatever I need to do when I need to do it.
Tamara Anderson 1:00:16
That’s beautiful. You've inspired others to follow their dreams as well. So you're applying that principle. This has been so fun. Daren, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, from financial woes to overcoming the obstacles of disease and huge mountains. You're just such an inspiration and helping us realize the importance of setting goals in the right order. This has been so amazing. I really appreciate you taking the time to share this.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:53
I love you. Since I met you at these book conferences, I just think you're a remarkable person. You have so much energy, so much light for people. You have such a giving heart. I just see you, when we're at these conferences, you just want to help people. You want to reach out and then afterwards kind of be a mother hen to pull them all together and help them continue with their goals. Because it's not what happens at the book conferences, it’s what happens after. You got to keep going with it. And so you've inspired so many people to keep going to their dream and I really admire you for that.
Tamara Anderson 1:01:30
Thank you.
You can connect with Daren Falter on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and you can go to his website, darenfalter.com and find more out about him or his book, which is on Amazon. Thanks for joining us today. Hope on.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to today's show. I know that there are many of you out there that are going through a hard time and I hope you found things that have been useful today. As you listen to the podcast, if you would like to access the show notes from today's podcast, visit my website. It is storiesofhopepodcast.com. That is where you'll find favorite quotes from today's episode and shareable memes. Those are fun because you can share them with your friends on social media. You will also find the links mentioned throughout today's episode so you don't have to remember what those were, and also all the tips that were shared. Sometimes tips are shared so much throughout an episode you forget and wonder, “What were those great things?” So go to the show notes, storiesofhopepodcast.com to look up these fantastic resources. You know, if someone kept coming to mind during today's episode, perhaps that means that you should share this with them. Maybe there was a story shared or a tip that they really, really need to hear. So go ahead and share this episode with them. May God bless you, especially if you're struggling, with hope to carry on and with the strength to keep going when things get tough. Remember to walk with Christ and He will help bear that burden. Above all else, remember God loves you.