LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
In this pilot episode, we cover Jon’s background, why he’s teamed up with me to tell his story in a forthcoming book, all about the confidence and downright cockiness that became both his salvation and his curse, and the timeline of the slow nerve degeneration from the disease that today has left him unable to move anything but his face: Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA.
We’re releasing this first episode in order to determine whether there is enough interest in this series for us to continue it. So if you enjoy this and would like to hear more, please let us know! To do so, you can comment below, subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast directory, and ideally leave us good ratings and reviews. If you’d like to reach Jon directly, the best place is on Twitter.
If people are into it, we’d love to continue … so let’s hear it!
Curious about the process? Enter your email below to get a cheat sheet of the process we used to uncover Jon’s “character arc.”
TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS:
NOTE: The transcript below was generated by AI and has not been edited. Accordingly, some things below are a little weird … but you’re smart, so I’m confident you can figure it out.
SPEAKER A
There are children of the darkness and there are children of the light. I was born in the dark withmonsters, and to survive I became a bit of a monster. And then at a certain point in my life, I stepped intothe world of the light and out of the world of monsters and I had to learn how to survive. You.
SPEAKER B
Welcome to The Impossible man the true story of how the inability to move allowed one person to tradehis humanity for ODS defying superpowers and how he clawed his way back. Hey, everybody. My name isJohnny B. Truant. I will be playing host for what I believe is going to be a very interesting behind thescenes look at a project that I am doing with and for John Morrow. Now, if you don't know either one ofus, I am a fiction author. I have written over a hundred books. I've been doing this for about ten or twelveyears. John Morrow is kind of a copywriting guy, kind of a content marketing guy, a writing guy, a blogger,a guy who teaches blogging, a consultant general all around internet badass. I would say that's certainlyhow I met him. But what it took me a long time to realize after hearing John's reputation and just thinkingof him as this larger than life personality was that he actually can't move anything but his face. I just knewwhat was inside first. And that's unusual because with somebody like John, usually people see what'soutside first. They see that he is in not just a wheelchair, not just a power wheelchair, but a powerwheelchair that he operates and drives exclusively by blowing into and sucking on a small tube. He has acondition called spinal muscular atrophy or SMA, which is sort of a cousin to ALS, also known as LouGehrig's disease. SMA is a little bit more mobile than that, but not very mobile at all. With just his faceand his voice, he has built a multimillion dollar business and just generally been one of the mostunstoppable people that I have ever met. John, being a writer and being somebody who has a way ofknocking people onto their ass with his writing, has written several posts about his condition and aboutbeing unstoppable in a way that it's kind of astonishing how unstoppable he is. And it's not just within therealms of his disease. He is unstoppable personally. Regardless. It's John's mentality that has made thingsthat seem to be entirely impossible possible. He has defied what seem like impossible ODS over andover again, both with things that seem to be within volitional control and things that seem like nobodycould control them. Like his health, john has survived close brushes with death many times. He has beentold by doctors many times that he would not live through a given ordeal. He's somebody with an attitudethat has somehow transformed his physical reality. I know how that sounds, but it is true. And as youlisten to this series, you'll find it. So publishers and others have been on John to tell this story for a longtime. And he keeps procrastinating, he keeps not doing it. He knows that it could be an instant bestseller.He knows that he could get a very large advance for it. But delving in, even as a writer, even though he's avery good writer, and even though he has a very good story, delving into it, actually penning the wordswould be too painful. And so John asked me if I would co write the book with him. We thought it might beinteresting to record the process of me discovering John's story. And there's a very particular slant to that,because uncovering his story could mean recounting the events in his life as they occur. And this is verydifferent from that. Just recounting the story in an autobiography doesn't really give you the lesson. AndJohn and I really wanted to convey sort of how this unstoppable personality was forged and how to do theimpossible. But in order to do that, we need to see how the listener can relate to John as a person fromwhere they stand, where things that are impossible tend to remain impossible. And that's one of thereasons that John wanted to work with me, a fiction author, to write this book, is because I believe that lifeis a story and that there's a lot of noise that crowds what could be a character arc, as if it were designedby an author. But most people don't see it because of all of the noise, because of all of the competingstimuli in our world. But if you delve Deep and I've written a whole book about this called The StorySolution, co written with Sean Platt, where we talk about picking out the pieces of life that, whenassembled together, can be a cogent story arc, you as the protagonist, you have an inciting incident at thebeginning. You have a first act climax, you have a midpoint, you have a second act climax. You have anemotional arc that needs to be developed to reach your fullest potential. And when John started thinkingabout that and we started looking at John Morrow as a character not fictional, but in real life, you canclear away the noise and see that he had an emotional arc that not only made this possible. But thathighlights what could have been a potential tragedy in his life, not as his health, but instead as somethingentirely different. Because we're both entrepreneurs, because we both think outside the box, we decidedthat we wanted to record the process of uncovering John's story so that you'll see how it came about andjust kind of to see if people are interested in it. And that's what this is. This is a pilot. Now, in subsequentepisodes of this, if everybody enjoys this and we want to continue it. I have the act markers of John as acharacter. I know when he reached his crisis points, when he pivoted in general because of this interviewthat you're about to hear and because of other times that we've spoken before. And I'll begin to have himtell his story linearly. But this first one is to give you the full picture. And so we're going to covereverything in this one now to get a.
SPEAKER C
Few of the things out of the.
SPEAKER B
Way so that I don't have to ask John what both of us already know. Here are some things that you need toknow as you listen forward again. John has spinal muscular atrophy. It's a condition where he slowly lostthe ability to move everything but his face. And so John spends his working hours in a power wheelchair,hooked up with all sorts of doodads that allow him to work with only his face. So if I had video of thisrecording, john has a rectangular object that's connected to an arm that's in front of his face, and it's a lipmouse. So he's able to move a cursor around on a screen using his lips. Most of what he does is withdictation. Now, another thing about SMA is he can feel everything. All of his sensory neurons work, but hismotor neurons, except for the ones that directly feed his face, don't. So in the interview that foll…
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit johnnybtruant.substack.com
Flere episoder fra "The Impossible Man"
Gå ikke glip af nogen episoder af “The Impossible Man” - abonnér på podcasten med gratisapp GetPodcast.
