Unlock Your Hidden Potential (Powerful Speech) Joe Roberts Goalcast
UNLOCK YOUR HIDDEN POTENTIAL AND ACHIEVE THE EXTRAORDINARY! In this powerful speech Joe Roberts shares his incredible story of his time as a 15 year old homeless skid row addict and what it took to pull himself out of darkness and despair, to become a highly respected business and community leader.
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00:00And it still haunts me to this day. It was a shriek.
00:04I grew up in this really normal, beautiful, middle-class family.
00:09My father was 35 years old. He was the breadwinner of the family.
00:13My mom was a homemaker. That was the rule in the 1970s.
00:16She stayed at home, raised the kids.
00:18I don't know if you can relate with this, but my dad was my hero.
00:21Not everybody has that kind of dad, but my dad was my hero.
00:24He was a hockey coach. He was a baseball coach.
00:27He was the kind of man that you wanted to be your best for.
00:31And I felt in his shadow I could do or be anything.
00:36And I felt loved and accepted.
00:39In August 1975, I remember the night the priest from the local parish
00:45came and knocked on our door.
00:47I remember it because I remember the sound that my mom made.
00:51And it still haunts me to this day. It was a shriek. A horror.
00:56Because all of a sudden our world completely turned inside out
00:59literally in one day.
01:02What happened within a year is Mom remarried.
01:05And the man that she hooked up with was a violent, abusive alcoholic.
01:10And so I went from a message of you're loved and you can do and be anything
01:14to you're stupid.
01:17You're dumb.
01:19You'll never amount to anything.
01:22And I was eight.
01:24Honestly, I didn't know how to process that.
01:27I began to believe lies about who I was and how I fit into the world.
01:32Shortly after my ninth birthday, an opportunity presented itself
01:36to do drugs for the first time.
01:38By the time I was 15 years old, I was non-compliant at home.
01:43I grew an extra two feet.
01:45Not so good for my stepfather.
01:47There was a lot of tension between him and I,
01:50and he paid the bills so I had to go.
01:53For me, it was jumping out of the pot and straight into the fire.
01:58At 15 years old, I was on my own.
02:01Just trying to get through another sunset.
02:04At 16 years old, I began getting in trouble with the legal system.
02:09I remember going back out to the street, completely broken as a human being.
02:14Walking up East Hastings with the pouring rain.
02:17And I said to myself, how did I get here?
02:19I'm a good kid from a good family.
02:21How did I end up in this much trouble?
02:24What ended up happening is I remember the day.
02:28It was a beautiful sunny day, just like today.
02:30See, back in those days, I was a liar, a thief, a cheat, and a mooch.
02:36And I landed in this park.
02:38And I saddled up beside this guy sitting at a bus stop named Gus
02:42because he had a cigarette.
02:44And he gave me a cigarette. He was a really nice guy.
02:46And he gave me a couple bucks too.
02:48But he gave me something more.
02:51The entire time I was sitting there talking to him, Gus said to me,
02:53he says, you know, Joe, there's more to you than you can see.
02:59He said, but life has kind of dirtied your windows,
03:02and so the light doesn't get in, and your light doesn't get out.
03:08You could go on to do extraordinary things because you're a real bright guy.
03:13I remember when he was talking to me and he was speaking his truth into my life,
03:17I was looking over my shoulder for someone else
03:21because what stood before him did not align with his words.
03:27But he said to me, he said, there's more to you than you can see.
03:35I remember my heart absolutely sank.
03:39For years of my life, I didn't take accountability for my own actions.
03:43I blamed society. I blamed my stepfather.
03:45I blamed everybody else except me.
03:47And that kept me from actually taking responsibility for my own behavior in my own life.
03:52It deflected it.
03:54But on that moment, the miracle happened for me.
03:57And the miracle was that I became teachable.
03:59I became pliable.
04:00And I became willing to do just about anything.
04:03You know, one of the things that I know today is that discontentment is the catalyst of change.
04:09And what I mean by that, it's oftentimes not until we're backed into a corner
04:14where we become teachable, where we become willing to do something different.
04:18But you see, possibility always exists.
04:21It never goes away. It's always present.
04:23Even at my lowest point, the possibility of transformation was there.
04:28I started to flower. I started to come out.
04:30And I started to do incredibly well.
04:33I went from a kid pushing a shopping cart to just trying to get through another sunset
04:39to being on the cover of Canadian Business.
04:42Because inside every single one of us is infinite possibility.
04:56And I found myself sleeping under this bridge.
04:58And I was one of those kids that would go around the city every morning.
05:01And I'd collect cans, and I would go down, and I would trade those cans in.
05:05And I would try and stay six hours ahead and do anything I could to stave off withdrawal.