You Can Outwork and Redefine The Story You Were Given

It's true, you can make your story your path to success! 

Aaron Golub was born legally blind, and he still walked onto a Division I football field at Tulane, became a team captain, and later signed as an NFL free agent. That isn’t a feel-good headline to us, it’s a blueprint for how identity gets rebuilt through daily reps, honest self-talk, and the decision to stop letting a limitation steer the wheel.

We talk through what it feels like to compete at the highest level when other people don’t know what to make of you yet, and how Aaron earns trust the only way that really works: by showing up and performing. He breaks down the difference between external motivation and internal motivation, why “proving people wrong” burns out fast, and how doing hard things consistently is one of the quickest ways to build real confidence that transfers from sports to school to leadership.

Then, we zoom out to careers and business in the age of AI. We explore practical advice for displaced workers and new graduates who feel their confidence get shaken by layoffs, uncertainty, and rapidly changing roles. Aaron shares why communication is not just about teams and meetings, it’s about how you communicate to yourself, because that creates clarity and momentum. He also gets specific about entrepreneurship, failure, and building a software product, including how programmatic SEO and long tail keywords can drive inbound leads when traditional “top keyword” marketing feels impossible.

If you want a grounded conversation about overcoming adversity, disability awareness, leadership communication, and building a career that adapts, you’ll get a lot from this one. Subscribe to Liftoff Journeys, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the biggest takeaway you’re putting into action.

Transcript

Welcome And The Big Promise

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, it's genies. Welcome back to Lift Up Journeys, the show where we go behind the titles and individual stories of the world's smartest people. Where they are today. Today's a special edition. I sit down with some of the smartest executives and leaders. I know. And I asked them their marketing and business. And what they're seeing right now that everyone else might be missing. I also want them to share some money. Here we are, the air method in motion. Let's get started. All right. So today I am thrilled to have Aaron Golub with me here on Liftoff Journeys because we're going to talk about his incredible journey from growing up, moving into college, becoming a D1 player at Tulane, and then starting a professional career that inspires all of us. But I'm not going to spill any of the secrets of why his story is so incredibly compelling and amazing. I'm going to let him do that for you. And you're not going to believe what you're about to hear. So let's get started. Erin, welcome to Liftoff. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

Yeah, thank you for having me here. I'm excited to chat and add value to everyone listening.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Now, so I think I mentioned this to you before, but you know, I probably get about 50 emails a day from companies and people who want to come on the podcast and share their journey. And they feel like they've got a really compelling story to tell. But when I saw your story, I had to stop for a minute and I was blown away at what you've accomplished. Um, why don't you tell everybody that's listening a little bit about who you are and what your background is so they know why uh you've got such a great journey to share with everybody.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Absolutely. So

Born Legally Blind And Choosing Change

SPEAKER_01 1:55

my backstory is I was born legally blind. What that means for me is my right eye is completely blind, no vision. My left eye is mostly blind. I see up just a really tiny hole. Grew up was you know a terrible athlete, lacked confidence, struggled in a lot of ways, found myself as a sophomore in high school, as a third string junior varsity athlete, never getting on the field, and decided to make a change, and that change was not allowing my limitation, my disability being legally blind to control who I was or what I could do anymore. Ended up deciding to think differently about it and working differently with it. Became the first legally blind Division I athlete to play in a game when I played football at Tulane University, was named a team captain while I was there, went on to become an NFL free agent. And since then I've you know built businesses and become an entrepreneur, a speaker, consultant, and you know, excited to be here today.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

So tell me what it's like. I mean you walk out on the field in Tulane University as a D1 football player and you're legally blind. How did you feel at that very moment?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

For me, when I was playing, it was never focused on, oh, I'm legally blind. It was focusing on being the best football player I possibly could be. And so it was never about, oh, I'm I'm legally blind. Of course, some people saw it that way, and I had to, you know, show them with my work, but my focus was every single day when we're in practice, I'm gonna hit just as hard as everybody else on that field. I'm gonna lift off the lineman, I'm gonna run off the receivers. I'm gonna do whatever I could to compete at the highest level with every single person on that field every single day and show that being legally blind, my limitation, my adversity doesn't have to define who I am because we all have different challenges, different adversities in life. They're a part of us, they're not all of us. And for me, when I was getting to practice for the first time in college, getting in my first game in college, yes, it was awesome. I was so thrilled to do so. But you know, being legally blind and doing that wasn't something that crossed my mind. It was, I'm just as good as everybody else on this field, and how do I compete at that level?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

And how

Proving It To Teammates Daily

SPEAKER_00 4:02

did your teammates feel? Did they just see you as another person on the team? Um, did they give you as hard a time as they gave everybody else? Did they have any special accommodations for you? Did it change over time?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

In the beginning, I think that people were unsure. They didn't know what to do. I mean, that's the same in every situation. Whenever you walk into a new room and you're trying something in and you have a difference that someone else doesn't have, they're gonna look at you differently in the beginning. But the second that maybe they try and go light on you and you know, you light them up on the line and knock them over, they're gonna hit you just as hard the the next play, the next snap. The second that, you know, you're lifting in the weight room and you know someone loads something up on the bar for you that, you know, is light, and then you double the weight, you know, it's it's you show people with your actions and not your words. And that's what's really important. You know, you can sit there and tell someone in my situation or in any situation what you can do. At the end of the day, no one cares. And and that's blunt, but it's true. Nobody cares what you say you can do. Nobody does. They only care what you show them you can do. And if you consistently show up and show people that you can compete, that you can succeed, then they realize that they understand that. And so even in the beginning, when maybe people looked at me a little differently to start, it became very evident very fast that I was there to compete and I could do the same things as everybody else, and I would be treated the same as everybody else. Of course, there were little things that we had to do from time to time. We learned very early that, you know, when our strength coaches were having us run sprints and I was just running in a group because of my vision. Sometimes I would like run a little diagonal, and that just like wasn't safe for everyone. So they made a rule that whenever we ran sprints, I had to be one of the like the one person running on the hash because they didn't want me getting hurt or anyone else. But it's a small thing.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah.

Internal Motivation Over External Noise

SPEAKER_00 5:47

And do you feel so fast forward, you know, you you mentioned it uh when you were introducing yourself, you've you've become an entrepreneur, you're uh, you know, incredible keynote speaker, you've done so much, you've accomplished so much in life. Do you feel like uh being born legally blind had been the adversity that has driven you to be so successful? Or do you feel like you would have been successful anyway? That drive comes in from inside of you, regardless of who you are.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

It's a great question because it's something that I can't answer, and none of us can pretend that we know. I I do believe that there's a difference between what I call internal and external motivation, and it's something I talk about. And the external is the noise of what people think or what people do or say. And that doesn't get you very far in life. Now, if I want to go to the gym and I want to bench or squat or lift a heavy weight, I might think of something that pisses me off for 60 seconds. And sure, that'll help me squat that heavy weight, but past that 60 seconds, that does nothing for me. And so it's the internal motivation, the internal why. Why do you want it for yourself? But that's not because I was born legally blind. Now, I say all the time, I'm so grateful I was born legally blind. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened for me because that's what allowed me to play football at the level I did and become the person I am today because it allowed me to think differently about situations. Do I have any idea if I would have the same drive? I have no idea. But I do understand that the only reason I got good at football and what I'm doing now is because I wanted it for myself. It wasn't and never has been about what other people think or say or do. Because when you focus on that, that's only short-lived. When you focus on what you want for yourself, that will take you the furthest.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Yeah, it's so interesting that you say that because, you know, I got a minor in sign language because I wanted to work with autistic kids. And for anybody that learns sign language, the first thing that you learn is you do not sign in the same structure, sentence structure as you speak or as we write in the American language. You have to, in real time, create a visual in your mind that you can then use your hands to express so that you're describing everything that's going on from emotions, you know, all the way down. And it causes you to think differently. And I am a hundred percent convinced that anybody that is hearing impaired or that has gone through a hearing impairment or used sign language at any point in their life, or even autistic and use sign language to communicate has an advantage because they think differently. You know, when somebody says, oh, it's gonna be a sunny day outside, for us, we hear it will be a sunny day outside. But for someone, you know, that's uh that uses sign language as a way of communicating, you see time, topic, action, object. It's a different way. So it's it's today, sunny day, right? And um, and I feel like the ability to process things differently than the person next to you gives you such an advantage. And so I wonder, do you feel the same way that you've got this advantage because you see the world just very differently than the rest of us?

SPEAKER_01 8:55

I think it's a part of it. I think thinking differently is a huge aspect of it. And it's something I talk about all the time because I think thinking differently is what caused me to get into the position I played in football. I don't think I would have wanted to be a long snapper or thought about being a long snapper if I had full vision. I would have wanted to be a quarterback, a wide receiver, a linebacker, just something else that, you know, most kids want to play. And so it caused me to think differently about what I could do there. But you know, at the same time, like you're you're 100% right. You know, in companies, when you we learn to think differently about what we can do, how people can work, it opens up so much more. I think that's absolutely a part of it. Now, I think it always has to be paired with you can't just think differently, you need to work differently. You know, I always talk about if you do the things that nobody else is willing to do, you'll get the results that nobody else is able to get. You know, and I'm a strong believer in that. The reason I would had a chance to play football in college was because I woke up at 5 a.m. every single day in high school, practiced long snapping for an hour and a half every single morning, went to school, went to practice, and lifted weights for an ever for an hour and a half every single evening, and did that consistently for years when nobody was there, when it was cold out, when it was dark, when it was snowy, it didn't matter. And so it's that combination of yes, you need to think differently, but if you really want to succeed at something, you need to do what nobody else is willing to do.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

When

Confidence Built By Doing Hard Things

SPEAKER_00 10:09

do you think like that ideation popped into your mind? Because you had said, you know, when you were younger, you didn't really play many sports, you were a little self-conscious about them. And then here you are going to Tulane, D1 athlete, first legally blind athlete, hit the field, play football, be so amazing, move into this incredible career. Where do you think the switch happened and why?

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Well, let's say this. So, I mean, I played tons of sports growing up. Didn't mean I was good at any of them. I tried every sport you can ever imagine from baseball to hockey to lacrosse. I loved sports that were a terrible idea for someone who's legally blind. Like, terrible idea. And I was really bad at all of them. And, you know, sophomore year of high school, I just I had enough of being legally blind, controlling how I could do in school, how I could do in sports, how I could be confident. And I, that's when I had to start thinking differently about it. What I saw was that when I started to get good at football, when I started to think differently, when I started to work differently, when I started to get better at the position, get stronger in the weight room, get faster on the field, even though I wasn't a starter yet or a D1 prospect yet, it changed my confidence. It changed who I was mentally, my mindset, how I saw myself for a number of reasons. Partly because I was showing up and doing really hard things. And I think doing hard things is the fastest and best way to change who you are and your confidence and your mindset. But also because I saw the results, I saw that I was making progress and that allowed me to start think differently, thinking differently and realizing that being legally blind doesn't have to control me. And so when I saw those that progress in the gym on the field and the weight room, it translated to the classroom, it translated to social situations, it translated to just my confidence in all aspects of life.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah,

Career Shifts In The AI Era

SPEAKER_00 11:54

so that's fascinating because I as you're speaking, I'm thinking about uh, you know, two different groups of people in the workforce today. I'm thinking about the displaced over 50-year-old worker that, you know, for whatever reason, downsizing AI, you name it, you know, a whole group of people are are laid off and they never intended to be. And they really have taken a hit to their confidence and their identity. And the younger worker who's who's brand new entering into market, especially now where they're just finishing college, where they started confidently sure that the career they were moving into was going to be incredibly successful. And then AI comes in and boom, now the career that they trained for might not be in existence anymore for humans as as much as it was, and and it's not relevant. So they're they've got shaken confidence and and they're very unsure. How what pieces of advice would you give to both of those groups of people as far as how to control their destiny?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah, it's it's it's a good question. There's two aspects to it. The first thing is something I learned from my coaches in football. You can only control what you can control. And then the analogy in football is you can't control what the other team does and how they show up. You can control if you're running with the ball, that you hold it high and tight, that you don't fumble the ball, that you don't go off sides, that you don't make penalties. You can only control what you can control. And it's the same thing in those situations. You can't control what's happening in the environment. You can't control like AI is the future. Anyone who doesn't believe that has a lot to learn there. And it's not a bad thing. It's how do we adapt because of it? You can't control that, but you can control your actions. And that comes down to, and I was actually having a call with someone at the company earlier today where this was sort of the theme of it, but it was around communication. And it's not just communication of how we communicate to one another or how you communicate to your team, but communication of how you communicate to yourself because communication creates confidence and clarity. And that communication can start with, you know, mental communication. How do you communicate to yourself? Are you that 55-year-old who says, hey, you know, I'm getting laid off, AI is new, I don't know what to do, this isn't my same career path, I can't do any of this. Are you going to communicate to yourself and say, what can I learn? How can I do this differently? Can I sit down and figure this out and find a way to be a part of this? Because if you can change how you can communicate to yourself, you can learn new skill sets, you can adapt, and then you can communicate those to others. But it starts with how we communicate to ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

But if you could give advice to, you know, the next group of people that are, you know, of of rising college graduates as far as what the future holds for them, you know, what would that advice be?

SPEAKER_01 14:43

I think it's understanding that it's it's okay to fail and getting out there and and trying things. Understanding that what you study might not be what you do. You know, I think personally, I think there's pros and cons to college. I'm never someone who's gonna say that you shouldn't go to college. I'm never someone who's say that you should go to college. I think it depends. I think that you can see these days with the way the world has gone, you could be very successful without going to college. Is that the right move for everyone? No, absolutely not. There's plenty of people who should go to college. For me, because of football, I think college was the right path and it taught me a lot. But I think the biggest advice is just get out there and try. Try something, learn, fail. Because the sooner you learn that it's okay to fail, then you learn how to succeed. But it's about failing time and time again and putting yourself out there and saying, it's okay if I look stupid, it's okay if I mess up, it's okay if I screw up today, as long as you learn from it and get a little bit better tomorrow.

Failing Fast While Building Software

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Yeah, so you've used the F-word a whole bunch of times in that last sentence, and I just gotta ask like, give us a good story of when you failed.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Yeah, no, good question. Um look, I I fail all the time. I think obviously from deals I lose with you know companies or keynotes, but I think uh I'll give you a more kind of recent example. So I'm in the process of building a software company right now on on top of what I do with you know my speaking, and I don't know how to code, I don't know how to develop. I did this one thing that allowed me to, I had this idea, did this thing that allowed me to get a lot of inbound leads for my speaking. And I said to myself, hey, how can I replicate this for others, not just for other speakers, but for any service-based companies, for accountants, for plumbers, for lawyers. How can we replicate this and automate it so it can help other people to bring inbound traffic to their sites? And so, you know, having no experience in developing a software, talked to some people, hired a development team overseas, they did okay work, but at the end of the day, it wasn't very good. And got to the point where they presented us their finished product and we had to figure out what do we do because we didn't feel like we could go to market with that. And so learning how to communicate that to them, but also realizing this is kind of a sunk cost at this point. How do we do we switch teams? Do we switch developers? What do we have to do next? And so it made us really sit there and think and realize we probably should have evaluated more up front. We probably should have done a little bit more due diligence on what we were doing and who we were going to partner with before we started doing it. We end up hiring a different development team, and it's been going a thousand times better. But it's all about the process and how you learn. There's been so many mistakes along the way and aspects that you know I wish we had done better, but it's realizing that you can accept those mistakes and learn from them, or you can sit in them and regret them. And if it's in the past, you know, it's it's in the past, you can't change that. And so it's looking towards the future and saying, what can we learn from this and what can we do differently?

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, I like I love that answer. You know, I have uh I have an approach whenever I'm working with companies called the air method. And air stands for authenticity, inspiration, and relatability. And I am convinced that part of being authentic doesn't just mean, you know, this is who I am and I am my true self at work. Of course, you know, that it means that and everybody should act that way. But it also means being authentic enough to act in a human way at work. So if you screw something up, you admit it versus trying to cover it up or hide from it and talk about, you know, how you learn. Because I also I I worked with a woman who was uh being interviewed on a panel one time. I was in the audience and they said, Tell us about a time you failed. And and she said, I've never failed in my life. And I think the whole audience was like, What? Oh my God, how can she say that? And but she said, because I've seen every failure, what you call a failure, as a reason to um as a gift. It's it was a gift of giving me a chance to learn to be better in the future. And we should look at what you call failures as gifts, and and that always stayed with me. And I think that you do learn a lot. And I wish that uh I wish there was a way to translate the learnings that we all have when we try something and it doesn't work, and then we learn better, how to ask better questions of a developer, you know, how to make better choices, whatever it would be, to share that knowledge with someone else so that they don't have to go through what we went through. But then I remember nobody wants to listen to anybody. They want to do it themselves. A lot of people have to figure out, you know, figure it out the hard way, which often turns out to be the most memorable way.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Well, and that's how you learn the best. You know, you truthfully, you know, most of us learn from trying and failing ourselves than asking others. And and, you know, you can say all the time of, oh, learn from others. And I agree with you, but most of us need to go through that pain, whether it be physical or mental, to have something stick.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. I I think that's I think that's really insightful. So

Programmatic SEO With Long Tail Keywords

SPEAKER_00 20:07

I gotta ask you about the software company. Is it built on AI?

SPEAKER_01 20:11

So to a degree, it is not like a vibe-coding, no-coded platform. It's a legit, like very coded developed type of thing. Yes, there is AI involved with part of the content, but basically what it is is a programmatic SEO tool. And so what that means is it creates, you know, pages based on what are called long tail keywords. And so what I found out is for me, and and again, this can be applied to tons of different industries, but this is just what I did for myself in the beginning, is ranking for top keynote speaker is just almost impossible. But creating, you know, pages around top speaker in, I don't know, Savannah, Georgia, for example, and creating content on that page that is truly unique, that is valuable, not just like a cookie cutter re repeatable template, caused me to rank and get people to come inbound to me thinking I lived in these cities around the country. Once I would get them on the phone, I could convince them that, no, I don't live there, but you should hire me anyways. Did it work every time? No. Did I get a lot of leads from it and a lot of business from it? Yes. And that's what got me thinking of why can't we do this for others? It doesn't mean that it just needs to be location. It can be industry-based, it can be tons of different things. It could be ranking for, you know, top uh estate planning attorney for uh I don't know, for elderly men in Cleveland, Ohio. Like it's it's a niche longer term thing. But when people are searching for that and you pop up, you're able to, you know, get that inbound. And so found a way to kind of just automate that creation, make it a lot easier. Yes, using AI to help create part of those pages as well, but getting that to rank. And so it's been a really fun project. It's been a very difficult project, it's been something that I have no background or experience in, like I said, developing and That's that's a tough thing to do when you just have an idea, but you don't have the experience. And so it's been a big learning curve, but it's it's been really cool for me to, you know, learn a new area of entrepreneurship that you know I hadn't had experience in before.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

And it's always fun to have a passion project. You know, it's not just something that you have to do. You weren't hired to go create this company as much as, you know, it's it's something that you're inspired to do that inspires others, which I think is very cool. And um, you know, it's it's really interesting to me, because I've been in marketing for so, so many years, that um, you know, still some of the tried and true basics are still some of the best ways to to drive visibility and awareness, which is something that I don't really think is gonna change, especially as more people are starting to search for longer and longer phrases as a result of using AI, where you have to write the very long prompts. You know, I think some some Google searches used to be a couple words like keynote speaker, Savannah, Georgia. And now they're like, I'm looking for a keynote speaker in Savannah, Georgia who can speak about these topics and you know enjoys this and that. So I think uh I think you might be on to something really fantastic. I hope it helps a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

And, you know, whether it's that, I mean, relating to that and others, I mean, the way AI is changing things to begin with, and at some point, whether it's in two years from now or five years from now, I strongly believe, and I've talked to a lot of people who agree with this, you know, point and I didn't come up with this, but at some point the Google homepage, as we see it's say, will no no longer be there. It will be the Gemini homepage on Google when you search Google. It will direct you to Gemini, and that is where you know you will search. You will no longer search in Google at some point, whether it's you know two years, six years, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. I I think they're trying to do it now, but I I do have to say, um, you know, I I will go to Google when I'm trying to troubleshoot something, and uh a refrigerator stopped working, our icemaker stopped working a couple weeks ago. So I'm taking pictures, I'm uploading it into Chat GPT, into Claude, into Gemini, and then I'm searching on Google for like someone tell me what's wrong. Do I need to get a new refrigerator? Can I just get this fixed? And um, you know, what's so frustrating is right now I think Google's in the middle of trying to figure out how to make AI work effectively. It didn't tell me to go eat a rock every day like it used to, or glue my cheese on my pizza, but it did mix together about four different types of refrigerator. So the troubleshooting it gave me were pieces of my refrigerator that didn't exist. And and I it was a little in infuriating. So sometimes, you know, it's not so good yet, but I think I think it'll get there because uh it'll get there, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Keynote Themes And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_00 24:44

This has been such a fabulous conversation. You know, when we talk about lift-off journeys, everybody wants to know how somebody ended up where they are today. And I think, you know, your story is very inspirational, um, but it's also super relatable because while not everybody may have, you know, afflictions and challenges as you have, they face other types of challenges in their lives. And and you said it yourself, you know, everybody faces challenges or things that hold them back, whether it's uh physically or emotionally. And you know, you've given us some really good thoughts on on how to overcome that and and how to keep looking forward. So I I really appreciate you being on the show.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Yeah, no, thank you for having me. I'm glad I could come and share my background with your listeners.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Yeah, absolutely. So if we heard you doing a keynote speech, let's end the call by talking about what are some of the things that you love to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 25:40

You know, there's really three main topics and areas that I speak on. The first one is what I call achieving goals through adversity, you know, talking about how to overcome challenges and obstacles and that perspective shift of, you know, gratitude for your challenges, the same way I'm grateful that I was born legally blind. The second one is what I call thinking differently about disabilities. A lot of companies bring me in for that, especially around like October and Disability Awareness Month, and talking about, yes, my story, but more from like that accessibility, disability awareness lens. And the last one is really around like leadership and communication. And so I talk a lot about some of that communication stuff. We started to get into trust team building and how to use that to you know excel as a team.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Awesome. All great topics, all super relevant. And I think here there'll probably be a tremendous amount of demand, especially coming up as humanity seeps its way back into our world as AI grows. So, Aaron, thank you so much for being on Liftoff Journey.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

All right, okay, I will do the closing at the end, but this is great. Is there anything that you want to talk about that we didn't get to talk about?

SPEAKER_01 26:44

No, this is this is perfect. I appreciate you you haven't.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Well, that was amazing, right? That's the episode. If you got something out of this conversation, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Hit follow on lift up journeys wherever you listen so you don't miss the rest of our special series. And come find us and follow us, lift up show on any social channel. Want to know which of these guests you'd grab coffee with in one? I'm Jeannie Walton. Until next, lift up.