From dropout to self-made Millionaire with David Neagle

A former high school dropout and minimum-wage forklift driver, David suffered a near-death incident where he was pulled into a dam, broke his back, and nearly drowned. No one expected David to survive the accident and the rescue workers even told his family that he was dead.

But David survived. He made the decision that day to begin the journey responsible for changing his entire life. Through the power of mindset work, he incrementally and systematically increased his income and eventually became a multimillion-dollar business owner.

Since then, David has helped thousands of entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners tap into their unlimited potential in order to grow their businesses and achieve their dreams - including New York Times best-selling author Jen Sincero.  

David is a perfect fit for The Beautifully Broken Podcast. He shares his powerful redemption story, three simple changes that unlocked his life, exercises to help anyone get through COVID (and any trying time), and how David would improve the world after we get past this pandemic. This is an inspiring and encouraging conversation. Please enjoy.

Episode Highlights

1:24 - David's pain to power scenario

10:09 - Three things that David tried for one year that changed his life

16:00 - Why those 3 things unlocked David's future

17:28 - The role of mentors in our lives

24:23 - The dangers of living in absolutes

26:45 - How COVID is impacting the conversations and divisions in the US

33:25 - What if things don’t go back to normal, what then?

38:36 - Exercises to cultivate what's necessary to succeed during and after COVID

45:08 - Actions to take to feel good and safe right now

46:48 - What does it mean to be beautifully broken?

48:50 - Three things that would change post-COVID with David's magic wand

UPGRADE YOUR WELLNESS

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CONNECT WITH FREDDIE

Work with Me: https://www.beautifullybroken.world/biological-blueprint

Website and Store: (http://www.beautifullybroken.world) 

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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@beautifullybrokenworld 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel and David Neagle (00:00.59)
I wrote this down on a card that I was going to do this. I was going to act like I love what I did, every job to the best of my ability, treat everybody with total respect. And I started doing this and 30 days later, my income went to 62,000 from 20,000 to 62,000. My whole life changed in 30 days.

Freddie Kimmel and David Neagle (00:22.562)
Welcome to the Beautifully Broken Podcast brought to you by AmpCoil. I'm your host, Freddie Kimmel, and on this show, we discuss the common thread survivors share after walking through the fire, the practitioners making a difference, and the treatment modalities that deliver healing back into the hands of the people who need it most. Witness the inspiration we gain by navigating the human experience with grace, humility, and a healthy dose of mistakes. Because part of being human is being beautifully broken.

Freddie Kimmel and David Neagle (00:54.542)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the beautifully broken podcast. We have an incredible guest here today. have David Neagle. David, welcome to the show. Hey, how you doing? Glad to be here. David, I am absolutely floored. was just sort of, I've been digging into some past year interviews and your story and this being a beautifully broken podcast, you are

You're, you're the example, you know, you're, walking the walk. Can you tell the audience a little bit about your story? Let's, let's call it your pain to power scenario. Sure. So I think that if we go, if we go back to my childhood, it was, it was a pretty crazy childhood. There was a lot of, was born in the mid sixties. So coming out of the probably up to about 1971, everything was pretty cool.

And there was a tragedy in my family in 1970. My mother's brother, my uncle died in a horrific house fire. And his two kids were, which were my cousins. One was a year older than me. One was a year younger than me. They died in the fire also. And I don't think anybody in my family was emotionally prepared to deal with that tragedy. So these, and these two kids, they were my playmates from birth till, you know, four or five years old. So

you know, everything was great and then everything was not great and it progressively got worse as time went on. So like at 13, my parents got divorced. We had moved around a tremendous amount. I was born and raised in Chicago. In 76, we moved to Phoenix. Parents got divorced, moved back to Chicago in 79. And then my mom disappeared for three years. So from about 13 to 16 and a half or so, I was pretty much on my own.

going through high school, which was a total disaster, trying to help my brother who was four years younger than me. Like I said, my mom wasn't around. My dad was pretty much in Arizona at the time. So he was there by phone, but he wasn't there in guidance type of a scenario. So I was just trying to make it, you know, and I was doing okay. I wasn't doing too bad. Although I ended up quitting high school at 17, moved out, gotten a big blow up with my mother and I decided that I was just going to try to chart my own path.

Freddie Kimmel and David Neagle (03:17.738)
in life from that point on. And I was making some bad mistakes. Like, not bad like you end up in jail or prison, you know, you kill anybody, that type of mistake. But mistakes where I did not know what priorities to put first. So I got married, I had a couple of kids, I had no education, I had basically no skill sets, I was driving a forklift on a dock, overspending, under earning, filed bankruptcy.

Had to leave our apartment in the middle of night because we couldn't pay our bills. Every time I would seem to get some kind of a leg up, it was like somebody kicked the stool out from under me and I'm back down again. This is just going on for a long time and I can't figure out how to get out of it. So I had a couple, I had a couple of very interesting things happen probably in close succession to each other. One was that right after my son was born in, he was born in June of 89 and this was in September of 89.

My wife and I went out on a boat with my mother, my stepfather, my aunt, my uncle on the Illinois River. And I was supposed to water ski that day and I got separated from the boat and I got sucked through a dam. And I was one of only two people that ever survived going through it as of September of 89. But it was, it was a bad, it was a bad accident. Like I had broke my back. I was beaten up pretty bad. I came very close to drowning and

After that accident happened, I remember thinking to myself, there's a reason that I survived this. And part of the reason that I was thinking that was because when I was in the emergency room at the hospital, they had the Army Corps of Engineers who ran that dam. They had the Ottawa River Rescue. They had the state police. They had the local sheriff. They had the conservation department. They were all in the emergency room and they all kept asking the same question, how did I survive going through?

And I thought it was the most ridiculous question ever because it wasn't like there was some technique. was, I was lucky. had a life vest on. I was lucky. The gate was open on the dam and I didn't get stuck inside. I was lucky that I managed to grab onto a tree branch off of an Island and it's smart enough to buckle my vest to it so that I didn't get swept away in the current again. And that's where they found me. That's where they found me hanging from this, from this tree branch. So

Freddie Kimmel and David Neagle (05:39.502)
They're, you know, they kept asking me, how did you survive? How did you survive? You don't know how lucky you are. Somebody's watching over you. Somebody up there likes you. Just, you know, don't waste this. You don't get another chance like this in life. All the cliche stuff that people hear when they survive something that people chalk it up to luck. So I started believing in what they were telling me to some degree. And I was thinking, yeah, there must be some reason why I survived this. Why am I only one of two people that went through this and lived? The other guy that went through it's a paraplegic.

They told me a story about the year before there were two guys on a motorboat on the river fishing. The boat went out, the engine, the little motor went out on their boat. They got stuck in the current, sucked the whole boat in to the dam, suck the guys into the dam. They sent three firefighters down with scuba gear to try to get the guys out of the dam. All five died. So it, you know, it was just one horrific story after another. And I'm like, okay, so there must be a reason that I survived this. So I get healed. I go back to work. I'm back on the forklift.

back on the dock again. And life's just getting worse. It's not getting any better. I'm waiting for, you know, like Moses to part the sea and something actually happened here and nothing's happening. And it's progressively getting worse. And I remember distinctively, this was a Tuesday night in February. go into work because I worked the night shift. I go into work. I got disciplined the day before. I got called in the office immediately when I walked in the door. I got disciplined again. I got in a screaming match with my boss.

It wasn't his fault. Like I was just doing shitty work. You know, I mean it was, that's what it was. I had a terrible attitude. I didn't care about my work. I deserved, you know, I should have been fired on the spot actually. was, you know, it was, it was, you know, like by the grace of God that he didn't fire me and I'm just mouthing off to him and I go and I'm in the back of this trailer on the forklift and I just start crying. I just broke down because I didn't know.

how to change it. had no idea. I wanted to change it. I really did. And I actually asked people, how do I turn, I realized I made a mistake. I should have stayed in high school. I should have found a way to go to college. I shouldn't have gotten married. I shouldn't, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have, but I did. So now what do I do? And their answer was work hard. That was it. Take all the overtime you can work hard, go back to school if you can, which was, it was an impossibility at that time. There was no internet. had two children.

Freddie Kimmel and David Neagle (07:57.49)
We were living in low-income housing, like next door to what I said. And it was very distinct. was in the moment I couldn't decipher if it was in my head or if it was actually audible. I remember looking around to see if somebody was there, like that was really weird. So I started thinking about it and I realized that this was not the first time that I heard that phrase change my attitude. I had been hearing it my whole life. So when I would get in trouble in school or I wouldn't do my schoolwork, they would call my father in and the teachers would tell my father, know, David's a pretty smart kid, but he's got a terrible attitude when it comes to.