Title:
YouTube Star Winston Clements: Influencing Change Through Content

Subtitle:
Limitless: Winston Clements on Life, Love, and Advocacy

Transcript:

Alycia Anderson: Welcome to Pushing Forward with Alycia, a podcast that gives disability a voice. Each week we will explore topics like confidence, ambition, resilience, and finding success against all odds. We are creating a collective community that believes that all things are possible for all people. Open hearts, clear paths.

Let’s go.

Welcome back to Pushing Forward with Alycia. Today, we’re gonna talk a little bit about your limitations might be an illusion.

We are joined by Winston Ben Clements, a global keynote speaker, a YouTuber, an accessibility consultant.

He was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease. Winston has lived through 200-plus fractures . Whoa. And is a full-time wheelchair user like me. But he’s turned all of his realities into a powerful platform that he is sharing with the world. He’s been on stages at Google, and Disney, and so many incredible companies. And he’s helping leaders build cultures where disability and the inclusive conversation can really thrive in the workplace and beyond. He, beyond the stage, has a beautiful marriage and he’s a father. We were just talking offline for a minute how much I love following him on Instagram and his beautiful family story, so I definitely wanna talk about that.

Winston, thank you so much for wanting to come on this show. I feel like we’ve been making friends over, I don’t know, the last couple years, year or two, over social media. So I feel like we know each other, but I’m really excited to meet you one-on-one. So welcome to the show.

Winston Clements: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me, and for this first proper meeting that we’re having.

Alycia Anderson: I know. I love it. I feel like you and I are in this similar business, and we could be supporting each other in a lot of ways. So I think this is gonna be a friendship that is able to grow in a lot of different ways. So welcome. Before we dive into the whole story because I’ve got a lot of questions for you, I want a couple icebreaker questions. Rapid fire. I just wanna see how you answer these. Coffee or tea?

Winston Clements: Tea.

Alycia Anderson: Okay. I had a feeling you would say that. ‘Cause are you from London? Where are you from?

Winston Clements: Yeah, I’m British.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. British. Very nice. One word that you could describe your energy for 2025.

Winston Clements: Consistent.

Alycia Anderson: Ooh, I like consistent. That’s a good word. Consistency will build lots of things. Would you have a hype song before you come out onto stage?

Winston Clements: Yes.

Alycia Anderson: What is it?

Winston Clements: I’ve actually got a hype playlist, so it would be something random from the playlist. I usually find something R&B or hip hop. But if it’s a fast-paced beat, that is something that really gets me going when I’m about to go on the stage. Just gets my energy up, ’cause naturally I’m a little bit more introverted.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. Okay, one more question. You are a YouTuber. You’ve got lots of awesome content on your YouTube, which we’re gonna leave all the links in the show notes so people can find you. But what’s your favorite video on YouTube that you could recommend to the world?

Winston Clements: Ooh. My video or any video that I’ve ever watched?

Alycia Anderson: Your video.

Winston Clements: Ooh. I think one of my favorite videos that we produced was when we told our family, my wife and I, that we were pregnant.

And you could see all their reactions, and that was a super cool video.

Alycia Anderson: Oh, I love that. I gotta go find that one. I haven’t seen that. Thanks for those. So, I started the show with the quote that’s on your LinkedIn, which I love. “Your limits are an illusion.” And I think that’s a powerful statement. Can you talk a little bit about what that means to you and when you realized this was true in your own life?

Winston Clements: Yeah, and there’s maybe a bit of a funny backstory about how this came about. So, the backstory is that I was working with a business coach, and he was helping me when I was getting started out as a speaker. And everyone said, “You need a speaker website.” And we’re looking through some of my favorite speakers, and we notice quite a few of them had an awesome tagline at the top of their website. So we were brainstorming, and he has this method, this coach that I worked with, it’s called 10 Bad Ideas. So he was like, “We’re not gonna overthink it. We’re just gonna come up with 10 ideas real quick.” And long story short, that turned out to be the best line out of 10. That said, “your limitations are an illusion,” but it also resonated with me because I realized that growing up. And I think a lot of people with disabilities can relate to this. We internalize a lot of ableism because you spend most of your time being told about all the millions of things that you are not supposed to be able to do. As I was able to grow up with my condition and then going into school, my parents chose to send me to what we call a mainstream school in the UK. So I didn’t have any sort of special, school system education, if I can say it that way. Initially, my parents were nervous about it, but then I went in there, made some friends, and I figured it out. And then later on, college, same thing. Went to college. Again, my parents were a little bit apprehensive because I wanted to go to quite a big college, huge campus, thousands of students. But again, figured it out. And then same thing, through navigating my corporate career, which initially I worked in the tech industry. And again, starting those jobs, I was told I’d have to travel. I’d have to catch flights, trains, airplanes, which sounded scary at first, but then figured that as well.

So, I guess looking back, I was able to realize that a lot of these, quote unquote, “limitations” that were either placed on me or I had placed on myself were an illusion because just through trial and error, not always doing it perfectly, you realize that. Which again, I think is true for lot of disabled people, that we actually develop a lot of transferable skills around creativity and innovation that allow us to thrive in spaces that are not meant for us.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, and it’s such a powerful lesson, even just to take beyond the disabled community. For just everyone in life, that there’s these things that we look at as limiting or too much adversity to deal with. And if you try to roll the path just a little bit, you’re gonna learn something that’s pretty cool, probably, or very likely.

So I love the quote. And your coach did a great job of just throwing something up there and seeing if it sticks because it sticks for me. I was like, “That is a great tagline. I love it.” So it really resonated with me too. And it made me sit with my own thoughts of myself and my own internalized ableism that I battle with, too, and go, “What are some of the limitations I’m still grappling with?”

So I like it. Very good Okay, so can we talk a little bit, whatever you’re comfortable with, about your backstory, your disability? You talk about having 200 bone fractures. Will you talk a little bit about how your disability shows up? How it was growing up with it, and just your lived experience a little bit.

Winston Clements: Yeah. So my disability is called osteogenesis imperfecta, which is a very complicated medical term. Which simply means brittle bone, so my bones are more fragile than the average person, but the condition is not just about bones. It can affect tissues, and muscles, and growth as well. For those of you who are watching on video, you probably noticed that I’m a little bit smaller. You can only see half of me right now, but I’m a little bit smaller than the average adult male. So I’m about three feet tall. I use a power wheelchair as well. And I would say for me, the way my condition showed up mostly was with the amount of fractures that I had to deal with. Especially when I was younger, because I was in an even smaller body, and so I was even more fragile.

It would be everyday situations, which you wouldn’t think anything of, that would lead to a fracture. For example, I could have a cold or flu and do a sneeze, and that would fracture some ribs. Or when I was even younger, even turning in my bed could potentially lead to some kind of limb fracture. So an arm or leg.

I guess that was the challenging part, and then also the frequency of them. 200 is probably an underestimate. Especially when I was younger, the frequency was very high with the fractures. But I guess that colored my life, especially when I was younger. I was just a kid like any other kid. And even though I knew that my container was a little bit more fragile than the next person I still wanted to be involved with all the other stuff that the kids were doing, Alycia. Whether it was trying sports. I tell this story a lot. In the UK, we played, I was gonna say football, but you call it soccer here.

So soccer was quite a big deal in the UK, and a lot of my friends growing up, they wanted to kick the ball. And of course I wanted to do that too, but probably not a good idea in my situation. And I remember a teacher, our sports teacher saying, “Hey, why don’t you call the game and stay? Why don’t you be the ref for the game?” And so I always wanted to be involved. That was good because it allowed me to step out on my comfort zones, but maybe not so good because it put me in harm’s way. And a lot of my fractures came from me being a little bit more daring and a little bit more of a risk taker. But yeah, I’m so glad that I did things the way that I did because later on it also gave me the mindset that, again, going back to your limitations are an illusion, that I’m able to figure things out. And sometimes you get to a point where you figure things out and you realize, “Actually, no, that’s not for me. I really shouldn’t be doing that.”

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, that also comes with age too, and just ” Oh, you know what? Maybe there needs to be some boundaries there.” I don’t know.

Winston Clements: Maybe no bungee jumping today.

Alycia Anderson: Maybe bungee jumping’s not a good idea. So I think you just answered it, but those lessons of jumping in and going for it in life. How has that translated in your career? You talked a little bit about being in tech. I love that you were. I was in tech before I started speaking full-time too.

Winston Clements: Oh, you were?

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. So I love that we have that in common. Can you talk a little bit about how you started your career and how that translated into the work that you’re doing? And just a little bit of that backstory as well.

Winston Clements: Yeah, so with the tech career, I ended up there.Some people have a five year plan or whatever. Some people that I went to school with, they knew exactly what they were gonna do in college, and things like that. I was a bit more open.

I really loved art, Alycia. I loved to draw and paint. I consider myself to be very good artist. Competitions when I was younger.

Alycia Anderson: Oh.

Winston Clements: And I thought, “Hey, I like the idea of being an artist.” But as I got a little bit older, everyone said, ” Artists don’t make any money, right?”

And I was like, “Oh, okay, then maybe I need to focus on science, which was my second favorite subject. And I was really good at physics, biology, all of those types of things. But it was one of those where I was good at them, but I didn’t really have an interest. So I would get straight A’s, but without even trying.

I realized I don’t wanna do something where I have zero interest. And then with the tech thing, I was almost like the default tech support guy in my home and among my community. If an auntie had a laptop that was broken or someone had a phone that needed fixing, they’d always bring it to me. And so when it was time for me to go to college. Out of those three sort of areas that I think could be an option, I’m gonna go with tech, and then see where that takes me. And then that kinda led me to doing a software engineering degree. And then ended up working initially in banking, but on the technology side. And then going through a tenure career as a tech consultant, which is where I did all the travel and everything else that comes with that, which you are probably familiar with as well. Then I guess the link to what I do now is not really a strong link. And maybe there’s two parts to my career. I feel like the first part of my career I spent trying to be normal in a corporate environment and trying not to focus too much on my disability, but I wanted to focus more on my competence. Which again, now looking back, I can see that comes from internalizing ableism and not even wanting to request accommodations because I didn’t wanna be too much of a bother. And then the second part of my career is when I realized that, “Hey. Actually, this is a part of me that I do want to embrace.” Just through running into various people with disabilities at work and then seeing them become role models for me. And then participating in the ERGs for the various companies that I worked for. It turned me from, I guess, someone who was avoiding it to someone who was an advocate. And then through that advocacy is when I also started dabbling with public speaking, to a point where I was looking back and I was thinking, “Actually, I think this is where my future lies.”

I talk about this as well. I did a TED Talk, which was something I would never have done. But it was something that I did and I was encouraged to do. It was only a small event in the UK. And through doing that Ted talk, it got a lot of views online, went a little bit viral.

I dunno what counts as viral these days.

Alycia Anderson: What’s the number?

Winston Clements: I think it got to about 60,000 views.

Alycia Anderson: That’s amazing.

Winston Clements: Yeah. And this was back in 2018. I had never done anything online, so I had zero online presence. So to me that was a big deal.

Alycia Anderson: That is a big deal.

Winston Clements: Thank you. But what came out of it, as well, was companies also started reaching out to me when I posted it on LinkedIn saying, “Hey, Winston. We’ve seen your TED talk and love for you to come and do the same thing.”

And in that way, this second career was born almost accidentally leaving the tech stuff behind and focusing more on disability advocacy and helping companies be more accessible.

Alycia Anderson: I think we’re twins. I have such a similar experience. That is so incredible. All of my speaking and advocacy came out of me hiding and then me deciding to not. And then speaking, and getting a TED Talk, and doing the whole thing. I can’t believe how similar we are in that. I love that we have that in common.

I absolutely love it. We’re gonna have to share the stage together.

Winston Clements: That’s so awesome. I know you already have a twin, we could be triplets, the three of us.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, you can be like triplets. I’m sure she would approve. That’s an incredible story. And I think that story is probably a lot of our stories where we’re navigating work and we don’t really wanna be the bother, or have to deal with accommodations. Don’t wanna be that person. I don’t wanna be the one that’s always gotta ask for something. And then the same thing with me. You start to build community around you of other disabled people, and it makes you stronger in your own advocacy to feel more comfortable in your own skin or something. So

Winston Clements: Right.

Alycia Anderson: What a beautiful story.

I love it. And my Tedx talk was the same thing. Once I did my TEDx talk, so many more corporate opportunities opened up for me. So it’s a powerful marketing tool, very powerful. And I only have 33,000 views, so you’re doubling me. Good job. So you’ve worked with a ton of big companies since Google, Disney, I’m sure many more.

What has been the biggest impact and what has been the biggest misconception that you think that you’re finding from disability inclusion, specifically?

Winston Clements: Yeah, we could go for a couple right now. I think one is just the reframe on accessibility that we hear all the time. I think I even did a post just today on LinkedIn that said accessibility is not special needs because it should just be the baseline that we build and design things universally. Because they don’t just benefit people with disabilities, but they also benefit probably eighty percent of the workforce at some point. I think that was almost like a message to my younger self as well, when I was internalizing all of that ableism and feeling like I was gonna be a bother, because I needed a desk with adjustable height or an ergonomic mouse to do my job properly. Not feeling like that was a bother, that was something that was helping me. And if the organization could create a process for providing those accommodations, they’ll probably benefit other people as well along the line. And then the other one, which again, I think most people be familiar with, just the idea of only focusing on highlighting and celebrating disability during the heritage months. Yeah, accessibility pride month. Let’s all wave our flags again, and then nothing for the next six months. And so a lot of the companies in the organizations that I’m speaking to now, I’m focusing on how can we actually keep the momentum going? And not focus on like this one-and-done type of engagement.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with all of that. And how are you doing that?

Winston Clements: Yeah. The way I’m positioning my keynote now is the keynote is the icebreaker. If you wanna see a real change, then let’s talk about further sessions that will follow up from the keynote. The way I’ve done it is, I do a keynote, which will cover a few three or four areas broadly. And then depending on the audience feedback or what resonates most with the audience, we could pick one or two of those areas for a follow-on, deep dive workshop, or focus group, or some kind of discussion with the ERG or the staff of company, just to make sure that we’re really embedding that change beyond Winston’s forty-five minutes and fifteen minutes Q&A.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah, and I think that’s where you see who’s really in and who’s not, right? The companies that are gonna have strategic partnerships with you, that wanna have multiple touches, and multiple education moments are the ones that see the bigger picture of, “Okay, let’s not just have Winston come in, check off the box, and then we’ll call you next year, or disability pride, or whatever.” Yeah, I love that’s a focus for you and it is for me too. I think it’s highly important. And especially this year when a lot of programs are being canceled, it’s giving us an opportunity to show up bigger and broader and support some of the gaps that are missing, which is great.

I love that.

Can we talk about marriage and fatherhood and real life for a minute, or am I going there too quickly?

Winston Clements: Yeah, sure.

Alycia Anderson: I don’t know you personally, like I want to be friends. I want us to go on a double date. I love my husband and your wife and your baby.

I would love to just hear about your marriage, and your partnership, and what that’s taught you about joy in your life and interdependence. You have a very beautiful love story that you’re very open about on your social media. And I think it really tells a beautiful story of disability and love, and we need to see more representation of that. I think in society in general, so people understand that we love too.

So can you talk a little bit? And take that wherever you want. It’s a lovely story from the outside looking in.

Winston Clements: Yeah. No, I appreciate you checking us out. When my wife and I got married, we didn’t really plan to share our story publicly. Actually, the way it happened. Again, a lot of things seem to happen accidentally for me, but they turn out really well.

You know how you get married and then they can make your wedding video. And then you have the two hour version of the wedding video, which shows the whole event from start to finish. And then you also have the three minute trailer, which is like a promo teaser thing that you can post on social media or you can share with your family groups.

So we received those two pieces of content, and then what I planned to do was to share the three minute teaser with my family group chat. And I thought, ” What’s the best way to share a video?” I don’t wanna just drop the whole file into the group chat. I’m gonna put it on YouTube, and then share the link in my family group chat. What I didn’t pay attention to, because I wasn’t really online so much back then, was I just posted it as a public video on YouTube. Which was fine. I still shared it with my family group chat. But then what I noticed was when I went back to the video a few days later, it had all these views, Alycia. The views just kept climbing up and up, and I was thinking, “Okay, my family’s not that huge.” This got a 100K views in a few days. And then it just kept climbing. I think, to this day, it’s got more than a million views now, that wedding trailer video. But I think what was really interesting wasn’t just the views, it was also the comments that we were getting. The comments were, majority of them, really supportive. ” Wow, this was possible.” Probably again, rooted in some ableism. It was kind. But you also had comments, which were unkind and saying, ” This shouldn’t be happening.” Disabled people should not be allowed to start families. Any kind of nasty stereotype that you could imagine was in that comment section. I think that’s when my wife and I made the decision of, we could go two ways with this.

We could say, “Hey, we’re just gonna hide our relationship. We’re gonna hide our family and just do everything privately because we don’t wanna take up too much space.” Or we could go the other way, which is, ” Actually, we’re gonna take all of these ideas that are probably rooted in ignorance and figure out a way to create change to create better representation for people who might have a similar background to ours.” And so that’s how the YouTube channel was born. And initially, we would literally create videos just based on silly comments that we would get. ” How does Winston take a shower or drive a car?” Or to my wife, “Do you have to be a full-time carer? Are you guys able to be intimate?”

All of these questions. And we would create content in a classy way that kind of answers those questions, or just shows people behind the scenes of our day-to-day life. I always talk about on YouTube that there’s a feature where if you click on someone who’s left you a comment, you can see their comment history. And there’s a few times we’ve done it where we could see someone started off by leaving a comment like, “Ew, this shouldn’t happen, throwing up emoji” like two years ago. Then you look at the next comment in the history, and it’s, ” Oh, okay. I like this family.” And then you look at comment number three and four, it’s ” Wow, you’re such a beautiful family and this has changed my perspective of disability, and I’m really gonna go and educate myself about it.” And so that’s exactly the type of trajectory that we’re trying to create.

Hopefully create a world that is kinder to the next generation of people that look like us.

Alycia Anderson: That comment journey is a pretty powerful statement and testimonial to how the world, and I’m generalizing, but how the world is taught to perceive disability. I’m gonna just quote you, “Ew.” Two, being able to be exposed to representation in an authentic way and see the beautiful, full lived story that we do present in this world as well. I think that is all so powerful. And I think that it’s a big deal that you’re taking the “ew’s”, and pushing through that. And creating something that is very helpful and useful, not only to the community to all of us disabled people, but to the greater good of the world.

That’s really powerful. Because I know when I get negative comments, I don’t know how to internalize it very well. It makes me pause a lot like, “Oh, man, that was really uncomfortable for me.” Props to you two for showing up that way. I think that’s really awesome.

Wow.

Winston Clements: Yeah, and it’s the same for us. Some of the comments can be jarring. Nobody wants to see something that is rude, especially if it’s directed towards your spouse or even your child, which is something that happens online all the time. And there’s times when we just have to say to ourselves, “Hey, we’re just gonna take a break from posting, or we’re not gonna look at the comments.” Now we have built a bit of a team around us. We have a social media manager, and she will help us engaging with comments so that we don’t have to look through every comment if we’re not in the headspace to do it. Because sometimes you also just have to know where you’re at with your headspace. “Today, I don’t need to be seeing anything negative against me or anyone in my family.” The systems around it help. But I think also what really helps is, especially now that we have a child, a daughter who’s just three years old, knowing that she’s gonna be able to look back on this. And she’s also gonna be able to see about how we live our lives day to day.

Kindness, inclusivity. Yeah, just thinking of others looks like from up close. So that then supersedes any resistance that we might have to continue doing this work.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. I can imagine, and you can speak to it if you feel comfortable or not. But I can imagine that you get similar comments about being a dad. I was never a mom, but I was pregnant a couple times. I have nieces and nephews, and what I have learned very personally is that when little ones are raised around disability, they become so genuinely empathetic and open. At least that’s been my experience with the kids that are around me. I’ve had other parents with disabilities on this show, and they talk about how society’s like, “You shouldn’t be a parent.”

It’s actually the opposite. It’s like we are producing humans that have a greater understanding of diversity and ability. So it’s actually a incredible path to be a part of. At least that’s what I’ve experienced. Can you speak to that just a little bit?

Winston Clements: Yeah. No, I agree. Obviously, I’m biased. I think my child is the best child in the world. I honestly do agree with what you’re saying. And it shows up as well. Like I said, our child is just three years old. She’s very young. But people always comment about, they call it maturity, which is an odd thing to say about a 3-year-old child. But I think it just shows up in how kind she is, and the way she really thinks about other people. And to give you a funny example, ’cause I use a power chair and I recently had an issue in my power chair. I think I needed a new battery for my power chair. And so I went to the shop where they look after it. Transfer from my power chair onto the seat in the waiting area, so that he could take my power chair away to do the work. My daughter came with me that day. As he was taking my power chair away, she started saying, “No, that’s daddy’s chair. Bring it back. He needs it.”

The advocacy at that age, like she couldn’t just sit back and watch her daddy lose his only means of being mobile. And so she spoke up. And again, it’s those types of things. Maybe I’ve not been around enough kids, but it just feels like that wouldn’t come naturally to a child who hasn’t been around a person with a disability.

Alycia Anderson: I love those stories so much. And look at what a young age it starts.That is such a beautiful story. And my niece was about that age. She would see me on stage twirling or whatever. And I have a small wheelchair that I would play tennis in when I was about her age. She gets in my chair and she mimics. And she wants to be me, like with the wheelchair and everything, like everything about me. And it’s just such a beautiful testimony of how we can shift narratives. Just with exposure, like doing exactly what you’re doing with your platform from a corporate standpoint, and then also just from a cultural, humanity standpoint. It’s really a big deal what you’re doing. So thank you for that.

Honestly. It’s awesome. Really awesome.

Winston Clements: Oh, no, I really appreciate you.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. I probably need to start sharing more of my personal life. I just always feel like I don’t know how to do it right. I just need to copy you, follow your lead.

Winston Clements: Let’s get you vlogging and sharing the day in the life.

Alycia Anderson: I know my community wants that from me too. Because when I do it, it’s popular. But I just feel so, I don’t know, exposed or something. So I need to get a little bit more brave like you.

It does leave you feeling a little bit naked. Yeah.

Winston Clements: Yeah, like you said, your community responds to it.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah.

Winston Clements: And maybe there’s a way to do it so that it doesn’t go too much on the personal side. Maybe you could vlog, for example, a day in the life as a speaker, which will incorporate you getting ready, the things that you do before you get on the stage. And then the things that you do after, which kinda keeps it a little bit in your comfort zone, but also showing a bit more of what happens behind the curtains, so to speak.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. Sometimes I feel like they just wanna see me putting on my shoes and showing what I buy.

Winston Clements: It’s funny you say that because some of the videos that have the highest views on our YouTube. It’s like a morning routine where nothing happened other than we go outta bed, I brush my teeth, my wife was making breakfast, we sat at the table, we had breakfast together, and then we went for a walk. And that was it.

That’s like a 12 minute video that’s got 5.8 million views on YouTube.

Alycia Anderson: Oh my God.

Winston Clements: So yeah, I guess people just wanna see the regular stuff.

Alycia Anderson: Totally. Wow. Okay, so I have one more question before we wrap up with a pushing forward moment. I know you’ve done a lot of interviews. Good Morning America. Today Show. Well done. Today Show is on my bucket list, so good job on that. Channel Four, all kinds of things. If you could set a headline for the next decade of disability culture, what would it read?

Winston Clements: Oooh.

Alycia Anderson: Let’s put you on the spot, too.

Winston Clements: Let me think. I would say something along the lines of accessibility is now a standard. Just something like that. Like how we look back and we talk about pre-Civil rights and post-Civil rights. Something like that, but for accessibility is now a standard in things that we’re advocating for, and that we’re pushing for, and lobbying for, and marching for today will just be a standard provision. Heck, it might even mean that I need to find a new topic to speak about on stage because everyone knows how to do accessibility now.

Alycia Anderson: Agreed. Wouldn’t that be amazing? It might ruin our businesses, but who cares?

Winston Clements: I have other things I wanna talk about too.

Alycia Anderson: There you go.

Winston Clements: I could talk about soccer instead on the stage, even though I never played it professionally. But it’d be great to do that just because I no longer have to fight about basic accommodations.

Alycia Anderson: Yeah. I love it. Thanks for coming on the show. Did we miss anything? We’re gonna leave all your links, all your social media, all your YouTube. Ways to find your website, and book you for speaking, and all the other things. Did we miss anything?

Winston Clements: No, honestly, this was such a fun conversation. I feel like we could probably go for another half an hour.

Alycia Anderson: Okay, good.

Winston Clements: Easily or more. Yeah, no, I’m just excited to share my story with your community. And I know we don’t generally get an opportunity for Q&A on podcasting. So if you are watching this, then definitely leave your question in the comment box on YouTube, and I’m gonna jump in there and reply to as many as I can.

Alycia Anderson: I love it. And for the companies out there that are subscribed to this, “Winston is booking, 2026 is coming, so call him.” Yeah, there you go. Okay, pushing forward moment. Do you have a little motivation, a little mantra, something you live by to motivate our community on the way out?

Winston Clements: Yeah. The one that comes to mind. And I think it’s because we had this conversation where we’ve spoken about my story and my journey, since the beginning to now. And it takes me back to some of those harder moments because of my condition with the brittle bones. I’ll give a specific example. There was one Christmas, I must have been about seven years old. And on that Christmas, I had multiple broken bones. I think I had an arm and a leg that were broken. And I remember feeling really frustrated and feeling like this was really unfair. And my parents were trying their best to make Christmas magical.

I’ve got two sisters, they’re trying to make Christmas as magical as they could for their kids. But obviously, I couldn’t really enjoy to the fullest because I had this situation going on. And I remember feeling really down and almost projecting to the future thinking, “Is this how my life is gonna be? Am I ever gonna be able to participate in life in the way that I’d like to if this keeps happening?” So the mantra I would say, just to focus on the next right thing to do. And what that means for me is, it’s very easy to take the situation of today and, again, project it forward.

This side’s gonna look when I’m 20, 30, 40, but nobody knows the future. And so, the next right thing for me in that situation looked like, “Yeah, I could spend this time ruminating about how hard my life is gonna be.” But actually the next right thing is, ” I just need to grab one of these boxes, these presents, and open it, and see what’s inside and enjoy it.

And if I have to play with my dragon with one hand that day because the other one’s broken, let’s do that and focus on that. And let college, or marriage, or having kids in the future take care of itself when the time comes. So I say all this to say, just focusing on the next right thing. And then before you know it, you’re looking back, and, to use your words in the beginning, you’ve rolled the path, you’ve pushed forward, and things feel a lot different because the clouds have cleared and you can start to see the sun coming out.

Yeah.

Alycia Anderson: Oh, you can start to see the sun coming out. It’s so beautiful. I love it. Yeah, look for the right moments, and then you look back eventually and you’re like, “Wow, I did all that.” And congratulations on all the things that you have accomplished and so much more. You’ve got such a bright future ahead of you.

I’m so happy that we finally met. Thank you for coming on the show. This was awesome.

Winston Clements: No, it’s a pleasure. I’m looking forward to staying connected.

Alycia Anderson: Yes, we’re gonna share the stage one day. Okay, I’m gonna wrap up. We’re gonna leave everything, all your links in the show notes. To our community, I know you thought that this episode was good, so please do not forget to share it, and subscribe, and review, and all the good things that’s helping the show grow every week.

Thank you for showing up again. This has been Pushing Forward with Alycia and Winston, and that is literally how we roll on this podcast. We will see you next week.