Josh Sundquist
- Paralympic Athlete & Cancer Survivor
- Best-selling Author, Comedian, & Social Media Sensation
Travels From
California
TEDxPotomac - Josh Sundquist - 1MT1MT: One More Thing, One More Time
Josh Sundquist Speaker Biography
Internationally-Known Motivational Speaker
Josh Sundquist is a bestselling author, motivational speaker, and Paralympic ski racer. He has spoken across the world to groups ranging from Fortune 500 companies to inner city public schools to the White House.
Cancer Survivor
Josh's journey began at age nine, when he was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer and given a fifty percent chance to live. He spent a year on chemotherapy treatments and his left leg was amputated. Doctors declared Josh cured of the disease at age thirteen and he took up ski racing three years later.
Paralympic Athlete
He trained for the next six years and in 2006 he was named to the US Paralympic Ski Team for the 2006 Paralympics in Turino, Italy. A multi-season athlete, Josh is the only person in history to ever have been named to both the US Paralympic Ski Team and the US Amputee Soccer Team.
Bestselling Author
Josh's memoir, Just Don't Fall, was a National Bestseller in hardcover and is now available in paperback and audiobook. It has been translated into German for a European edition and is also on shelves down under in an Australia/New Zealand edition, for which, as it turns out, no translation was required.
YouTube personality
Best known for his viral hit "The Amputee Rap," Josh has built a YouTube channel with over ten million views and one-hundred-thousand subscribers. In 2010 he was a winner of both the YouTube NextUp and YouTube On The Rise contests.
Doer of Good
Josh served a two-year tenure as the National Spokesperson for the Combined Federal Campaign, an effort that raises over $300 million dollars a year for charities. He has been featured on the back of Doritos bags nationwide for being the founder of LessThanFour.org. For the record, Josh would've preferred to name it GiveMeAHand.com, but that URL was already taken.
Media Attention Receiver
Josh has been featured on CNN, USA TODAY, and NPR, and in many other less-famous and important-sounding media outlets.
Education
Josh received a degree in business from the College of William and Mary and a Master's in Communications from the University of Southern California. He lives in Washington, DC.
1MT1MT: ONE MORE THING, ONE MORE TIME
Josh's keynote presentations blend clean comedy with soulful storytelling. Hilarious audience interactions are punctuated by moments of profound silence. Your attendees experience a roller-coaster ride of laughter, tears, chills and still more laughter. His storytelling format engages, entertains, and instills hope in people who are facing challenges both personal and professional. Key takeaways include how to fall forward by learning from disappointments and failures, why our results are based more on our response to adversity than our response to success, and how to keep swinging when we feel like we have struck out.
HOW JOSH CUSTOMIZES
Josh will study the unique challenges and opportunities facing your audience to tailor his presentation for your event. If possible, he will attend your entire conference or convention up until his speech, sitting in on general sessions to hear speeches by your leadership and industry experts. He will take part in your social functions and chat with attendees in the hall during breaks. This cultural immersion allows Josh to give a speech that weaves together his own story with the story of your organization, to interact with members of your leadership team and individual audience members by name while he's giving his talk, and to impart relevant 1mt1mt's your audience can do to elevate their performance.
YOUR AUDIENCE WILL LEARN:
1MT1MT
When Josh was training for the Paralympics, his motto was 1MT1MT (one more thing, one more time). What's the 1MT1MT you could do today to get closer to the future you are training for? What's that little bit of extra effort you could make to better serve your customers?
CHANGE IS OUR CHANCE TO GROW
Josh had to give up his childhood dream of playing for the local travel soccer team. But as a result, he discovered something even better: the dream of a Paralympic uniform. When we accept change—in our lives, our workplace, and our industry—we create the space necessary for new growth.
YOU ONLY STRIKE OUT WHEN YOU QUIT
Josh went up to bat in a softball game a month after his amputation. He got three strikes in a row. But his friends let him keep swinging. It took more than twenty to get a hit. That game was a lot like life. In most endeavors, you only strike out when you quit. How many strikes are you willing to take?
SELL SOLUTIONS, NOT PRODUCTS
An airline employee offered Josh a seat with “extra leg room” because he has one leg. Which is funny since he gets extra leg room...automatically. She wanted to help, but she made the most common mistake in customer service: offering a solution before understanding the problem. Don't tell your customers what you want to sell before learning what they want to buy.
IT'S NOT HOW FAST YOU SKI, IT'S HOW FAST YOU GET BACK UP
In his first ski race, Josh fell. Five times. In sports, in life, in business, the principle is the same—you will fall. The question is, how fast can you get back up? How quickly can you learn from a mistake and then recover by implementing that new knowledge?
WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, MAKE HALLOWEEN COSTUMES
We all have problems. We all have things we wish we could change but can't. And we certainly all have stress. But sometimes within those situations we can find a bit of humor, and that can make the challenges a little easier to endure.
LEADERSHIP IS PUTTING YOURSELF IN THEIR BOOT
Josh's first ski instructor had two legs, but he took off a ski and balanced on one leg to give Josh an example to follow. Whether you are a business leader, a community leader, or a student leader, that's an illustration of how to be effective: put yourself in their boot. And leave a trail they can follow.
COLLABORATION DOUBLES OUR RESOURCES
For years, Josh accumulated a box of unused left shoes. Then he met his solemate, Stephen, an amputee missing the opposite leg. Now Josh and Stephen exchange shoes and each have twice as many as before. Likewise, when we collaborate with co-workers and with other divisions, we all end up with more.
