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.