What Diamond Dallas Page Learned from Lee Iacocca

Diamond Dallas Page recounts how he overcame ADD and illiteracy with diligence and discipline. His first read, Lee Iacocca's biography, revealed that "works" are used across industries.
Read more at BigThink.com:
Follow Big Think here:
YouTube:
Facebook:
Twitter:
Transcript: I’m a kid who grew up with ADD and dyslexia when no one knew what the hell ADD or dyslexia was. I’m 58 years young. And at the age of 30 I was reading at about a third grade level. And at 31 I’d made a decision. I was going to learn how to read proficiently mainly because, you know, it’s embarrassing having to work around not knowing how to read. I’d already achieved so many things in my life at that time, I just knew it was now. So I set a goal for myself that I was going to read a book from cover to cover.
Now that may not seem like that big a deal to most of the people watching me talk right now but to me at that point in my life it was fucking overwhelming. Like you’re going to read that book from cover to cover? And I thought well how do I normally approach, you know, any goals that are daunting. I’d already achieved so many at that point in my life. Break them down. So I wrote that I was going to read one page from that book every day. And I just didn’t think it, I inked it and I put it everywhere. I put read today – once I made that decision I was like I’m going to do this. I put read today and I stuck it on my bathroom mirror. I stuck it on my nightstand, my headboard, my refrigerator, my car. It was everywhere. I was in the nightclub business back then so I didn’t always read right before I went to bed because I knew I might be out raising hell that night. But before that day was over, before I headed out to the club I was going to get one page from that book in. And it took me a year but I read that fucker from one end to the other.
My girl Brenda had heard me tell this story numerous times. She goes, what was that book? It was Lee Iacocca’s first autobiography. Interesting choice, huh? It was around the time that, you know, he took over Chrysler. Everybody went oh, he’s fucked, you know. That company’s done. Uh huh, it wasn’t. And Lee was the guy who turned that thing around. And my favorite story from the book was – you have to understand I come from the land of what some of you call make believe because we’re make believe fighting. But I want to tell you we’re whooping each other’s ass out there. Like wow, like you would be shocked how hard we hit each other, especially if we’re good friends. And we’re trying not to kill each other. But we believe that everything is a work meaning it’s set up. Like wrestling is the first reality TV show. We took real wrestlers, some of their real names, some of them different names, took real life situations and worked it into the storyline. Wow, that’s – oh but isn’t reality TV real? Ha ha, what part? Maybe the game shows. I’ll tell you Shark Tank was real. But that’s not a reality – it is but it’s a competitive show so it’s a little bit different.
Duck Dynasty to pick one, I don’t care. You know they’re all scripted, you know. Some of them better than others. Duck Dynasty is top of the world now, you know, so obviously they’re doing something right. Everything is a work. Everything’s set up to us. So going back over and the story that stuck out to me, Iacocca was the guy who was responsible for the Mustang. I believe it was 65. It could have been 64. I’m almost positive it’s 65. And the biggest sensation in the auto industry at that time. And they only made a few of them. They didn’t make like bazillions of them. They made so many of them. And on the day that the Mustang was in the showroom, a guy in a tractor trailer saw the car, couldn’t take his eyes off the car, went right through the light, crash, went right through a building, destroyed everything. He, of course, walked away and no one was injured. That means that was a work. But it was the greatest story, you know, 18-wheeler goes through the side of a building staring at the new Mustang. And it was already a really cool car to boot so I just – that’s one of the things in that book that sticks in my mind. I thought that was brilliant.
Produced/Directed by Jonathan Fowler and Dillon Fitton