EE516 - From €237 in the Bank to Building a Global Accessibility Company | Stephen Cluskey

I heard a crack

You actually heard it?

And in an instant, everything in my body just went dead. Firstly, I think I should've been dead. Many people would've died with that level of injury. Spent the next six hours at the side of the road in the lashing, lashing rain trying to find a service that should've been available, in, in my mind. And-

It's not the strongest that survive, it's those that adapt

... after, I don't know, 12 months maybe, we'd €237 left in our bank account, and it was one, one conversation there that really changed everything for us.

Stephen, welcome to the pod.

Yeah. Great to be here, Gary.

How are you?

Great. Fantastic. Yeah.

Are you a better artist or a better businessman?

[laughs] Good question. Um, so you prompted me on a story that, uh, that is one of the, the fondest memories I have from the journey over the last 23 years. Uh, we can talk about it in a few minutes, the accident. So I had, I had an accident 23 years ago at the age of 18. I, I, um, I fell from a hay bale, broke my neck. I'll tell you all about that when, when we go a bit deeper on it. Uh, but the artwork story, yeah, so, um, couple of months after the, after the accident, I was in the hospital. I was in for 14 months in the rehabilitation hospital in Dun Laoghaire, um, with a spinal cord injury. And I was in a 12-bed, 12-bed ward, and quite spoiled. Now, the, the food wouldn't have been the best in the hospital.

I was gonna say, very, very rarely do people say spoiled. [laughs]

I was spoiled. Dad had five sister- Dad has five sisters. Mom had two sisters, and so there was a routine set up to bring me in food every day. One of them would cook a meal, and-

Oh, nice

... I'd have a luxury meal every day sitting in the hospital-

Everyone else in the hospital-

... making-

... just eyeballing you going, "Yeah."

Making everyone else jealous. And as I was sitting there one day, um, my aunt was there, and she, she'd brought in chicken, so I was eating this bit of chicken. I was chewing away, and this guy walked in. I saw this guy at the end of the corridor with blue sunglasses on, and I went back to chewing, and I looked again and I went, "Holy shit. That's Bono." And he walked down, and he stopped in front of me and he said, "Hey, Stephen. How are you? Now I'm a massive U2 fan." And I started to choke on the chicken.

[laughs]

I, I half swallowed. And I, I, uh, I eventually composed myself. I, I, I have no idea what we spoke about for the next 15 or 20 minutes. Absolutely no recollection. It was just one of those, one of those moments. And I wouldn't get starstruck often. And as he was leaving, I was, I was sitting in a, in a powered wheelchair at the time, uh, using my chin to control the, the chair, and I, I... When I move off, it just happens with a spinal injury, I'll get spasm in my legs. My legs will jump. And so he said to me, "Do you wanna walk out to the car park?" And I went, "Poor choice of words," but anyway.

[laughs]

Um, I went to move off and my legs jumped, and he stopped, and Bono looked down at my legs and he went, "Oh my God, you can, you can move your legs now."

He thought, he thought he was after curing you, did he? [laughs]

I think he was thinking he's after