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- [00:07]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Journey on magic lies within the trails we ride. You're listening to the Journey on podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warrick is a horseman trainer, international clinician and author who helps empower horse people from all over the world with the skills, knowledge and mindsets needed to create trusting partnerships with their horses. Warrick offers a free seven day trial to his comprehensive online video library that includes hundreds of full length training videos and several home Study courses@videos.warwickshiller.com.
- [00:45]
Warwick Schiller
G'day everyone. Welcome back to the Journey on podcast. I'm your host, Warwick Schiller and my very, very special guest this week on the podcast is Dan Brodsky Chenfield. So Dan is a six time world champion skydiver, author and motivational speaker. In 1992, Dan survived a plane crash that killed 16 people, including several other members of his skydiving team. He spent six weeks in a coma with major injuries, including a cervical fracture of his spine. And this podcast is, we're going to hear about that, but also how Dan got into skydiving, what, what motivated him to do that and what he's up these days. You know, it was such an honor and a pleasure to, to have this, this conversation with Dan and yeah, hope you guys enjoyed listening to this conversation as much as I did recording it. Dan Brodsky Chenfield, welcome to the Journey on podcast.
- [01:57]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Thanks Rory. Great to be here.
- [01:59]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, good to have you here. You know, so I was introduced to you by our mutual friend and badass stunt woman, Hannah Betts.
- [02:07]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, she's, I met Hannah when she was much younger and hadn't even begun the, the stunt experience and stunt career when she was wanting to become a world champion skydiver as, as a young skydiver. Wanted to become a world champion.
- [02:23]
Warwick Schiller
Right? Yeah. Now, now she's a badass stunt woman and had that, had that spot recently that they played during the, the Grammy Awards, which was, was it the, was it the Oscars or the Grammys? The Oscars.
- [02:37]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I get them confused sometimes.
- [02:39]
Warwick Schiller
The Grammys, music, Oscars, Film. Yeah, it was, it was, it was the Oscars.
- [02:43]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It was great. Hannah came out, you know, she hadn't been jumping for a while because she'd been busy doing other types of stunt work. And she came out to the skydiving center to get current because if you haven't jumped for a while, you want to come out, you want to go through everything. You don't want to be complacent or take it for granted. You want to make sure you've got it Together. And she came out, we got to hang out for the day and go back through all the basic, important, you know, safe skydiving practices and do a jump together. So it was great, great to see her out and get to do that with her right before she went and did that whole commercial.
- [03:18]
Warwick Schiller
So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. There's your first lesson for the podcast is Hannah is a very, very experienced skydiver. Did she end up. Did she win a world championship or not? She did. So she's a world champion skydiver, but hasn't done it for a while. And what did she do? She came back and went over the basics. That's the secret to life right there.
- [03:42]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Don't take these things for granted.
- [03:44]
Warwick Schiller
Right. So speaking of life, you've lived an amazing, amazing life and have an amazing story. Where did you. Where'd you grow up?
- [03:56]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I was born in Albany, New York.
- [03:59]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, wow.
- [03:59]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And then. But mostly grew up, we moved to Hawaii briefly for a year when I was five years old, then back to Albany, then mostly grew up and moved to Columbus, Ohio, when I was 8 and grew up in Ohio through high school, through college, after college, was still there, and then moved out west when I was about 28.
- [04:25]
Warwick Schiller
Okay, so you're one of those people who maybe a bit like me, too, is kind of ended up living their childhood dream, like a lot of people I have on the podcast who, like, let's say Hannah. Hannah ends up being a world champion skydiver and a Hollywood stuntwoman. And as a child, she wasn't thinking, I want to be a skydiver or I want to be a stuntwoman. You know, series of events led her on that path. But from what I've read, you have always been interested in this since you were a kid.
- [05:00]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
You know, I, as a little kid, and I think a lot of little kids have the same, you know, little fantasies, little dreams, little pretend worlds that we live in. And mine was about flying. I wanted to fly. I'd watch birds fly, and it was just incredible to watch them, to think about how they did it, how they maneuvered their wings, how they flared, how they glided. And then also, you know, little kid watching superheroes thinking, man, that would be the coolest superpower in the world to be able to fly to the rescue or fly to retreat or whatever it is, but to be able to fly where you wanted to go. And I just dreamt of flying. And, you know, as a little kid, you. You fantasize about these things, and you played these games all the Time. But even, even at six years old, I realized that this was just going to be a fantasy. You know, human beings can't fly. And then I remember seeing something about skydiving. I mean, this is in the 60s, so there wasn't much out there about it. But there was a few TV shows and something called Ripcord, a show, old show, in the 60s. And I remember seeing people in free fall, unattached to any man made flying machine, just flying themselves, flying their bodies in free fall. And I thought, that's got to be the most incredible thing in the world. And that's as close to human flight as people can come. And even at six years old, I thought, I want to be able to do that. I want to fly like that. That it would become a career and a sport that I would get involved with. I had no idea at that time. I just wanted to fly.
- [06:38]
Warwick Schiller
Right. And so what, what came first? Flying or skydiving? Like, did you. Well, you got a degree in like, aviation.
- [06:49]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Aviation, yeah.
- [06:51]
Warwick Schiller
What did you, what did you think you were going to do with that degree? Did you want to be a pilot or anything like that?
- [06:57]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I was in, in school. I started skydiving my freshman year of college and got very involved at the skydiving center. And because I was so involved, I also started getting all the different skydiving ratings you get to be able to contribute more to the skydiving center. So I got my instructor rating and my jump master rating, parachute rigger rating, it's an FAA rating. And I also got my pilot's license. And I started flying the skydivers then and got a degree in aviation because it seemed logical. As I was in school, I was involved with aviation already. A pilot career was, was probably the most likely career to pursue with that degree and with the experience that I had. But it was skydiving that I loved more than, more than flying. I wanted to fly myself. Like, flying an airplane is great, but the airplane is flying. You're out in the airplane. Even flying my parachute. The parachute is flying and I'm operating the parachute, but in free fall, it's us, we're flying ourselves. There is no, there is no other flying machine we're operating. And that's, that's what I loved so much and still do.
- [08:09]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah. So tell us about your first skydive. Because, you know, a lot of people will have one. Like I have had one, just because the idea of it scared the out of me. So I had to, you know, I wanted to, I wanted to cross that off the list sort of thing. Was your first skydive like everybody else's. Like, you're petrified until you actually drop out of the plane. Or. And. And did you. Were you tandem or did you.
- [08:38]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Nice. I. When I learned to. Scott, if it was 1980 and tandems were not even thought of at that point.
- [08:44]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, really?
- [08:45]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
We did. We used old military surpl. Round parachutes, kind of like what you see in the old World War II movies.
- [08:53]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah.
- [08:54]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
With static lines that were connected from the top of the parachute to a connection on the airplane, and then you just jump out of the airplane and it would automatically deploy the parachute for you. And everything was solo. You didn't. No one was allowed to skydive with you until you had an A license. So you had to learn completely on your own. And we also didn't have any of the backup devices like we have now. Now we have several backup systems for new jumpers especially, but for all skydivers that we didn't have. So, you know, I had been wanting to do it since I was 6 years old, but you had to wait till you're 18. You can't skydive until you're 18. So until I was, you know, I started college when I was 17, and I was still as soon as my 18th birthday. I'm doing this. I am doing this. And lived in the dorm. And there was a bunch of us, of course, hanging out at the dorm. A bunch of, you know, freshmen. And everybody's talking smack all the time, and everybody wants to go. I want to go, too. I want to go, too. And finally I had my birthday. Finally. It was spring in Ohio. And said, okay, now. Now we're going. We set a day to go and got up that morning to go. And I was petrified. I was. I was. I was hoping it was raining outside. So I had an excuse to chicken out. So I didn't have to. I didn't have to chicken out. I had a better excuse than that. I remember opening the curtains in my dorm room window and looking outside, and the sun was shining. I said, man, I guess I've got to do this. And, you know, when it was only, you know, prior to then, it was really just a fantasy because I. I wasn't allowed to even do it then. And it was easy to be brave and talk smack when you actually can't do it.
- [10:35]
Warwick Schiller
When you can't do it. Yeah.
- [10:36]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And when I finally had the chance to go and make a jump, I was terrified. And of the dozen of us that were sitting around the dorm talking about going. Three of us, I believe actually made it to the car that day and made it to the skydiving center. And it was, it was horrifying. It was the scariest experience of my life. I remember, you know, we used tiny little single engine Cessna airplanes and had to climb out of it. So you had to climb out the door. So you're standing on the, the step and you've got your hands on the wing strut and look back in at the, the jump master and he says, go. And, and I was just completely petrified. I, I couldn't, I couldn't do it. I couldn't let go. I finally just released. The airplane fell off. Watch my parachute deploy above my head. The parachute worked. It becomes very quiet with these big round parachutes and you just drift down. You can't really fly the parachute and I landed without, without injury, kissed the earth. But it wasn't, it wasn't that I just wanted to go skydiving. I wanted to fly. And in order to actually fly like I saw these guys in free fall flying and controlling their flying. I mean, you have, you can maneuver yourself, you can fly. But I had to go through the whole sequence, the whole series of jumps that would bring you up to a level where you could now start to fly on your own. And we had to do five static line jumps. And then we did three free fall jumps. First where you just did a clear and pull. You just hopped off the airplane and pulled your rip cord basically as fast as you could, right? And then as slow.
- [12:27]
Warwick Schiller
Did they, did they have, you have a, a dummy ripcord? Because I talked to a guy years ago who was in the learned jump in the army and you've gotta, with the static lines, they, you have a fake rip cord and your instructor has to see you be able to deploy your fake rip cord five times or something before they'll let you jump without a static line. Did you guys do the same?
- [12:47]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
We used the same thing. It was pretty much. It was military training. There really wasn't any other way to do it back then. And then you just do slow. You do three of these clear and poles where you clear the airplane and pull. And then you do three 5 second delays and three 10 second delays where you're just counting. You hop out, arch like crazy and 1000-2000-3000-4000. It's like the longest five seconds of your life while you're just accelerating and hopefully under control. But if you're not stable like now, you learn to jump we have a vertical wind tunnel that we teach people at Skydive Paris, which is where I had the job done. I run in California, so everyone has that experience, and then they go up with two instructors to be with them, you know, on the first jump. But this was all by yourself.
- [13:38]
Warwick Schiller
You didn't have all that practice stuff back then.
- [13:40]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And I remember, you know, and five is doing pretty well up to the five second delays because I really didn't have time to screw it up. I went down to the 10 second delays, and I started turning in free fall. Just started to turn. And the jump master is still in the airplane. He's just watching as you fall away. And I was like, man, I'm turning. Why am I turning? And he's. He says, I don't really know why you're turning, but you'll figure out how to stop. And I was like, how do I stop? He said, well, just look the other way. Look the way you want to go was about it. And he, he passed me to the 15 second delays. I said, man, I don't. I don't know that.
- [14:19]
Warwick Schiller
So he's. He's.
- [14:20]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
He's in there.
- [14:20]
Warwick Schiller
He's fallen with you?
- [14:21]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
No.
- [14:22]
Warwick Schiller
How are you guys communicating?
- [14:24]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
This is after we land. Oh.
- [14:26]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, sorry.
- [14:27]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, okay. They were communicating. There's no oh.
- [14:29]
Warwick Schiller
So you didn't get out of the turn on the way down, you were turning?
- [14:32]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, no, I'm turning in free fall, and I just. I keep turning, and then I just pull my parachute while I'm turning. And I said to him, man, that's, you know, I'm kind of. I'm. I'm scared. I don't have control of this. I can't stop it. And he says, you just need more time to. To stop. So do the, do the 15 second delays, and that'll give you more time to stop the turn. Well, it gives you more time to stop the turn, but it also gives you more time to accelerate as well. And I just accelerated and just was spinning faster and faster in 15 seconds and pull the rip cord. And all the lines of the parachute are all spun up because I'm spinning so fast. And I was like, man, this is. This isn't good. He goes, yeah, you pulled, you pulled. You landed safely. Passed to the next. To the next level. So at that time, basically, if you lived, you passed.
- [15:24]
Warwick Schiller
The survivors got the check mark on the report card.
- [15:27]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I was learning to skydive in 1980.
- [15:30]
Warwick Schiller
Wow. It's funny. You were talking about being petrified. The first skydive I was supposed to have was in Australia. I was doing some clinics in Australia and there was a lady in the clinic and, and she's Swedish. And you know, a lot of times teaching, you know, I teach people with their horses, but a lot of times you can tell somebody is very good at something else in life because when you're talking about getting the basics right, they're kind of nodding and everybody else is kind of going cross eyed, you know. And I said, you've, you've done something in an elite level. What is it? And she said, I was on the Swedish skydiving team, you know. And she's. I think I forget how many jumps she'd had, you know, 10,000, something like that. And we went to dinner one night during the clinic and I said, you know, I'm petrified of skydiving, but I would go skydiving with you. And she goes, okay, next year when you come back, we're gonna skydive. So I had a year to think about it and the closer and I used to go out to my back step at the house and like stand on the step and envision that's, you know, 10,000 drop or whatever. And it would be hard just to step off the step. But anyway, when we, I went back the next year and the day we had it booked, we go there and it was overcast and they said, we can't jump yet. Go for a walk and see if it's, you know, we'll see if the cloud clears up. And we came back to the office and it hadn't. And they said, okay, you know, you can't jump today. And that's the only day I had free on that trip, you know. And so I'm like this complete relief and walking out of there, there and she says to me, she says, well, there's another place a couple hours up the coast where we could jump too. You want me to give them a call? And I said, no. And she said, why not? And I said, because I'm not ready. And she goes, but you were ready 10 minutes ago. I said, I spent a year getting ready. And I just let go of ready. Okay, like, like I would have to psych myself up to do it, but. But what I actually ended up doing was I was in Las Vegas for some one time and we stayed at the Stratosphere, so I ended up jumping off the Stratosphere. And then I did a couple of bungee jumps in New Zealand. And so by the time I actually had my first skydive, I Booked it with my son. We woke up in the morning like, hey, we're going to go skydive today. And I had no trepidation at all because of the stratosphere and the. The bungee jumping. I don't know, it just. Yeah. Took all that away. But I'm glad you were scared.
- [17:58]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
That's good, man. I was terror. I was terrified for. Until I stopped spinning, until I got control over it.
- [18:07]
Warwick Schiller
So for me, and I think I've heard a lot of people say this, like they first got up, and this is. All would be tandem. You're petrified until you actually drop out of the plane. And it's like bliss. Did you have that? Your first.
- [18:22]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I don't know. Bliss is kind of a strong word for it, but.
- [18:25]
Warwick Schiller
Okay.
- [18:25]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I think the anticipation of it and getting ready to jump, I think you just get more and more scared the closer you get to it. Like, you wake up that morning scared, right?
- [18:36]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, yeah.
- [18:37]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And then you make it to the skydiving center, and the sun comes out, and now you're more scared, and you get on the airplane, and now you're really scared, and then you get to the door to go out, and. And now it's the. The peak of it. Where do I still have to do this? Can I turn around? Do I. What's. How do I get out? How do I get out of this? And. But as soon as you exit the airplane, you are so overwhelmed with the whole experience that you just. You don't feel the fear anymore. You know, it's. Some part of it is sensory overload as well, because you're just experiencing something you've never even been able to imagine because you can't. Skydiving is so different from anything else. No matter what else you've done. Most things, like, I'm sure you tried to explain it to people afterwards. And when you're trying to explain an experience, you usually connect it to and compare it to some other thing. It's kind of like this guy. And there's nothing you can.
- [19:34]
Warwick Schiller
That's kind of like nothing else.
- [19:37]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
So. But usually people stop being scared once they exit because they're just so overwhelmed. The whole thing.
- [19:45]
Warwick Schiller
I remember, for me, I didn't go out first, and when that door opened and then the first two rolled out, it was like a surreal experience. It was like that. That can't happen. You know what I mean? Yeah, it was. It was. Yeah, it was interesting. So I guess you ended up getting rid of your spins.
- [20:10]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Get rid of my what?
- [20:12]
Warwick Schiller
Your turning.
- [20:14]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I finally Was able to stop turning. And I don't really know what happened, but just.
- [20:19]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, really? You couldn't tell me I did this?
- [20:24]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I could tell you what I thought I did, but I have no idea if that's actually what I did. I think I just finally realized that, you know, for several jumps, I was spinning, and I was able to still pull my rip cord in. The parachute still worked, so I stopped being as scared about spinning anymore. And I think when I stopped that, you know, when I got rid of that level of fear, I was able to relax a little bit more. And just that my body wasn't so tense and rigid. I pretty much stopped. And just by looking to the right, I could turn to the right, look to the left, I could turn to the left. If I was drifting to the right, I could just look to the left, and suddenly there was a jump. And I could just turn when I wanted to, and I could just watch and look at the horizon and look at the clouds, and I could stop when I wanted to, and I could look at my altimeter and know how high I was. And suddenly everything felt like it became quieter. It became more peaceful. And at that moment then was the first time that I felt, okay, I'm. I'm a little bit more in control. I'm not quite flying yet, but I'm. I'm closer to flying.
- [21:38]
Warwick Schiller
You're dropping.
- [21:39]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Well, you're. You're dropping, but, you know, you don't even realize you're dropping because you're. You're so high up and you're not going past anything.
- [21:46]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah.
- [21:47]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
You just feel like I'm just this little speck in this huge sky. No one even knows I'm here except the birds that are flying around.
- [21:56]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, it's one step. It's one step away from that. And there's a term for it, the experience that astronauts have when they first look back and see the earth right there. And there's an actual term for it. I can't. I don't know if you know what that term is, but there's a term for that. And your life is never the same again.
- [22:21]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And I thought about that. Exactly. I mean, just to see that, to see that picture and realize just how tiny, little insignificant speck of dust you actually are in the big picture of things. And it's the same very similar experience I had in that those moments of free fall when I just realized I'm just this tiny little thing up here. Not. I'm sure looking back from space is that same feeling type at times a thousand.
- [22:48]
Warwick Schiller
Right.
- [22:50]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
But the same idea.
- [22:51]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, there's, you know, there's, there's the skydiving, there's the astronaut one, and then the only other, the only other thing in the middle of that would be what Felix Baumgartner experienced when he freefalled from whatever it was.
- [23:05]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I don't know how high was 115,000ft.
- [23:09]
Warwick Schiller
I mean, he's probably, you know, there's skydivers, there's astronauts, and he's the only one who's been somewhere in between the two.
- [23:15]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Ah, there's actually three people who have.
- [23:17]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, have they really?
- [23:18]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who have done both. Got to see the earth almost like that from, from that altitude and then free falling, you know, for 100,000ft. Yeah.
- [23:30]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, so he's not. But he was the first that did it, wasn't he?
- [23:33]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
No, the first was Joe Kittinger, who did it, I believe in 1960. He was, he was an Air Force pilot and a combat pilot, fighter pilot, and they were. The space program was pretty new at that time. It's 1960. It's very new. And as I understand it, they, you know, they really didn't know how well this was going to go, how well it was going to work. And they wanted to see if the astronauts would be able to get out if there was a problem, would they be able to get out and free fall down. And they wanted to go test this out to see if somebody could free fall from space. And they had to find somebody who would do it. In 1960, skydiving was very, very new. And Joe had, I think he had about 30 jumps. 30. And was like, I'll go, I'll go. And, and I mean, there was the spacesuit. This is 1960. This. They didn't have any of these things. There was no technology for this. And he got in a capsule in the balloon and went up to, you know, I think it was like108,000ft and got out and free fell down to. To 10, 000 or something. But you could see, it's all, of course, very well recorded, Joe Kittinger. And you could see his jump. And it was about 50 years. This is an aviation record. It was about 50 years before Felix did it. And that was a record in aviation that was held for 50 years. What other aviation record lasts 50 days? Hardly. Right. But nobody.
- [25:23]
Warwick Schiller
Technology, you know, how quickly the technology advanced and they still couldn't beat that record.
- [25:28]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Well, they would know it. Not only could they not beat it, nobody even Wanted to try. They're like, right, I'm not doing that. And then Felix was the first one after about 50 years. And then one other guy has gone since Felix.
- [25:43]
Warwick Schiller
Is that all the same height?
- [25:45]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
They had been higher each time. Okay, but it's. But Joe was over a hundred thousand feet.
- [25:53]
Warwick Schiller
Wow. You know that when Felix did that, I don't remember anything about it have been done before.
- [26:00]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It was. Felix was out training at Skydive Paris again, my drop zone. And Joe was with him. They were really, they were together and it was just an amazing, amazing experience to hang out with both of them and be able to talk to Joe about it. And for Felix to think, man, if this guy did this 50 years ago, way before he was born, it was, yeah, pretty, pretty incredible. Have those two around.
- [26:26]
Warwick Schiller
Wowzers. Okay, back to your story. So you get your, you get your turning in the air sorted out what, what comes next in your skydiving career.
- [26:38]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I, you know, I still, more than anything, I wanted to fly. I wanted to fly. And, and at this point I was, I was falling under control, but I hadn't gotten the jump with anybody else yet. Right. Because you're not allowed to. And then Finally I had 25 jumps. I had my a. License where then you were permitted to jump with other people. And you know, a more experienced person took me up and they had me dive out of the airplane after them. They showed me, told me what to do to fly down to them, and they basically did what we called lane base and just fell stable underneath me. So they get and gave me someone to fly down to. And for the first time, I was now, you know, a few hundred yards up above this person and there was someone I wanted to fly down to. And I did what they told me and brought my arms, my wings back and put my legs out and just dove down to them and then put everything back out to stop and stopped and connected with them. And that was the moment where that's what I wanted to do. I was flying. I was flying. I wasn't just falling, I was flying. There was someone down there hundreds of yards away, and I flew down to them and grabbed them and it was, it was beyond my wildest dreams to actually be able to fly. And from that moment on, once I experienced that I wanted to. To fly more, I wanted to fly faster, I wanted to fly better. And I still hadn't realized that skydiving was even a sport. You know, it was just an activity. And then soon also found out that it was a athletic competition sport. And Started getting involved with the sport. But mostly, I mean, I'm not. I was never a particularly competitive person. I'd never really tried to win anything. But the best way to learn to fly and to fly better was to be on a team and to train with the team and practice with the team. And I discovered four way formation skydiving at that point, which was the biggest and is still the biggest athletic competition event that there is in skydiving, the same one that Hannah ended up winning the Women's World Championships with. And I just got completely involved with that just for the purpose of just. Again, it was still the childhood dream. As a child, all I wanted to do was experience flying. But then there was the next step of, of that same dream of being able to bring that flying to a whole new level by being a part of a team.
- [29:17]
Warwick Schiller
I want to ask a bit. I want you to explain that four man thing in a second. But going back to when you flew down to that person, is the feeling different when there's someone to fly to? Because you've got like a point of reference that you're actually moving through the air is. Does that make a difference?
- [29:39]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Absolutely. That makes you feel like you're flying. Right. Otherwise, before I could control, I wasn't, I wasn't falling out of control, but I was just falling right. I could turn the way I wanted to, but it was just me. But to have other people that now relative to each other, you're flying, there's nobody falling. Everybody is flying at that point. And we'll do. And I can show you, you know, you've probably seen large formations of hundreds of people together and the people who are getting out of the airplanes last, they've got to dive for thousands of feet to get down to where those other people are and then stop when they get there. And it's, it's flying. It's the coolest thing in the world. I'm. I mean, I've been doing it for 45 years now. I've got 32,000 jumps. I was hoping I'd be sick of it by now, but it's still just.
- [30:33]
Warwick Schiller
I, I read somewhere you sent me your book. Thank you very much. We'll talk about the book here in a bit. But I read somewhere that you, you thought you might get it out of your system. So you were jumping like a thousand jumps a year and you thought, well, If I jump 2,000 jumps a year, maybe I'll get over it.
- [30:48]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
That's. That was my logic to it. Yeah. I don't think I was too committed to getting over it, but I was committed. Let me see if I can just overdo this completely. So it's when I was very involved with competition and team training, we were trying to win two different events. So we were training just as much. And when we weren't training, we were coaching and skydiving quite a bit. And there was a few years I made 2000 jumps and you know, I still not sick of it. I thought I'd be sick of it by now, but man, it's just the best 2000 jumps.
- [31:23]
Warwick Schiller
So you've got to be racking them up. What's the most you've ever jumped in? One day?
- [31:27]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
25 maybe.
- [31:28]
Warwick Schiller
Holy cow. Okay, so tell us about the. When you first started getting into the competitions, it was the, the four man thing. Is that what it was?
- [31:37]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah.
- [31:38]
Warwick Schiller
Can you explain what needs to be done?
- [31:41]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
What, what I can. So you've, you, I'm sure you've seen pictures of people in free fall who are connected in formation.
- [31:47]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah.
- [31:48]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And depending on how you configure yourselves, you know, we could all be holding hands and being like a circle or we can be one behind the next in a straight line with grips on each other's legs. And there's many different ways you can assemble each other, assemble yourselves to have different formations. And the formations are defined by the actual grips that you have on each other. And in four way, and it's, it's four way because it's. Men and women compete together. There is a separate women's class, but there isn't a men's class. There's the open class. There's no, there's no gender advantage. It's not football or boxing where the bigger, stronger person is going to do better. There's lots of women who are every bit as good as any man. So it's four way competition is what it's called. But there is a pool of. To simplify the explanation as much as possible, there's a pool of about 40 different formations, each with, you know, assembled in different ways. Each formation on a competition jump, you get a sequence of five or six of these formations. Each formation is worth one point. When you exit the airplane, you start the clock and it's a 35 second clock that as soon as you come off the airplane, the clock starts and you go through the sequence as quickly as you can and get as many points as you can. So it's, it's a race. But there's very.
- [33:21]
Warwick Schiller
You have to hold the position for a Certain amount of time.
- [33:24]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Nope. You just have to be there. There has to be a moment that everybody. But everybody has to be on the same grip, the correct grips at the right time. And then in between the formations, everybody has to be off at the same time. So you can't have. Where one person still has the grip from the last formation while someone else gets off and then picks up the grip on the next one. So the team has to be perfectly synchronized. So everybody is on and off together while doing 360s or flying two person, you know, pieces around the sky and doing all sorts of things. So it's a very mental sport also, because you don't know what the sequence is going to be until the competition. So you've practiced the individual formations, but you haven't practiced that particular sequence, that order. The sequence is randomly drawn the day of the. The competition. So very often people, you know, forget you haven't practiced this. So it's a very mental sport. It's a very physical sport also. And it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. And no one else in the world even knows it exists. You know, we're kind of doing our own thing. There's no. When you win, you don't really win anything. It's not a professional sport. It's not something that there's sponsors or there's endorsements or anything. It's. We're out in some corner. I've been to the world championships in Australia, national championships in Australia. All the skydiving centers are out, removed from society in some place where no one. No one has to be worried about us. And we're. We're doing.
- [35:03]
Warwick Schiller
Where was the. Where was the world championships in Australia? You know, remember the name Cora? Okay. Yep.
- [35:11]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Sound familiar?
- [35:12]
Warwick Schiller
Yep.
- [35:12]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I believe it was in Cora, 1999.
- [35:16]
Warwick Schiller
Okay. It's on the coast.
- [35:18]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
No car was further inland.
- [35:20]
Warwick Schiller
Okay.
- [35:22]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, because you need a big area, right? A big, wide open area to do it. So most of the coastal sky diamond centers are not as open as they need to be.
- [35:34]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, the. The Swedish lady met in Australia. She ended up marrying an Australian who she met who was on the Australian skydiving team at the world Championship. So, yeah, they're a skydiving family. So then you. So you start doing the competitions. When does your goal or did you ever have a goal to become a world champion? Or is that just something that happened? Like, is that what you wanted to do?
- [35:57]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
You know, it wasn't at first. I mean, at first I just wanted to fly, and then I wanted to fly better, and the best way to do that was to get on a team. So we put together a team from just the other guys at the little Skydiver center in Ohio who wanted to do the same thing. And our first year at the national championships, we came in seventh. And there were six of the teams who were by far in a league of their own. There's six of the teams who were the best included the army parachute team, Golden Knights, and a few of the other teams who had been together for a while, and they were the best. And then there was the rest of everybody else who came after them. And we finished in our first year as the best of the rest, basically came in seventh that year, right behind those teams. And I realized, wow, we did that our first year. If we could do that our first year, I might actually be able to win. And I really. The idea of winning the world championships never occurred to me until suddenly I realized that I might be able to. And though it wasn't just that, it was to be able to watch these other teams fly, as great as they were, to think I could fly like that, look how that just looks like so much more fun even than what we're doing, and to be able to see past that. So it wasn't just the winning. It was being able to fly at a level that would position you to win. And at that time just said, I want to win the world Championships.
- [37:38]
Warwick Schiller
So that was still in Ohio. When did you end up making the move to California? And what was the. What was the. The thing. The push behind that?
- [37:45]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
At that time, I was. And this is. I just. It was. That was my last year in college. After the first national championships, I took over the skydiving center in Ohio that I had been working at. I'd been working there through college. I took it over. Part of the reason was because I wanted to keep doing this team also. And at that time, skydiving was a completely amateur sport. There was no professional teams. There were no sponsored teams. All the top teams were made up of people pretty much like myself who had started their teams a few years earlier, kept the teams together, worked their way up into the ranks, battled for the gold, either won or lost for a few years, and then they would step aside and the next teams would move up. And that is how it had been since the start of competition skydiving. There was no reason to suspect it was ever going to change. So we kept our team together. The first year, we came in seventh. As I was saying, the next year we came in fifth. The next year we came in fourth. And our fourth year, we came in second place. And I thought, man, this is working out exactly as I planned it. You know, we've earned it, we deserve it. The next year was going to be our year to win. And if you win the national championships, then you go representing the US at the world championships. And I thought, this is our year now. We, this is how it goes. And then right then, out of nowhere, one person in France made one decision which would forever change the face of competition. Skydiving. I'm sure you've heard of the watch company TAG Heuer.
- [39:22]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah.
- [39:22]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
The owner of TAG is a French Saudi Arabian skydiver who like me, had fallen in love with four way unlike me, he had billions of dollars he could just throw at it if he chose to. And he chose to. He decided he was going to sponsor the French national team and turn them into the tag team. And he gave these guys support that was completely unheard of in the sport. We'd never seen anything like it. He bought them their own airplane and hired a full time pilot to fly just for them. He bought them two sets of brand new parachute equipment and hired professional parachute riggers to pack their parachutes for them. So all the other teams like mine, we would land from a jump, we'd spend 15 minutes or so packing our parachutes and then we get back on an airplane whenever there was space available with whoever else was jumping that day. But the tag team would land, drop their parachutes with their packers, grab their other parachute which was just packed for them, their plane would land next to them, they jump back in there and off they go. So they could just, they can just go all day long, non stop. They hired the current world champion to be their full time coach. No one had ever had a coach before. We just did. We all talked about it. It was, you know, it's a tiny little community. Hired a full time physical trainer, sports psychologist, bought them a house one mile away from the largest skydiving center in Florida and paid them each a good salary. And the tag team became the first professional skydiving team that there ever was. And the top US team at that point was the army parachute team, the Golden Knights. And the Golden Knights had the resources. They could just about match what the tag team was doing. And these two teams just took off. They started to perform at a level that we didn't even think was physically possible. We didn't think it was physically possible to move that fast, to fly that sharp, to be that in sync with each other. And all the other teams like mine looked at the professional teams and just thought, that's. That's completely unfair. This is an amateur sport. This is skydiving. No one even knows we're doing it. This is an amateur sport. We have professional teams competing in an amateur sport. They said, that's not fair. That's not okay. That's not how the game goes. But the game had changed, and it was never coming back. And I looked at these guys, and I just was angry at myself for letting other teams reset the bar so high. And I looked at them and I said, man, I know I could fly like that. I know I could. And look how great it looks. To be able to fly like they're flying must be just the most incredible thing in the world. But I would talk to my teammates and my friends, and they'd say, dan, forget it. Forget it. There's no way these guys are going to do a thousand jumps a year in Ohio. We're lucky to do maybe 200. You know, based on the numbers alone, it would be impossible for you to compete with the pro teams. But I've never been that strict of a numbers person. So I asked myself another question, basically, which was, is it possible? Is it possible for me to succeed? Is it possible that we could beat those guys? Just, is it possible? And when I asked it like that, the obvious answer was yes. I mean, these guys weren't gods. They weren't superhuman beings. They're just people. And like everybody else, they can be beaten. Which brought up the next question, which was, did I want it badly enough to do whatever it was going to take to make it happen? And that's the real question, right? Whether it's possible or not is one thing. What's it going to take? Do you want it badly enough? And I thought, well, what would it take? What would it take for me to do that? So the first thing I'd have to do is quit my job, leave my home, and move south to somewhere you could skydive all year round because you couldn't in Ohio. Yep. Second, I was going to have to figure out how to afford this financially, because we're going to have to pay for a lot of jumps. And third, I had to find a new team because my teammates wanted nothing to do with this. And again, why should they? It's not like you get anything for winning, right? There's no prize. There's no endorsements. Like, no one even knows, except for skydivers. But I wanted to fly like they did. It was just a continuation of that six year old dream.
- [43:46]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah.
- [43:47]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And I, I had to give it a try. I had to try. So I sold everything I owned and I moved into my van and I started heading west looking for a team and made it to Arizona and found four other guys who like me, had seen what the pro teams were doing and wanted to, wanted to give it a shot. And we, we lived in our vans. We ate peanut butter and jelly three times a day. We packed our parachutes for ourselves and, and we started training.
- [44:20]
Warwick Schiller
So where in Arizona do you end up meeting these guys?
- [44:23]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It was in Coolidge, Arizona, which is about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson. About 20 miles away from the main freeway and deep out in the desert.
- [44:35]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, it's middle of nowhere, isn't it?
- [44:36]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And I wasn't, you know, I wasn't even on my way there. I was on my way to California because I had friends from a skydiving team who I wanted to try to build a new team with. And I was driving pretty much all night, heading up, I believe it was the 10 Freeway. So coming through Texas, New Mexico, everywhere. And I was headed to Paris at that time. And honestly, I'm driving up the freeway and I've been driving all night because I'm just like, I'm on a mission now. And the sun was just starting to rise over there. And it's beautiful in the desert. Every sunrise is just absolutely incredible. And I hadn't been in the desert much, and I was just thinking, wow, that is just beautiful. I've never seen a sunrise like this before. And the sun looked like a little gold medal on the horizon. And at the same time, I was driving by a sign that said Coolidge. And I knew that there was a skydiving center in Coolidge. And it was Skydive Arizona, which was a known, reputable drop zone where they had had competition teams before who were high level teams. And I just thought, man, there's a gold medal right over there, right where it's telling me to go on the exit here. And the sun was coming up and I just at the moment thought, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause and stop here. And I, I got off the freeway and had to drive another 20 miles out into the middle of nowhere to get to the Coolidge Airport. And I walked onto the drop zone. There was a, the owner of the drop zone was getting up, it was still before anybody else was, was really awake. And I met him and he said, what are you doing? And I Said, I'm, you know, here, I'm Dan. I'm looking for a team. I'm looking around the country to see if I can find a four way team. I want to win the world championships. His name was Larry Hill. Larry had just moved his drop zone to Coolidge. He wanted to build the biggest skydiving center in the world and knew that having a top team was a big part of that at that time. And he said, you know, man, I've been, this is. I need a team. I need a team here. And it was just like magic that there was no, there was nobody else around. And I drove onto the airport at whatever 5 o'clock in the morning. It was, I remember the time, but it was early. And just walked right into this guy who had a dream also. He didn't want to be on the team, but he wanted the skydiving center that had this team. And it was like magic meeting then. And then the teammates I met that day as well and ended up starting a new team there.
- [47:30]
Warwick Schiller
Wow, I'm, I'm kind of big into manifesting and it sounds like that guy manifested you. I mean, you know, you're driving from, you're driving from the east coast to the west coast. You just happen to drive past there as the sun comes up, remind you of gold medal. I'm going to pull in here. And it, you know that I think, I think it's a roomy quote that says what you are seeking is seeking you.
- [47:52]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah.
- [47:54]
Warwick Schiller
And he was seeking you and me.
- [47:57]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Him.
- [47:58]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
- [47:59]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
You know, and that's, you know, when I left Ohio, it was a crazy thing to do. It was a crazy thing to just. I didn't have a team. There was nobody who wanted to do this. People who, who wanted to make the commitment, who wanted to quit their jobs and come up with the money and live in their vans to, to, to do this. And what do you get if you win? Nothing. It was a crazy, it was a crazy thing to do, but it was just something I was so passionate, so driven about. And when you, when you follow your dreams and that, committed to. I know it sounds cliche, but you end up crossing paths with other people, following theirs, who you need to connect with, who, whether they, to some degree or another, become teammates, become friends who. You work towards this direction together. So it was a, it was a magical moment. And I, you know, I got done at the end of that day and I was like, thank, thank goodness. I followed my gut, followed my instinct and got off the freeway and drove out when I saw the sun there. Thank good. Those little, those little messages like that didn't go unnoticed.
- [49:12]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, I'd say that would be a common thread of a lot of people I've had on the podcast is just paying attention to those little opportunities that arise and, and follow them and, and have that, that vision in your mind. I mean, I think there's a, there's an energy to that. There's a magic to that. Obviously you, you can't. You think about. Coolidge is a dot on the map in the middle of a. It's in the middle of nowhere. You know what I mean? I've never been there, but I mean, I've probably driven through there because I've driven 10, Highway 10. But you know, if it's halfway between Tucson and Phoenix.
- [49:48]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Is it Phoenix?
- [49:49]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah. Yeah. So it's. There's nothing out there and, and 20.
- [49:52]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Miles off the freeway.
- [49:54]
Warwick Schiller
Right, Right.
- [49:54]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
So it's way out there that. But you know what? It changed my life. Larry and I are the closest of friends. Ultimately, in the course of this story, built the world champion team together, which this one wasn't at that time, but it was one of the teams that led to the world champion team.
- [50:18]
Warwick Schiller
I was just looking up the map, seeing where it was. Okay, yeah, it's out there.
- [50:23]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It's the definition of the middle of nowhere.
- [50:26]
Warwick Schiller
Right.
- [50:26]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Beautiful.
- [50:29]
Warwick Schiller
And so how long were you there before you ended up in Paris?
- [50:33]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
So we started that team. We did about 700 jumps before getting to the national championships. And when we did, we went head to head with the Golden Knights and there was another team from Florida who was doing similar to what we were doing. And my little throw together team. The other guys I found for my team had never competed before. They had never been to the national championships.
- [50:59]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, really?
- [51:00]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And then our first year, we went head to head, battled it out, jump by jump. And though when it was all said and done, we. We lost. The Golden Knights won. We ended up coming in third just a couple of points behind them. And at that point I was really, I was, I was that. How can I continue doing this anymore? I'm out of time, I'm out of money. I don't have anything else I can sell. There's only, you know, so much peanut butter I can eat. I'm out of peanut butter for you. And we did that for a couple more years in Coolidge and we're still unable, you know, right. There was very high neck and neck, but we're unable to Win. And it was really was thinking, how do I. How do I continue? And. But right about that time, I started getting contacted from skydiving teams all around the world. And these same teams who had gotten so discouraged when they saw what the pro teams were doing, were newly inspired when they saw what our rookie team did. You know, never before had a rookie team started from scratch like this and in one year been able to compete with the top teams. And they figured that if we could do it, then they could probably do it too. And they started hiring me to coach them and to show them how. And suddenly I had teams from all around the world, all around the country who were contacting me about coaching them. Teams from Australia, teams from England, teams from Switzerland, teams from Japan, who were all coming to wherever I was so I could show them what we did in order to improve so quickly and be at that level in such a short period of time. And before then, there was some skydiving coaching, but not nearly to the same degree. And so I never did it with the goal of becoming a coach because there wasn't much of this at all. But it happened and it allowed me to have a way to support myself. And right about that time, the owners of Skydive Paris had seen what was happening with four Way. Four Way was now becoming something where. Where before teams would just be at their home drop zones and jump on the weekends like my team from Ohio did, but now teams were making a much bigger commitment. Teams would. Would travel to train for a week, for two weeks, for three weeks, and do eight and ten jumps a day. And it became something that was a good chunk of business for, for skydiving centers. And I had positioned myself accidentally, I didn't intend to do this, where I was drawing a lot of these teams. And Scott F. Paris, the owners there saw this new team market that there was and the influence I was on it, and they decided that they wanted to have a skydiving team in Paris and they wanted me to be the player, coach and captain of that team. They wanted to hire me to be the player, coach and captain of that team. And I was just blown away. No job like this had ever existed before. So, I mean, I had never even thought about looking for one.
- [54:10]
Warwick Schiller
You're one of those people who made a job there where there wasn't a job like this.
- [54:14]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, I never even thought about looking for one. And the job came looking for me. And it wasn't because it was my pursuit of victory that created this opportunity, because it wasn't the Victory itself. I still hadn't won anything. But just the pursuit of that victory had created this for me. And they said, we'll sponsor the team, you can pick anybody who you want. And I was like, wow, this is, I couldn't have planned for this. I never would have expected this. If you told me this was going to happen when I left Ohio, I wouldn't even have believed you. Right. It wasn't even on my radar. I just wanted to fly more. I just wanted to fly better.
- [54:53]
Warwick Schiller
I've got a question for you because I feel like if you think about something enough, you almost manifest it into reality. How, how that tag team did you have in your mind? Oh, it would be so good to have something like that. We ever thinking about the tag team because it sounds like you recreated the tag team and it came to you. You didn't make it happen.
- [55:21]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I mean I did, I did. I figured the thought was if that opportunity had been created then maybe there'll be more. But other than the hope of that, there was no logical reason for it. The only reason the tag team was because there was a multi millionaire skydiver.
- [55:38]
Warwick Schiller
Right.
- [55:38]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
That they, they weren't, it wasn't, no company was going to do this. There was nothing that you could do marketing wise or media wise that was going to make the team like that pay for itself. It was just a passion project of his. But that's what I had in my mind. But this, this wasn't that exactly, but it was a step towards that. And I could pick, you know, whoever I wanted to come and be on this team. And the first person I called was a kid from Ohio named James Lane. And James, I taught James to jump when he was 14 years old back in Ohio. And by, by the time he was 16 he had a thousand jumps. You weren't allowed to jump until you were 18 by the way. And you could do 16 with parental permission. But both of his parents worked with me on the Drop zone. So they said at 14, you know, that it would be okay. And nobody paid attention. Back then we didn't film anything. So by the time anybody, it wasn't.
- [56:40]
Warwick Schiller
All of the Internet.
- [56:41]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
By the time anybody found out, he had a thousand jobs. But he was the most incredible skydiver I'd ever seen. Like a little brother to me. And he came out to start this new team in Paris called Paris Air. Moves picked up two other friends. Troy Widgery was one. Tom Falzone was another Tom who was here in Paris already. And then the cameraman from the Team in Arizona. Richard Stewart from Australia actually was our cameraman and came out for that. And we started a new team called Air Moves in Paris.
- [57:17]
Warwick Schiller
Tell me about the cameraman. I was wondering before, when you do all these different holds, how do they see them? Or is there a cameraman falls with you?
- [57:25]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
When I first started, it was off from the ground with like telemeters and like a telescope with video attached to it. But then, then, now the teams have an early, early on, I think it was 89 was the first year where a cameraman would film the team. So the cameraman, the judges can only judge what the cameraman shows them. So the cameraman needs to be just in the right position, in the right spot at the right time to be able to show exactly what the team is doing. And then they judge based on what they show what the cameraman films. So there's a lot of pressure on the cameraman too. If they, if they're straight above, you can pretty much see everything. But if they get a little bit flat, you can't tell if everybody has been hands on and off together and if they're playing by the rules. So there's a lot of pressure on the camera flyer.
- [58:13]
Warwick Schiller
Also. At a competition, do they provide the cameraman or the cameraman's basically part of the team?
- [58:18]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Part of the team.
- [58:19]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, really? Holy cow. Okay.
- [58:23]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
A big part of the team.
- [58:24]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, have to be. Wow. So you bought your cameraman. Okay, so now you got the team. Then what happens?
- [58:32]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
We started training. The whole team was working at the skydiving center also. So we would jump the days we could and then usually work on the weekends. Whether it was, you know, instructing students or. Or other mentors for people growing in the sport, younger jumpers, putting, putting, activity, creating activity, creating lots of excitement on the drop zone. We, we had made maybe 300, 350 practice jumps so far. There was a big competition that we had done very well at. And we're on course. We were on course to be very competitive. You never know if you're going to win. Right. That's not up to you. It depends on what everybody else does. But, you know, if you're advancing and we were advancing quicker than any team I had ever been on. And to have to have the opportunity to do this, this was my job. I was, you know, it wasn't anything I was going to retire on, but I wasn't having to live in my van at the moment. Right, right. And to be able to have. This was my job, to have my closest Friends on this team with me to be able to train the way I wanted to train and to have us having such a great time together and advancing like this was. And I know it's the oldest cliche in the world, but I was honestly, truly just living my dream.
- [59:54]
Warwick Schiller
It's. You've got the. You've got the icky guy thing going on. You know the Japanese term icky guy?
- [60:00]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
No, I don't.
- [60:01]
Warwick Schiller
It's like a vent. It's like a Venn diagram with four circles, and, you know, each of the adjacent circles overlap, but one is. Let me pull it up because. Icky guy. Here we go. So there's four circles, and one is what you love, one's what you're good at, one's what you can be paid for. And one what the world needs. And like, where what you love and what the world needs, crosses, that's called your mission. With what you love and what you're good at, crosses, that's called your passion. What you're good at, what you can get paid for, that's called your profession. And where what you get paid for and what the world needs, crosses, that's called your vocation. But there's a spot in the middle where they all overlap, and it's called ikigai. And the Japanese concept, that translates into a reason for being or a reason to live. And not many people get all of those circles where they can all overlap in the center. A lot of people have some overlap here and there, but. Yeah. And so you're living the dream.
- [61:07]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It was. It was exactly that. I don't know if the world needed it, but the world of skydiving needed it. It. So it was a good. And it was most unbelievable thing in the world.
- [61:21]
Warwick Schiller
And so at some point in time, your life takes quite a big turn. How soon after that did the accident.
- [61:31]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It was right about then, you know, and to me, it was. You know, I was just waking up one day and, you know, I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't get out of bed. I could. I didn't hardly have the energy to open my eyes, and I was just laying flat in the bed and I was trying to get up and trying to wake up, and I couldn't. I was wondering, what the hell's going on here. I finally had the energy to open my eyes, and I looked up and saw hoses and gauges and wires and realized I was in a hospital bed and had no idea what had gone on, no idea what had happened. And then was told about the plane crash.
- [62:29]
Warwick Schiller
Do you still not have any memories of it?
- [62:31]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
No, not at all.
- [62:34]
Warwick Schiller
So have you, have you like what you remember the, the morning of it?
- [62:41]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Did I. You know, I had a very severe brain injury and it's hard, the memories I did have, it was hard to place them and where they were. But there was a good friend of mine who was on the Golden Knights who told me months later that he had called me that morning and we had spoken that morning. And I, I remembered the conversation, but I didn't remember that it was that morning. Right. And that's the only, the only memory I have that I know is from, from that day.
- [63:16]
Warwick Schiller
And so you. It was a, Was it a training run?
- [63:20]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah.
- [63:20]
Warwick Schiller
Was that a training flood?
- [63:21]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yep. We were taking off. It was just another beautiful day at the skydiving center. You know, the sun was out, we had all sorts of people there jumping and it's, it's, it's a happy place. You know, people are skydiving because they love it. Everybody's there because they, you don't jump out of airplanes. You know, just maybe I'm into it, maybe I'm not. The people who are there love what we do. They love the sport, they love the community. Everybody supports each other and is there to back each other up, to keep each other safe as much as we can. It's wonderful community. It's. It's a happy place. And it was just another beautiful day at the skydiving center. My team was training, I was coaching a team from Holland who was there, who was training with us. There were students, they were doing their first jump on the airplane with their tandem instructors and their video flyers. It was just another one of 20 flights that was going to happen that day and just barely got off the ground to about 100ft and lost an engine, rolled over and went in.
- [64:31]
Warwick Schiller
So that's what happened. The plane lost an engine.
- [64:33]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
The plane lost an engine. Which isn't, isn't reason to crash in a twin engine airplane, but when it happens that low to the ground, the pilot needs to respond correctly and rather quickly. And there was pilot error involved which led to this also. 16 of the 22 people on the plane were, were killed.
- [65:06]
Warwick Schiller
So you were talking about when you woke up, was that, was that after you came out of the coma? Were you in a coma? The whole.
- [65:15]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
This was the first. I remember. It's hard to know exactly when, into what degree of coming out of a coma, but my first memory of anything was just waking up wondering what happened, how did I Get here. What am I doing in this hospital bed? And I couldn't. I couldn't move, right? I'm laying there, and I couldn't move. And I realized I'm in a hospital bed. But I also realized, like, I was just trying to pick my head up to sit up to see what was going on, and I couldn't move my head at all. My first thought was, I'm paralyzed. Holy. I think I'm paralyzed. And the fear. The fear that comes with you when that's your first thought. And I. I recognized how scared I was getting. I recognized how negative the thoughts and the emotions were at the moment. And I thought, just hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on. Maybe not. Don't, you know, don't lose it. Don't lose it right now. And I said, let's start again. And this is. I'm just. This is my first memory of it. I haven't spoken anybody. I'm just in bed. I said, let's. Let's start again. And I said, okay, let's. First let me see if I can, you know, lift up my. My hands. Let me see if I can lift my hands up. And I started. You know, I'm laying there flat on my back, you know, staring straight up, and I can't move up at all. And I. I was able to pick my hands up in front of my face where I could see them. And I just like, okay, those. Those are my hands. And I felt between them and. And. And realize, all right, at least my. At least my upper body. At least I can move this. I can move this and this. The relief was beyond relief. And then I said, all right, let's try. Let's try my legs. Let's try my legs. And, you know, I. I felt like I was moving them, but I couldn't see them. And I remember hearing about people who were paralyzed to, like, ghost movements where you could. Felt like you're moving. And I was like, I don't know if they're moving or not. And I kept trying, and I kept trying, and I tried to pick my knees up, and finally laying flat on my back, I saw my sheet come up with the knees, the bed sheet come up with my knees, and I realized, okay, I can move. I can move my legs too. And the utter relief when. When I realized this, and I was like, why can't I move my head? I can't move my head, you know? And I reached up with my hands, and I. Hands ran into a halo brace, it's called, where they you break your neck and they screw it into your skull. And I realized that it wasn't that I was paralyzed, it was that I had some kind of a brace on my head. And just knowing at that moment that I. After thinking I was paralyzed, knowing that I wasn't, the. The experience of. Of gratefulness to that level and just utter, utter relief was. Was amazing. And that the doctors came in and they, you know, said, you've had, you know, you broke your neck, you collapsed one lung, had other. Lots of other internal damage. You had a severe brain injury and cracked your skull. They said all these things to. Which to me was like, who cares? I thought I was paralyzed. This sounds great. You know, break anything you want at this point. And then they told me I'd been in a coma for six weeks, had lost over 40 pounds, and that 16 of the 22 people on the plane had died, including my little brother James.
- [69:37]
Warwick Schiller
That must have been devastating. The high and the low. The. I'm paralyzed. No, I'm not. Did they. How soon after you regained consciousness did they tell you that?
- [69:50]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
As soon as, you know, it was. It was shortly after I remember regaining consciousness. I may have had different levels of consciousness. I don't recall that led up to that, but it was relatively, relatively soon.
- [70:08]
Warwick Schiller
And I mean, obviously it was terrible. But how. How is that for you? Like, you know, did you just spiral?
- [70:16]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I had a memory that felt like it happened right before I woke up. And to me, it was clear as day, clear as day. And I was in freefall, but it was a different freefall. It was quiet, and it wasn't like. It was more like the. The wind was gently suspending me. I wasn't falling through it, but it was a. It was a comfortable place for me to be. You know, I knew it was odd. It was. It wasn't normal free fall, but it was okay. I was in the sky. The breeze was suspending me. It was fine. But I knew this is. I don't know what this is. But I wasn't scared of it. I just was curious of where I was. And I looked up and I saw James. And James was flying down to me, as I described earlier, with this joyful, playful look on his face, which he usually had, which was his normal look to have. And he said, danny, what are you doing here? And I was. I don't know. I don't know exactly what I'm doing here. I don't know where I am. And he said, you have to get back down there. And I said, are you coming with me. And he said, no, I can't, I can't. And I started to get some idea that there was more going on here than I was aware of. And he said, I can't, but it's okay. He said, there's more things to do, more places to go, more fun to have. It's okay. He said, tell my mom I'm okay. And then basically said, you need to get down there and get control of the situation. And I had no idea what he was talking about. I had no idea what the situation was. But he said, you need to get down there and you need to get control of it. And then he put his. We had a team count that we did in the airplane where before. A few minutes before exit, we'd all put our hands in like a little sport huddle and just. It was. We'd practice our exit count, but it was more of, let's get that juice going here, let's get the attitude going. And we'd give a ready, set, go. And he put his hand out like it was for the team count. And I put my hand on top of his and he put his hand on top of mine. I put my hand on top of his and he said, ready? We said, set, go. And we clapped and then high tend, basically, which is what we did before every exit. And he said, I'll see you later. And it wasn't, it wasn't goodbye, it was, I'll see you later. And then I started to descend. He faded away. And what it felt like to me was that the next moment I opened my eyes in bed and I was where I was a few seconds ago that I was describing to you.
- [74:00]
Warwick Schiller
It's. It sounds like. It sounds like a near death experience. I've had a number of people in the podcast have had near death experiences. Did you didn't flatline or anything like that in the hospital before you woke up?
- [74:14]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I don't. I don't believe so. But there was. There was times where it was different degrees of close to death. There was times that they weren't sure if I was going to make it at all. I don't know that I ever flatlined.
- [74:29]
Warwick Schiller
But I mean, that could have been one of those times. I've had a number of people on the podcast have had NDEs, and that message of you need to go back is. Is a common one. Have you looked? Have you. I mean, do you feel that was an nde and do you feel like that was that other place?
- [74:59]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yes, and I'm not. If someone else Told it to me, I would be, you know, relatively skeptical. I mean, I'm a fairly skeptical, pragmatic person. I, you know, I am very open minded, I think, to many different possibilities in the world. But, you know, I want some evidence to back things up also. But to me it was, it was very, very real. And I woke up. The part of the day when I, when I woke up, my first thought was, what's the situation? What is the situation? And that's when I was evaluating whether I was paralyzed or not. But already in my head was, I need to get control of the situation. What the hell is the situation? And, and because of that conversation, it. Had I woken up without having had that, I think I would have been just lost and, and confused and, and didn't know what to do. But because I had that very clear direction, you need to get control of the situation. That's the attitude that I had. So not what the doctors were going to tell me necessarily. Not what other people were going to tell me. It was me who was going to be in charge of it.
- [76:24]
Warwick Schiller
So, as a self professed skeptic, did that experience change some of your skepticism?
- [76:34]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
No.
- [76:35]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah. No, you still escaped.
- [76:37]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
You know, I mean, I had, I had, I had developed my own religious, spiritual beliefs. You know, before then I really, I had believed that there must be more than this. There must be more. This can't, it can't, this can't be it. This can't be everything right here. I don't know what it is. I have no idea what happens, but there's got to be more than this. And you know, call it what you want, you know, belief in a God, belief in that there's more to the world than what's before us here. And I realized I was someone who not only believed that, but also wanted to believe that. I really hope there's more, you know, but I still, it had never been proven to me before and this, this was as much as anything is as to me was proving it. And even though the few people that I shared it with at that time were like, Dan, don't you think this was a dream? Don't you think you heard conversations that were going on and that you knew this and you know what? I don't know that it wasn't that, but it was very real to me when it, when I woke up.
- [78:05]
Warwick Schiller
Do you feel it was as real as this right here? Or did it feel more real?
- [78:16]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
As real as this right here?
- [78:17]
Warwick Schiller
Okay. Okay. Okay. And do you, do you still feel him? Like, do you feel like he's about.
- [78:30]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I don't know, you know? No. And I did. I, I'm very close with his family. Like I said, they're all worked their job. Zone is little sister Caroline is reading David. His parents and I called his mother as he, as he told me to, and we still talk. And she said, I remember her telling me a few months later, why hasn't he come to me like this? Why hasn't he done this? And I, I really thought of it as. I don't know, I have no idea. I don't pretend to know how this works by any stretch of the imagination. Okay. But I thought maybe it's kind of like a cell phone signal where he was just. It's someone who has passed is out of range of normal life here. But wherever I was in that time when I was in a coma and it may have been, it may have been we had this conversation not right at that moment before I woke up. It may have been at the worst when I was closest to dying, I have no idea. But maybe I was within cell phone range basically. And he was able to have that conversation with me. But I can't say that I've had any similar experience since then. But of course, I think of him often and always in my heart. There's that connection there, always.
- [80:02]
Warwick Schiller
So what was your recovery like? Did it. And what was your prognosis like? Did they tell you you're never going to sky it again? Or they. Did they tell you, yeah, you're going to be fine, it's just going to be a while?
- [80:14]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah. No, they told me you never skydive again for sure. But I've also been skydiving long enough at that point. Like, I'm very aware that doctors tell you that when you catch a cold or something, so. Right. But to me, at that moment, I was so lucky. I was so lucky I could move everything. Right. I had full range and motion in my body. Aside from the one lung that was collapsed, which healed also, all my internal organs were working well enough to get by the brain injury. It was funny. I asked the doctor when he told me about the brain injury, he goes, it's going to affect your short term memory. I said, will it last 35 seconds? Because that's what the competition clock is. And he looked, he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. It might last 35 seconds, you know, and. But all all indications were I hadn't been hurt so bad that I wouldn't be able to continue Doing the sport that. That I loved. And I got on a mission to recover. You know, it's a slow thing. I've weighed 125 pounds, 120 pounds, which is pretty light. And there was not much you can do at first. Right. When I got out of the hospital, it's not. I had a little exercise machine to practice breathing, but I did every little thing that I possibly could. I practiced breathing. I got three pound dumbbells to be able to lay in bed and do curls and just get everything moving. I hadn't moved for six weeks just to wake. Wake everything back up.
- [82:06]
Warwick Schiller
So once you were out of the coma, how long were you in hospital after?
- [82:12]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Few weeks.
- [82:13]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, no. So not a long time. Okay. Yeah. And so did you still have the brace on?
- [82:17]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, I had that on after I got out of the hospital and still had that on for just over three months, I believe. And then they took that off and I, you know, they put a brace on, they said, okay, just be careful. See how it feels. And at some point, I lowered my head just this far, and my whole body went numb. So I immediately called them and had to go right back in. And then they operated on my neck after that. I got out of the hospital after the neck surgery, and then my internal organs, intestines, got all twisted up from being back in surgery again. I had to go back in the hospital and have all of that resorted out and fixed. And then.
- [83:08]
Warwick Schiller
I've never heard of that. Is that a. Is that a thing?
- [83:11]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I guess it's a thing. I mean, I was pretty beat up and pretty banged up, so it wasn't working well to begin with, but I guess then put me out for the surgery. It. It all twisted itself up into some kind of knots. It just. It. It was already damaged. Right. So then came back out, had surgery on that, and after that, it was pretty much I could just go and really work on recovering.
- [83:40]
Warwick Schiller
Right. The survivors of the crash, were they all in one particular area of the plane?
- [83:46]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah, we're all in the back of the plane.
- [83:48]
Warwick Schiller
Okay.
- [83:48]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Because the plane went straight, straight in. This is before skydiving. Airplanes didn't use seat belts back then, and because of this crash, now they all do everywhere around the world.
- [84:04]
Warwick Schiller
So how long after your. How long after the crash did you skydive again?
- [84:10]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
About, I GUESS it was 10 weeks after the next surgery. Wow.
- [84:18]
Warwick Schiller
You weren't messing around.
- [84:19]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Well, I started rebuilding the team while I was still in the hospital, you know, because I remembered what it was like to really, honestly, truly Be living my dream and be right in that niche that you were talking about, where it's just pure magic, where all the reasons were right there, all aligned and. And after experiencing life like that, you just do not want to settle for anything else, right? So I. I asked one of my old teammates to come and replace. You can't replace James, but to be in James position on the team. My other Richard, our cameraman, he. His camera broke right as he was getting ready to get on that airplane, and he got off and asked another friend to go and film us while he went and fixed his camera. And the other friend passed away. Richard just happened to not get on that airplane. So Richard was still there. Troy and Tom, who are my other teammates, were also injured, but not nearly as badly as I was, so they were able to start jumping again sooner. So we started trying to rebuild the team, hoping that when I got the halo off, I'd be ready to go again in a couple of weeks. In my world, I went back into the hospital to have the surgeries and had another friend, Kirk Verner, come out and take my position. So now, I mean, I wasn't going to be able to jump, you know, for a while, but at least we could have the team starting to reform and rebuild. So the team started training, and then after my surgeries, about 10 weeks after that, I had been going up in the airplane with them, been watching the videos, coaching them in the plane. I was by far the most experienced person on the team, was the captain and coach of the team, as I described. And I went up in the airplane with them and be going through the videos of the jumps and telling them what. What they did well, what they need to do better. And that I'd asked the doctor how long before I can jump again, back before the surgery. And he said, for the record, I'm telling you, you should never jump again. And I was like, okay, I got that. So how long, you know, before I can. And, you know, and. And what am I risking? I said, am I risking, you know, paralysis? Is it going to break again? And he said, it will not break. Where we fixed it, we have put steel reinforcement into your neck. It's not going to break there, but it's going to be weak. It'll be weaker above that, you know, above the. The surgery, below it, it's going to be weaker, but there's no. You're no more likely to be paralyzed and have an injury like that than any you were before. So I got a parachute which I know would open very Slow, because that's one risk, right? If your parachute opens fast, the whiplash of that is going to hurt your neck. So I got a very old parachute, which I knew would open very slow. And he said, 10 weeks afterwards, the surgery will be healed enough that that's not going to be a problem. He said, you may still be a problem. You may not be strong enough. You may not be in good enough shape, but the surgery itself will be okay. It's not a risk. At that point, if he told me, you're risking paralysis, it's going to break again, I wouldn't jump. I don't want to jump that bad. But he said it would be okay. And I was in the airplane with the guys. I knew it had been 10 weeks, and I. I got a parachute that I knew would be gentle with me for both for landing and for opening. And I didn't know if I was going to jump or not, but I knew I wanted to be ready to. And I watched them get out of the airplane, and I was just terrified to go. Just scared to get out and. But knew I could do it, knew I was ready, and just heard this voice in my head, basically just say, go, Just go. Stop thinking, go. Just get out. And just shot out the airplane and did the jump with them and started jumping again gently and slowly from that point on. But it was about 10 weeks after the surgery, because I believe he told me 10 weeks. It was probably 10 weeks to the day.
- [88:55]
Warwick Schiller
My listeners, regular listeners, would know that I send questions out for people to choose from, and I think this is a good place to ask you about one of the questions you chose. What is your relationship like with fear? Because I think you've kind of told us. But if you can verbalize that, you.
- [89:13]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Know, I'm not a fan. I'm really not a fan of fear at all. I could skip it. I don't like being scared. I don't get off on being scared. I'm not an adrenaline junkie at all. But there are certain things in life that you want to experience, that you want to do, and skydiving was certainly one of them, especially starting off. And I'm not going to let the fear stop me from doing those things. So I'm not asking for it. I'm not looking for ways to be scared. But when you've got things that you want to do that you want to experience, they're new things most a lot of the time. And you. You can't know everything there is to know about something you've Never done before that you've never experienced.
- [90:05]
Warwick Schiller
Right.
- [90:06]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And so it's going to come with a certain level of fear which you'll discover when you're doing it. So for calculated fear like that, to actually know what I'm scared of, I'm okay with it. It's part of life, it's part of the game. And if you hide from that fear, well then you eliminate so many experiences and so many things that you won't enjoy if you hide from it, as opposed to facing the fear. It's also need to be smart about knowing what you're scared of. It's a funny thing, an experience I had the first time I jumped out of a hot air balloon. It's fine. It's a hot air balloon, right? We're up at 5,000ft, which is plenty high to skydive. It's not like it's too low. 5,000ft is way high. We're in the desert. There's nothing for me to land on. There's no obstacles. It's wide open. There is nothing for me to logically be scared of. But I've never been in a hot air balloon. I've never jumped out of a hot air balloon. I'm looking down and I am myself about. I'm just. And I'm feeling this fear. And I'm thinking to myself, I mean, I recognize the feeling. I recognize the feeling of fear, but there's nothing for me to be scared of here. And the logically overrule the emotion you feel sometimes. And I think that's something. Just because we're feeling fear for some experience that we are worried about doesn't mean that that fear is warranted. And to actually recognize that and understand that it's the same thing. You know, I do a lot of public speaking now and I'm. I'm scared to go up there and do that. But what do I have to be scared of? Am I going to get hurt doing this? Am I going to be damaged in any way? No, there isn't anything. So it helps you get through that fear when you actually know what it is I'm scared of. What's the actual damage at risk here? I haven't, I haven't ever made a BASE jump. BASE jumping, jumping off cliff. Because right now the as much as I see some of the guys doing it, I've got lots of friends who do it all the time. And how much fun some of that seems to be, the risk is just too high. So I'm not, I'm not Open to that much fear with that risk.
- [92:39]
Warwick Schiller
So it's interesting you mentioned BASE jumping then, because I was going to ask you if you've ever wing suited, because I, you know, you said you wanted to fly and I had an amazing lady on the podcast from Australia a couple years ago, and she, her and her husband broke the world record for the world's highest wingsuit BASE jump. They jumped off Mount Maru in India. So you've never wing suited?
- [93:02]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I have.
- [93:03]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, you have.
- [93:04]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I've done about 10 wingsuit jumps. Not off the earth, just out of an airplane.
- [93:09]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, out of an airplane. Oh, you were talking about the, the hot air balloon. And, and that's something. Her name is Heather Swan, but that's something she was saying that hot air balloon's different because it's stationary, whereas when you, when you jump out of a plane, you're already moving at speed. So do you, you almost don't get that, that acceleration feeling like when you, you know, if you cliff jump or whatever, you feel that out of a hot air balloon, though, don't you?
- [93:37]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Hot air balloon is very similar in that feeling to base jumping because it's still. Right. The airplane's already going 80 knots. So you fly right out the door because you have that wind to fly on where in the hot air balloon, it's, it might as well be a stationary object. So. Yeah.
- [93:53]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, it's different. Where did, where have you, where have you wingsuited at?
- [93:59]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Paris?
- [94:01]
Warwick Schiller
Yep. And. And do you like that feeling of flying? That kind of feeling of flying?
- [94:06]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I, I didn't like it as much. I mean, it was, it was very cool, but I felt like I was flying the wingsuit rather than flying my body.
- [94:16]
Warwick Schiller
Right, okay. You're really into.
- [94:19]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Which is the part of, of skydiving I love so much. It's if whatever I do with my hands, my fingers, my knees, my, my torso, that's how you fly. Where with the wingsuit, it was. I felt like more like how I fly my parachute when I'm under my parachute.
- [94:33]
Warwick Schiller
Yep.
- [94:34]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I had to fly the wingsuit.
- [94:35]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah.
- [94:36]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I think it's. There's so many great ways to skydive, and that is certainly one of them. And looking at the wingsuit BASE jumping, where they're flying along the Earth, just is absolutely out of this world. It would be amazing. I'm not doing it, but it looks incredible.
- [94:57]
Warwick Schiller
Yes, amazing. Okay, so the thing I wanted to. The next thing I wanted to get to was you ended up becoming a world champion skydiver after your, I mean, multiple World champions. Skydiver, aren't you?
- [95:10]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah.
- [95:12]
Warwick Schiller
How many did you win? How many World titles? We.
- [95:14]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
World Championship itself. Three times in the World cup, three times World Games. There's different world international events, but yeah.
- [95:25]
Warwick Schiller
And how long after your accident, the plane crash, did. Did you win your first one?
- [95:33]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
The World cup was in 94, so it was two years after.
- [95:37]
Warwick Schiller
Wow. Wow. So soon. And then what. What was that like for you? Like finally achieving that goal, Winning. That was it. Was it? Was it? I want more of that, obviously, because you won more of them. But was it. Was it like everything you thought it would be?
- [95:57]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
No, not at all. It was funny, you know, I had the team I built which ultimately won the World Championships. Was I a guy? Jack Jeffries was a friend of mine who. We weren't that many friends, but he was on the. The team that was our biggest competition. And we decided to combine our efforts to try to put the best team we could together in the United States and have a chance to beat the French team that I was talking about. And he had dedicated so much of his life, as I had, and we had competed against each other for years. And finally, at the 1995 World Championships, they were filming it. They were judging it live. So as we got open under our parachutes from the last jump, we saw people running out from the judge's tent and the hangar there waving US Flags, and we knew that we had won.
- [96:57]
Warwick Schiller
Oh, wow. Before you hit the ground?
- [96:58]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Before we hit the ground.
- [96:59]
Warwick Schiller
Wow.
- [97:00]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And we hit the ground and all, you know, and it's a. It's a small community, but it's a very close community. And all the competitors as well as the observers were there, and they were spraying champagne, and it was a little celebration and American flags everywhere, and that was all great. And that lasted for about 20 minutes, and then everybody went back over to probably the bar over there, and Jack and I were still standing there after finally having one, after spending more than a decade trying to. And we looked at each other and said, is that it? Was that. That was it. We're like, man, that's. That was it. That's pretty much that. The actual victory. That was it. And it was great. It felt great to finally achieve this. But the. The actual victory itself was nothing compared to all the experiences that we had had and all the struggles that we had and all the challenges and all the accomplishments every day and the choices we had made that led us there. So the win was actually pretty much a disappointment. I woke up the next day. I was still short you know, I thought for sure I was going to be 6:2 when I got out of bed. I was still 5:8. On a good day.
- [98:26]
Warwick Schiller
You thought you'd be taller. Oh, my goodness. But you kept going. And, you know, that's the thing. This is the journey on podcast, and it's not about the destination. It's about the, you know, who you become on the way to getting there.
- [98:41]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It is so. It is so true, and more so than ever. It's the. It's the pursuit of that goal. It's not achieving the goal as much, and just everything that happened. And one example is pulling off the freeway at Coolidge, right. Which then changed my life because I met this person just because I got. Had I not done that, that wouldn't have happened. But it's the pursuit of that, of those goals. It's the decisions you make, trying to go for something you're passionate about, something that you love, something that just brings you such utter joy. That's where the magic is. And it's just one thing after another that happens. And you need to have your eyes open to recognize all the. The special things that. That come together, the people you meet. Yeah. And if you. Ever. Don't get me wrong, I've competed a lot, and winning is better. Right. I'd much rather win than lose, but it would all it was. I competed for a long time before I won, and I wouldn't have traded those experiences for anything. And had I stopped right then and not continued, it still would have been such valuable period in my life. So much would have been learned, so much would have been experienced had I never won. Right.
- [100:06]
Warwick Schiller
One of your. One of the questions you chose, I think you've already answered it, but it says, what's the most worthwhile thing you've put your time into? Something that changed the course of your life. And I'm. We've talked about nothing but wanting to be a skydiver and fly all your life. So I imagine that's your answer.
- [100:19]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I think having particular times, one was going out for the first jump, actually doing it. Right. Because like I said, it was all easy to talk about. Easy to say, I want to do this, and this is my goal is a whole nother thing to get my butt up to the airport that day and actually jump out of an airplane. So that was. That first jump was one. None of the rest would have happened if it wasn't for that. And then also when I decided I still wanted to try to win the World bank, even after these professional teams had raised the bar so high and without a plan, with no. You know, it had never been done before without a team, without the money. But just, it's going to work out. It's going to work out. I'm going to head out there and make this happen, and it's going to work. And having the. Having the courage to do that, having the confidence in myself to do that, and having the faith in the world that it'll work out, those two things.
- [101:19]
Warwick Schiller
That reminds me a lot. I met a guy years ago who was a. He was the starting pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds, I think. And I met him at a barbecue in Arizona and didn't know he was a baseball player. He was just a guy at a friend's house and how you going? Whatever. And it turns out he just signed a five year, $110 million deal. I think. I think he's getting $21 million a year to play baseball or something. But. So I said, where'd you grow up? And he said he named this place in Texas. And I said, I've never heard of that. And he goes, oh, it's halfway between San Antonio and San Angelo. So it's kind of like Coolidge. It's in the middle of nowhere. And I said, how big a town is it? And he goes, oh, it's only about 4,000 people. And I said, so where'd you go to college? He goes, oh, I didn't go to college. And I'm like, well, I don't know much about American sports, but I thought you, in order to be drafted in the majors, you get drafted out of college. He goes, no, I got drafted out of high school. And I said, is that a thing? And he says, yeah, you can do that. And I said, so tell me, how does someone from a town of 4,000 people in the middle of nowhere, Texas, get drafted out of high school? And he looked at me and he said, well, I just never believed it wouldn't happen. And that's like you. You just. You had that. That faith, you know, like, very similar story. Like, there's no reason for it to happen except you. You wouldn't believe it wasn't going to happen.
- [102:51]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It starts there, right? You have to have that. You have to have that. I mean, if you. If you don't believe that, you won't make the right decisions to lead you down that path. But it's not guaranteed. You know, you believe it, but you also. You also realize there's no guarantee here. It's still up to me. I'm in control of this situation. I need to take the right steps. And I don't even know what the steps are going to be, you know, or when the questions will be asked. But it starts with that belief, for sure.
- [103:24]
Warwick Schiller
It's interesting. I had a guy on the podcast who's. He's a horse body worker. But anyway, he was telling me a skydiving story. He used to skydive quite a bit, jumps out one time, and he's. He's deploys his shoot and he should get all tangled. And he says, and I didn't get it untangled until right before it was too late. And I said, so what were you thinking about on the way down? Like, you know, you're looking at the ground like, holy shit. And he goes, oh, I didn't have time to look at the ground. I was just working the problem. And I'm like, oh, that is great. I was just working the problem. Just working the problem. Okay, I gotta. We'll finish up with the rest of your questions here. Do you have a favorite quote?
- [104:10]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I do. There's probably a few, but one in particular from one of my favorite books as Illusions by Richard Bach.
- [104:21]
Warwick Schiller
Okay.
- [104:22]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yeah. I take it you like that as well. Yes, but it says you are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however, which I thought was. Was fabulous. And just the way that he put it, that I think too often. Too often people have a dream, have a vision, have something they want to accomplish. They believe. They believe it'll happen, but they kind of wait for it to happen to them rather than realizing that, you know, is it. Could it just fall into your lap? Maybe, but much more likely you're gonna have to work your ass off. So it's possible, but you may have to work for it, however.
- [105:12]
Warwick Schiller
That's a.
- [105:12]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And that was.
- [105:13]
Warwick Schiller
That's a. It's a great quote and a great book. And, you know, you're talking about the. The thing in Coolidge where if I hadn't have turned off, you know, like, the universe kind of gives you signs. I have a Facebook group, and a number of years ago now, someone posted on my Facebook group and asked me, had I ever read Illusions by Richard Barr? And I'd never heard of the book at the time, and this was on, like, a Wednesday. This is the weirdest story. This is, like on a Wednesday. And I hadn't heard of the book. And I commented, said, no, I haven't heard of it. I have to. I'll have to get a copy and read it if you think it's worth reading. Friday I get some packages in the mail, and there was two of these packages addressed to me, and one was from England, so it had been sent like 10 days before. And one was from somewhere in America to be sent like four days before. So I opened the one from England, and it's a copy of Illusions by Richard Bar. So I. So it's been. It was sent before I'd even heard of the book. So then I'm like, I wonder what this other one is. I open it up and someone else has sent me a copy of Illusions by Richard Bach. They both arrived the same day. They arrived two days after the first time I ever heard of the book Illusions by Richard Bach. But they were posted before I ever heard of that book. Like, that's just.
- [106:34]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And this is, I'm sure, from people who were speaking to you and got to know you as I am now to some degree, and thought, this guy will love Illusions. I'm going to send it. Right?
- [106:44]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah. And so the fact that they sent it to me was one thing, but the fact I got two copies, arrived the same day, posted different days, but posted before I ever heard of the book. It's like I'm supposed to. I'm supposed to read this book. And I suppose you probably liked it not only for the wisdom in it, but the fact it's a flying. It's got, you know. Yeah, the plane.
- [107:04]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And I bet you read it that day, too.
- [107:06]
Warwick Schiller
I did. I did. And I've read it a few times since. Next question. What's a common myth about your profession?
- [107:16]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I think there's two that really are ones I would love to. For people to understand. One is that people who don't skydive think of skydivers just normally as this young, crazy, adrenaline junkie group of people who are out there just risking, risking death all the time and. And get off on that. And that's what we do. And that could not be further from the truth. You know, it's this. We are not people with a death wish at all. You know, if we were, we'd be dead. Because it's really easy to do if that's what you're after. But it's also people who, you know. Any day you walk it on, Skydive Paris, just my drop zone. And then any day you can meet people from 18 to 90 years old from every ethnicity, men, women, every gender, every sexual preference, every nationality, every political party. You meet people from all over the world. The only thing they have in common is that when they were a little kid like me, they wanted to fly. That's what they have. That's what they have in common. And they wanted it badly enough that they stuck with it. They made it happen. They've made that dream come true. But it is that varied of a group. It's that diverse of a group. It is not just people, you know, risking death. And for the most part, we try to keep the adrenaline to a minimum in skydiving. It's natural enough to have it. We. The less the better, generally speaking. So just to realize this is the community that we have, which is great. The other thing is people don't realize it's a sport. This is a sport. I've spent. I spent many years of my life training the sport the same way athletes train for anything else. And people just don't know it. They haven't been exposed to it. And I would love people to actually see the sport that we love, to be able to appreciate it for the competitive athletic event, that it is.
- [109:28]
Warwick Schiller
Very cool. What quality you admire most in people?
- [109:37]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
If I had to pick one, I'd say optimism. You know, so often meet people who just approach the world from this negative place that they. They meet new people, and until that person proves that they're a good person who could be trusted, they expect the worst. They. They see opportunities that happen and then go right to what the negative side of that opportunity is, rather than seeing the positive things that are all there all the time. Sometimes you have to go through the negative thing, go through the things that scare you, go through the different, what if this happened? What if that happened? To find the jewels. But I think it's a much happier place to live and puts people in a much better perspective. When you're optimistic about the people that you meet, optimistic about the situations and opportunities that come in front of you, rather than seeing all that can go wrong. See all that can go right. Yeah.
- [110:38]
Warwick Schiller
It's almost like that Rumi quote I said before. What you are seeking is seeking you. And if you're seeking negativity, guess what?
- [110:46]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
You'll find it.
- [110:47]
Warwick Schiller
It's right there. One of the questions you didn't pick, but I'm going to ask anyway. Do you have a favorite book that you tell people about? Not necessarily your favorite book to read, but one that you recommend to people?
- [110:58]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I have to go back to illusions on that. I would have said just from the conversation.
- [111:03]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, yeah. Do you. Do you have any others?
- [111:11]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Deepak Chopra's the seven Spiritual Laws of success is really great. One thing that I love about it, like illusions, is it's short and easy to read. Right. You don't have to commit two weeks to. To get through it. And it gets straight to. To very deep ideas in a very simple way and really, really hits home. And it's similar. The ideas are very similar to illusions, but approached in a completely different way.
- [111:44]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah, well, that, you know, there's a lot of different ways to say in the truth, but.
- [111:48]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
- [111:50]
Warwick Schiller
All right, awesome. So, Dan, your book. You wrote a book above all else, a world champion skydiver's story of survival and what it taught him about fear, adversity, and success. When did you. When did you write the book?
- [112:04]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It was published in 2011.
- [112:07]
Warwick Schiller
Okay. How long did it take you to write it?
- [112:12]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Forever. You know, it was funny. I was first. I had no intentions of writing a book at all. I was coaching the Russian national skydiving team, and they were in Skydive Paris training with me. The sponsor of the team was also on the team. And he said to me, we've been coached by a lot of different people, but no one has ever told us what you're telling us. He said, I want you to write a book about it. And I said, what would the book be about? And he said, how to win the world, mate. And I said, well, that's like 10 skydiving and 90. All the other things to succeed at anything, you know, I can. There's a technical skydiving stuff, but it's 90 other things. And he said, write whatever, whatever you want to include, but write what it's going to take to win the world. And I said, I don't have time to write a book. You know, I'm running. Scott F. Paris is the, you know, one of the biggest skydiving centers in the world. I just don't. I've got two little kids. I don't have time to write a book. And he said, how long would it take you? And I said, it would probably take me about three months just to brain dump the ideas on the paper before even. And this is no book, mind you, but just to brain dump the ideas. He wanted to translate it to Russian. And he said, I'll. I'll compensate you to take the three months off to give me that, and then I'll take it from there and make a book out of it. And it sounds like a really fun opportunity to try to do that. So I worked half time for three months, and I just Spent the time brain dumping all these things with the idea of how to win the world mate. Three months went by, I gave him what I had written and he had lost interest at that point. So I was sitting there with 200 pages of work I had written about a book I didn't want to write, right, Because I didn't. If I was going to write a book, it wasn't going to be how to Win the World, but it wasn't going to be so skydiving limited because, right, I could just call my friends and tell them how to do that, the ones that are interested. So I went back and thought, what am I, what should I do with this? And the book had maybe two stories in it that I had used to try to get a point across. And I gave it to about half a dozen friends and I said, just tell me what you think of this. I don't know what I should do with it. And you have to be careful when you're getting everybody's opinion on your writing because everybody has a different opinion. But the one thing that they all agreed on was these stories were the best part. The stories, these two stories you had, they really hit home. The rest of it was a technical manual on how to win the world, mate. Hang on. So I took that to heart and I thought about, I have two kids at that time, they were both younger. And I thought, what would I want my kids to read? What do I think I've learned in my experiences in life, like those two experiences I had there that my kids would be able to use and far beyond skydiving. I didn't want it to be a book about skydiving. And then I started back on that. But it was something I just had to do in my spare time. So all in all, it probably took six years, five years to write.
- [115:35]
Warwick Schiller
Yeah. When you're not a writer. I think when you're our writer, it's still hard to write a book. But when you're not a writer, it's even harder.
- [115:41]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
This is the most frustrating experience of my life. I remember you just have to jump on it when it comes to you ideas. And I remember staying up late writing and writing and thinking, oh, there it is. That's. I got it, I got it. That's what I wanted. That's what I wanted to share. That's the way I wanted to share it. That's beautiful. And I put it to bed and I'd go to bed, I'd get up the next morning and look at it and think, what the hell is that? That's such a bunch of crap. You actually wrote that last night and just, you know, back and forth on it, editing it. Re editing it, moving things around. But I finally, it's. I am proud of it. I think the final book is something I. It is what I wanted it to be.
- [116:25]
Warwick Schiller
The blurb on the back says. In above all else, Dan tells his inspiring story of hope streams and his amazing comeback. He presents proven tools and techniques for success and explains how they can be used in everyday life. Whatever your goals are, Dan Brodsky Chen field can help you make them a reality. So it's not just a skydiving book. It's. It's a how to achieve your goals and succeed book.
- [116:50]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It most definitely is. I, I tried to write it. Not for skydivers. Skydiver. I went through many skydiving related stories, but it's. The stories are the same for anybody else who's going after a dream with the same commitment and the same passion that I did. One of my other favorite books was In Pursuit of Excellence by Terry Orlich. He was a gymnast.
- [117:13]
Warwick Schiller
Yes.
- [117:14]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
And I read this, you know, way earlier in my skydiving career. It's not about gymnastics. Everything he said related perfectly to what I was doing and I wanted that, you know, skydivers can, can relate to it in like an additional way because they've shared some of these experiences. But you is not written for skydivers for sure.
- [117:35]
Warwick Schiller
Right. So where can people find that also and find you? Do you have a website?
- [117:43]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
I do. Danbrotskychenfeld.com It's a mouthful, I realize. And the book is on Amazon.
- [117:54]
Warwick Schiller
It's on Amazon. Okay. And on your website. Is the hyphen in the spelling on your website?
- [118:02]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Yes.
- [118:03]
Warwick Schiller
Okay. It is. Okay, Perfect. It'll be the same as it reads on this. Awesome. Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining me. Taking the time to join me and share your amazing story work.
- [118:13]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
It's been a pleasure. Been glad we finally made it happen. I know we were talking about it quite a ways back and as, as Hannah said, life got in the way.
- [118:22]
Warwick Schiller
Life got in the way. Yeah. Special thanks to Hannah Betts for hooking us up too. Yeah. Once again, Dan, thank you so much for sharing your story and for you guys at home, thanks for joining us and we'll catch you on the next episode of the Journey on podcast.
- [118:35]
Dan Brodsky-Chenfield
Great. Thanks, Warwick. Thanks for being a part of the Journey on podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warwick has over 850 full length training videos on his online video library@videos.warickschiller.com Be sure to follow Warrick on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram to see his latest training, advice and insights. SA.