From Severe Dyslexia to Successful Entrepreneur: Beating the Odds with Benjamin Shrader

But think about it like this. If you want to be liked, well, what do.

What do college kids like? College kids like to party. So if you control partying, college kids will like you. That was. That really was the simple deduction behind my career.

Today we sit down with Benjamin Schrader, a unique entrepreneur who built his own path in the face of tremendous adversity.

From being told as a child with severe dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia that he would never learn to read to founding a thriving events promotion business, Benjamin's journey took him from a lowly start as a homeschooled kid through startup Aggieland at Texas A and M, where he discovered his entrepreneurial edge all the way to producing sold out concerts and high profile events across Texas.

In this episode, Benjamin opens up about how he battles not just business challenges, but life threatening health issues, including surviving a massive brain tumor. We dive deep into how he used stoicism to keep moving forward, the power of doubling down on your strengths, and his hard won wisdom on why taking action beats waiting for the perfect plan every time.

Get ready for an episode packed with candor, practical advice, and a powerful testament to never giving up, no matter what life throws at you. As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe. All right, Benjamin Schrader, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment. It's great to be here. We're gonna have a great time today. Absolutely we are. We appreciate you taking the time to be here.

So, Benjamin, you faced significant challenges early on in your life with, with severe dyslexia. That really made just the basics of going to school extremely challenging. Can you just talk about that and how that shaped your path as an entrepreneur? Indeed, When I was in kindergarten, I was diagnosed with extremely severe dyslexia. Being in the one percentile, it's actually one in every five people have dyslexia.

But the level of severity that I had is actually quite rare, to the point that specialists, teachers, doctors said I would never read at all. I mean, how can you survive in the world? So from a young age, I felt that, you know, maybe I'll have to work for myself, figure something out, do something like that.

But years of reading therapy, nine years of reading therapy, and then I was later diagnosed with dysgraphia and dyscalculia, which is dyslexia, trouble with reading, dysgraphia, trouble with writing, and then dyscoculia, trouble with math, and. And the big three. The trifecta, I call it. You know, it Was tough. Growing up was tough. My parents were absolute saints. My mother homeschooled me from kindergarten to freshman year of high school. And then I attended traditional school.

Wow. Okay, so talk about overcoming the odds. All the so called experts told you you would never read at all. And you were basically homeschooled out of necessity by your mother. Eventually, by the time you got into 10th grade, you were able to attend regular school. I was, I was with accommodations. You know, dyslexics. We get tested every three years when we're attending school. And basically that is a little booklet.

Mine is like this thick, but most people's is a single page that allows us to get accommodations, extra time, a reader, things like that. But when I was young, there were very few places that offered accommodations. And that's really why I was homeschooled or that offered them to the level that I would have needed. Just because imagine it was. It was like being blind to reading. It was like being blind, but you look completely fine. So my mother was a saint. My parents, very good people.

They homeschooled me. And for me, I have to say that it was lonely in a sense. They did their best to form co ops and things like that. But I'm a very outgoing person. So I thought, the grass is going to be greener on the other side. I'll go to high school. It's going to be like High School Musical, you know, I'm thinking it's just going to be fantastic.

High school was rough, but when it comes to overcoming the odds, I have to thank a retired teacher named Mrs. Prim who used the Orton Gillingham approach, which is the original method for teaching Dylexics. It's very simple. A, Apple app, B batbu, C catcon flashcards. And that approach got me to the point. And what my parents would always say was to get me to the point where I could go around town, where I could survive. That was all I needed to do. And I last thing I'll share on.

This is the best advice my father ever gave me. He said, benjamin, you're going to have to work twice as hard as other kids just to get to where they are on most things. But you're good at talking. Double down on that. Become the best at it. That is how you will survive in a reader's world. Wow. I'm losing my voice a little bit, so forgive me. I'm not my usual self. I had a speech yesterday and a speech the day before that. Wow, okay. Well, yeah, you certainly took that, that advice to heart.

Let me just ask, too, because as you're going on this journey, right, like most kids as they go through school, you just. It's. It's almost taken for granted. You learn to read very early on, and you're able to read, and. And that's, you know, you're able to use that as you're learning, but as you're going through this process, and like you said, you're basically blind to reading.

What was your mental state like in terms of dealing with that type of adversity through your formative years where your. Your situation is so different than everyone, every other kid around you? Back then, it really felt like a curse. Now today, I'm grateful for it. It made me the man I am. Without dyslexia, I probably would have turned out to be a jerk. Honestly. You know, it keeps you humble when you can't read. But I was very angry. I was, you know, mad at the world in many ways.

I, you know, I was overall a good kid. Never destructive, never violent, things like that. But I held a resentment towards the readers because why. Why was it me? Why did I have to be the one that was burdened with this? And of course, you know, there are people that have horrible conditions and difficult things, but as a kid, you're not thinking like that. You're saying, why me? Why do I have to suffer and be the one that is an outcast just because they can't do the most basic thing?

You know, the other kids would read Harry Potter, and I. I watched the movies and I acted like I had read the books, and I tried to hide my dyslexia when I was young. And that. That never work because, you know, the moment a book got to me, passing around a Bible study or things like that, I. I was done for. Today, I don't hide it. You know, I will joke about it. I. Anytime somebody says something, I'm just like, oh, I have dyslexia. That's my blanket excuse for everything.

Doesn't even make sense. And the best thing you can do is embrace it, admit what you are, get the help you need. Accommodations, get to the point where you can survive. But it was tough growing up. And I do believe, though, that it gave me a fire. It gave me a drive to want more, to want to succeed and to work hard to. To succeed. Because I knew, you know, I. I've been on the bottom some, you know, as they say, and it's not great down there, and I don't want to go back to there.

I Don't want to ever be an outcast again. I don't want to ever be back on the bottom. So I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to really put everything that I can into something so that I'm not back on the bottom because I remember how people treated me when I was there.

Okay, all right, so ultimately you finish high school and then you made it into Texas A and M University, which is. Which is really where your entrepreneurial journey started. So, so tell us about that experience and what happened there. Well, it was, you know, it's funny, a lot of things lined up to be chance almost. I was a lot of luck. I saw when I was filling out the application to get housing, you know, to live in a dorm, I saw this thing, Startup Aggieland.

We all would live on the fourth floor of Hullablue hall, which was the nicest dormitory. We would all take a class on entrepreneurship together. And I said, wow, you know, boy, being an entrepreneur would be neat. You know, amongst gen Z. I'm 26 myself, so just barely make the cut for Gen Z. But to be an entrepreneur is, excuse me, the most aspirational career. More than a doctor, more than a lawyer, it is to be an entrepreneur.

To be free, to have that freedom is something that really Gen Z values very much. So I said, okay, I'm going to sign up for this. I signed up for it. I move into my dorm, we start taking this class together. And I have to say, Startup Aggieland, now It's called the McFerrin center for Entrepreneurship, but Startup Aggieland was amazing. I mean, it is still amazing to this day, and especially in my time.

It did so much for me because every single week we would have people come in who were executives, who were actual entrepreneurs. I know Fadi Kaluz, the founder of Aggieland Outfitters, a very popular store out there. He would come out, he would talk to the class, he would take us to his store, he would take us to the country club for one of our class.

I guess not a field trip, but maybe like extra credit or something like that where we would hear talk from an entrepreneur and getting us connected with the business community out there. The connections now, the connections and the teaching that Startup Aggieland offered was invaluable. They helped me start my llc. Like none of what I have. None of Schrader promotions would exist if it was not for Startup Aggieland. In today's business environment, optimizing your efficiency is critical.

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To find out how Leverage Assistance can increase your operational effectiveness and to take advantage of this exclusive trial, click the link below. Okay, and so you're in this, this entrepreneurship course, basically college course. And then based on your, your upbringing and all the challenges you went through, you had an idea for a business and it involved, in your words, controlling partying. Yes, yes, yes. I know it sounds a little bit funny, but think about it like this.

If you want to be liked, well, what do, what do college kids like? College kids like to party. So if you control partying, college kids will like you. That was, that really was the simple deduction behind my career. And when I came up with that line years ago, I was like, oh, that's very clever. I'm going to always use that. For me, I saw I had no widget, I had no coding idea, nothing like that.

But I saw void in the market for the promotional side for these different venues and nightclubs where they didn't have people that brought an element of professionalism. Most of the people. Now I mostly do event coordination. It's where the real money is. But back then it was promotion. And most of the people did it to party. They did it so they had an avenue to party.

I went out there and in the beginning, I was out there every single night shaking the hands of bouncers, shaking the hands of managers, desperately trying to get someone to give me a chance, give me a deal, make a deal. And then eventually, you know, one venue did and we increased their sales by like 25% in the first couple of months, made it a premium spot to be, because I treated it like the business that it is. You know, I did not drink till I was 21.

And it's very rare to this day that I drink it. Just honestly, I think I'm allergic. But for me it was professionalism. I was always in a suit, even if it was sometimes ill fitting or a suit or a sport coat. I tried to do everything I could to give that air of legitimacy and professionalism. And you know, a lot of times it was the suit guy or, oh, that's Ben, the suit guy.

And that brand helped me a lot though, because I was young, I was young, I was inexperienced, but the air of legitimacy turned into real legitimacy. Okay, wow. So certainly a way to stand out. I have to imagine that there's not a lot of. No, no. Imagine a college role and you're going around in a full three piece suit, you know, saying, oh, we need to do this, we do this. And yes, no, it was excellent.

We made a lot of deals with fraternities, sororities for these venues and it was just fantastic. We were able to really earn that first venue that I worked with, the premium spot to be. We made it, we took it from just somewhere that was, oh, kind of dirty. You know, it was the college bar to really a premium spot to be. I mean, we put the bouncers and polo shirts instead of T shirts, simple things like that. Getting a red rope at the front door changes the entire atmosphere.

Wow. And so how did you come up with. With these ideas in terms of the. These tweaks to make, like you said, what's that? You know, that's interesting. I have not really thought about that. I think some of it comes down to. I'm sure that I'm an avid YouTube watcher and I'm sure that some things came up. I know back in the day I was a real fan of Gary Vee and I had the privilege to meet him once. He's a very nice man. But I'm not sure if I'm being honest.

I think I was kind of partially winging it in the sense of I said, okay, what do luxury places do? What are places that have that Very similar, I guess, to what I was doing with the sport coat and the suit. It was the air of legitimacy. It was setting the right tone and through that, attracting more people and then expanding your audience, doing a good job with that audience and then expanding it even more.

So I would say yes, it was that air of legitimacy that, you know, if you want to be a good entrepreneur, dress like a good entrepreneur, talk like a good entrepreneur, learn the lingo, have. Definitely have a suit and tie, you know, I, I fall into the camp. I know a lot of entrepreneurs are not the type where they want, they want to just wear whatever and you know, I, I have a good friend who, he just got a seven million dollar investment and I've never seen him in a suit.

So you know, for him it works great. But for me and for a lot of people on the rise especially, I think if you show up in a suit that, you know, you show up in a well fitting suit with a tie, tie clip on, you know, you look good, you feel good, people are going to give you a little bit more of a chance than they might otherwise. Love that.

Okay. And I want to touch on something else that you said too in terms of you, you think you may have just been winging it, but all throughout your journey, one thing that sticks out to me is, you know, you've had this incredibly tough upbringing. You overcame that. You got into a major university despite all those challenges. They probably made a mistake. Yeah, being able to read. Right.

And then you get into this entrepreneur course, you have this idea to be an entrepreneur and you decide to go through the event, you know, the event promotion path. But like you said, you didn't have things figured out. You didn't really know what you were doing. But this, this, the overall theme here is no matter what you were facing, you continued to take action. Can you talk about that bias fractionate where that comes from? That is the most important thing. Act, Act. Apathy is death.

Act. You have to push forward and do something. There was a priest I worked for when I was in high school and he said to me, you know Benjamin, sometimes you don't know what to do, but you just got to do something, you just have to try because that's all that we can do in life. So yes, on many fronts. There were a lot of times where I was winging it, but I believe was it Nicolae Machiavelli who said the true strength of a leader is judged based off how he handles fortuna fortune.

When things are presented to you and setting yourself up to be in the right place at the right time to meet the people that you need to meet. For me, a dj, an artist, someone in the music industry or an owner, these type of things. I set myself up so that I would have these opportunities because I was there, I was actively trying. I. Yes, you make an excellent point. Because what you have to do, you have to try, you have to act.

Do not sit idly by and do not dilute oneself into thinking, oh, Just because, you know, I. Oh, I had this great idea and I watched videos about it. I did something. No, I think that, you know, on the ground operations, as I call them, are very valuable.

So if you have a type of business where you need to go somewhere, do something, so you're trying to find clients, these type of things, and if not, you know, get out of your house, go to a coffee shop, do your work there, hold yourself accountable to do it, and you really can go far. Because honest to God, in the beginning, I did not know what I was doing and I saw what did not work and I saw what worked and I just kept doing more of what worked, eventually leading to the events.

You know, the real money in the music industry is in event production. And that's mainly what I do now for a corporate clientele, occasionally a fraternity or sorority, but they're going to give me an aneurysm or a heart attack. So corporate clientele is. I work a lot with them and. But of course, love the Greeks. But for me, that I saw, that's how people were making the money, that's how people were surviving long term.

So that these promoters and things like that, they have a second job or they're a bartender, all these types of things. I wanted to be independent and I wanted to have the ability to organize things, to see all my work come to fruition in something that is the most rewarding thing about events. So we've done shows with Riff Raff, G, Eazy, Wiz Khalifa, Parker McCollum, Co Wetzel. We've had thousands of people in the crowd.

And it's a great feeling when you put a lot of work into something and then you get to see it all for you. Absolutely. Okay. And we'll get into the corporate event stuff here in a minute. Forgive me, Forgive me. I got up, I jumped, but I got too excited with the story. Well, we wanted to highlight the next major plot twist, if you will. So you. You get things going in.

In college, you're doing the events there, business is doing really well, taken off, and then another major challenge hits you in the midst of the global pandemic.

But will you just talk about what happened there? It was one of the most difficult things in my life. I remember, I believe it must have been. Yes. So the pandemic was wrapping up. It was coming to an end. And what I had done during that time was just. I wound down operations. You know, I have two people that work for me, and I was like, okay, we're going to do the you know, we're just going to do the bare minimum. We're going to save as much as we can, we're going to survive this time.

And then when it's over, we're going to get right back into it. So we'll be some of the first that are able to get back into it. That that worked out. And we were doing a show with a DJ group called Loud Luxury. They're pretty famous, they had a couple big hits. And I remember there was an odd pressure in my right ear and 2% hearing loss, I would come to find out, but very minor hearing loss. But sounds sounded ever so slightly off. And I had been nauseous for years.

I just thought I had a weak stomach. I thought I was nervous, but it wasn't a weak stomach. I went into the doctor, I got, you know, he looked in my ear, he said, oh, it looks fine. Let me get, let's get a CT scan just to make sure you're okay. I get a CT scan, they're like, okay, your bones look a little weird, but you might have grown that way. The bones in your ear are all like bent out. It's kind of odd, but, you know, you might have grown that way.

I get an mri, then I have a show coming up the like next day. So I'm working on that. I am not really checking my phone for calls. I'm only focusing on the show stuff. And late at night I get a call from my parents, kind of panicked and they said, benjamin, the hospital called us because we're your emergency contact and they couldn't get a hold of you. They said to come in tomorrow, anytime. Just come in. That's not good. That's bad.

When the hospital is making it so easy for you to come see them and they really are like desperate almost for you to go see them, you know, that's bad. So I didn't sleep a wink that night and I took an Uber to the hospital. Thank God, because I wouldn't have been able to drive after the news I got. I go into, you know, I go, I say, oh, hi, I'm Benjamin Schrader. And they like take me back right away. The guy comes, the doctor comes and he sits me down and he just tells me, okay, are you ready?

I said, okay, let's do this. And he said, you have a golf ball sized brain tumor growing off your hearing nerve. It's growing underneath your brain and pushing up against your brain stem. The pressure in your head is already quite high. If we do not get this out you will have one to two years before you die of a massive stroke, and you're already at risk of a serious stroke. I just laughed. That was my first reaction. And he showed it to me. The mri, I mean, was big.

For the viewers that are looking, I've got a huge scar, 61 stitches from the base of my neck to the side of my head. I wear my hair short to show it off now, but at the time, I mean, that felt like a ton of bricks. I. I was like, okay, I get the appointments, we'll schedule everything. Sounds good, sounds good. And I just go out, I sit down and I'm just. Shell shock. I call my Uber, I get in the Uber and I just tell the Uber driver, I just got diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And then I just break down crying. And, you know, I. Then I went home, was with my family. I. The only people I told that I had a brain tumor was, you know, my employees. And one person that we had an event coming up with. I had to cancel because I explained the situation and he was very understanding. And yes, a few. About a month and a half later, I had it removed at MD Anderson. It was a 12 hour surgery. They cut you open, spread you, and went in there apparently fibrous.

Fibrous and bloody, the doctor said. And I got a lot of titanium up here now holding in my parts of my skull. And then I had to get gamma knife six months after that, which is a type of radiation treatment. And I, I tell you, friend, that was like a Saw movie because you are awake. And I turned down the Ambien because I said, okay, no, I want to remember this. I'm going to make a great story one day.

They drill a vise into your head, they numb you, and it makes a crackling, popping sound, like because your skull has a leather bag around it, it's like, oh, my God, it is. And then they drill this vise into your skull so you can't move an inch. And then they put you in something that looks like an MRI machine and they zap you with beams of radiat radiation to kill the last of the tumor. But I went deaf in my right ear. I lost a balance nerve. So I had to learn how to walk again.

That was not very fun because I'd stand up, I'd fall down. That I got. I got back to kind of walking within a couple of weeks, but I needed a cane. And then I got back to fully walking kind of within six months. And after a year, I was relatively steady. But you know, luckily they saved my facial nerve. So your hearing, balance, and facial nerve are all wrapped together in your ear canal. So I almost lost this guy. And I would have looked like I had had a stroke.

And I'm very vain, so I'm glad that I didn't lose that.

That is the tale. Wow. Okay. So, as if you didn't come overcome enough adversity. Right. Growing up. And then you. You get past that, you launched a successful business, you make it through covet, and you're just starting to business. We were just. We were. It was going great. Like it was. We was picking up and. Yeah. And then I'm struck down at the height of my success, I'm literally struck down. Wow. All right, so then talk about the comeback from that until and up until where you are today.

And one thing that I. I can share, I know we were discussing beforehand was how I survived, how I. I got through that. For me, stoicism. I would tell myself when I was lying in that hospital bed, I would say, it could be worse. I could have brain cancer. It was a benign type of tumor, so not cancer. You know, I. I could have had cancer. You know, I could have had some. It could have been brain tissue because it was a nerve tissue from the ear growing underneath.

So I would just tell myself, it could be worse. I don't know if I could handle that, but I can handle this. And that's how I got through. That's how I survived mentally. That's how I coped. So I'm a big fan of stoicism, the real type of it. Not the influencer type, you see, but the stiff upper lip where you don't ignore your emotions, but you control them so that, you know, you don't spread your pain to the people you care about and you prevent yourself from freaking out.

But the return, it was glorious. I came back onto the scene and I had an immense honor. Actually, there were some students from UT who, I was shocked. I had no idea that this was happening. Were making a documentary about me and what happened to me because I fell off the face of the earth. I didn't post on Instagram. I didn't do anything. Only my people that worked for me and my close friend knew what was going on. No, I didn't tell anybody else. I'm not sure why.

I guess, yeah, maybe I. A silly thing. Maybe I didn't want to seem weak or. I don't know. So I get this message from them, and I'm like, you're doing a documentary that's amazing. I'd love to be in it. So they interviewed me, and it was actually great. Kazden, Morrison and Robbie, just some great guys. And really we're friends to this day. Now, I didn't know them back then, but now, hey, you make a documentary about me, that's a. A way to become a friend.

So that was amazing, and that was really nice to come back to. And then I. I said, okay, you know what? Let's hit up all of the people that we've got. Let's start doing things again. I partnered with this Hispanic group called Tamo Activo. We did a series of great events together. I would bring the fraternity, sorority audience. They'd bring the more Hispanic audience, and we would all make more money together. It was fantastic. Great people.

So eventually I said, though, you know, I don't want to be in College Station forever. There's a. I guess a little saying. I say, northgate takes from the many to give to the few, but eventually it takes from you, too. Northgate is the bar district. Out there, you can't stay in a college town forever. It'll eat you up. It's just not. It's not viable. So I said, okay, I. Through my work, I mean, I've been doing this almost nine years now. I had expanded to San Marcos, Houston and Austin.

We did shows all across Texas, of course, but those were the main cities where we did a lot of work. I said, well, I'm from Austin. I know the city. I have a lot of contacts down there. Let me start winding down business operations in College Station and transitioning everything that I can to Austin. Then I moved to Austin, and that was. I was very nervous at first that, you know, I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, how am I going to pay my bills? How are things going to work out?

How am I going to pay my employees if things don't work out? But luckily they did. They did. And it's been fantastic down here. Booming city for nightlife, booming city for music. Concerts do very well because younger generations, Gen Z really does not go out on a Friday night just to drink and just to hang out at the bar. But they do go out to go see a concert. So there's a much larger market amongst nightclubs and venues to have concerts.

So there's a great band that has been just blowing up out here called Jimmy Eat Brisket. And they've. They're pop punk, a genre I was not familiar with. But, boy, they put on one heck of a show. And they've Been hacking out different venues every. Every other night, and they're a pleasure to work with. So, yes, things going good. No more brain tumors. And I am in all good health now, so thank God. Yeah. Wow, that's quite a story.

And through all this, through all you've overcome and all you've accomplished, what would you say was the. The most important lesson that you've learned about entrepreneurship? We must try. Never surrender. There is no shame in trying and failing. There is shame in not trying at all.

And I've said this to my buddy, if he's talking to a girl that he likes and she rejects him, I said, my friend, there's no shame in, you know, trying and failing, but there is shame in not trying to. If you have a dream, if you think that you actually have something really viable that you can work at, that you can work at all, the time that you think about constantly, because what you think about is what you are. If you have that, go for it, strike, do it.

Because, you know, all we can do in this life is try. And for me, you know, I've faced my own mortality with the different health things that I have had. And when I was lying in that hospital bed and I was thinking, you know, Ben, if this is a wrap, you really. You did. You tried. You tried to make the most of the time you had. You really tried to build something. You tried to do something. Because my greatest fear, My greatest fear was to be an old man with regret, to.

To be too old to do anything about it and then to still have regret. That's. That's real fear for me. So if you have a dream, try it. You know, what's the worst thing that can happen? You know, well, there are some bad things, but be smart about the way you try it, and otherwise, you know, you'll be kicking yourself for the rest of your life. Love that advice.

All right, so, Benjamin, if people want to reach out to you, learn more about your promotion, business, your speaking, or any of the other things that you do you're doing, what's the best way people can get in touch with you? The absolute best way is my Instagram. And that is at Benjamin Underscore Schrader. S H R A D E R. My father would joke it's cheaper without the C. So no seeing my last name. Benjamin Schrader. Benjamin Underscore Schrader on Instagram.

That's where put out a lot of content. I think we've got 50 something K on there. Verified. So it's a good time. I enjoy it a lot. Instagram sort of the main social media but the plan is to expand to YouTube and I never got the TikToks. That is a little bit after my time. So maybe one day I'll have to kind of work more on that. But Instagram and Facebook, Ben Schrader on Facebook. So yes, I would love to hear from you.

And hey, if you want to put on one heck of an event and you're in Texas, give me a call. All right. And we will link all that in the show notes for everyone as well. All right. Well, Benjamin, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing this incredible story of your journey and all the valuable wisdom you've learned. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much. Never give up, guys. Always try. All right. And that's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time. Sa.