Dan Hall | I Can't Scratch My Own Nose

In this episode of Hope Mississippi, Dawn Beam sits down with leadership coach, speaker, and longtime friend Dan Hall for an honest conversation about resilience, relationships, and the moments that can change a life forever.

Drawing from decades of experience helping churches, businesses, and organizations move vision into action, Dan shares practical insights on leadership and communication. He explains the differences among visionaries, strategists, and tacticians—and why understanding these roles can make or break a team.

The conversation also explores the importance of asking better questions, building stronger relationships, and creating meaningful dialogue across difficult divides. Dawn and Dan reflect on race relations in Mississippi, the value of staying at the table during hard conversations, and why empathy matters now more than ever.

Dan also shares his deeply personal journey through a life-altering medical crisis that left him paralyzed from the neck down. With honesty, humor, and hard-earned perspective, he opens up about disability, dependence, perseverance, and the relationships that continue to sustain him.

This episode is a reminder that leadership is personal, healing happens in connection, and hope often grows through the people willing to walk beside us.

🎧 Subscribe, share this episode with a friend, and help spread hope across Mississippi and beyond.

Join us for new episodes on the 1st and 15th of each month as we continue sharing stories of transformation from across Mississippi. Each story reminds us that when we contribute our unique gifts, Mississippi rises together.

Hope Mississippi's Mission: The sobering reality remains: one in four Mississippi children lives in poverty, and one in five experiences food insecurity. These statistics aren't just numbers—they're our collective challenge. Through these conversations, we discover that Mississippi's transformation occurs through individual commitments to mentor, encourage, and be present for others. The small acts of hope accumulate into the broader "miracles" we celebrate.

Transcript

Welcome And Dan’s Backstory

SPEAKER_04 0:42

I'm Don Dean, and this podcast is a space for conversation, collaboration, and calling. I hope you're having a great day. And today I am excited to be joined by my dear friend Dan Hall. Welcome, Dan.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Hey, thanks, Don. How are you today?

SPEAKER_04 1:02

I'm great. How about you?

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Good.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

Dan lives in Madison, Mississippi, and we have come to know each other. What we've known each other about 20 years, maybe?

SPEAKER_02 1:13

We have. I've known your father for 40, almost 40 years. And somewhere you and I interchange. I couldn't tell you where it was. It was an evolution, but yes, we've been working together for 10 years, have known each other longer than that, but I couldn't put a date on it.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

Well, all I can say, if you want to get something done, just team up with Dan Hald because Dan, you do get a lot of things done. Could you kind of tell the audience a little about you?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Sure. I coming up on my 39th anniversary with my wife. We have six kids. We have ten grandchildren. We got married and immediately I was I had just started working with a new church plant, and we got married there, had five of our six children at that church. They're here actually outside of Jackson, Mississippi. Then we moved to Indiana. We were there for six years where I pastored another church. I came out of that church and started a consulting business working with churches and businesses and leadership development and leadership training and strategic coaching for CEOs and business owners and upper level management, C-suite type leadership. I spent a little time in South Florida where I pastored again for a couple of years, but I left that and went back full-time into consulting and coaching. I have spent my life trying to understand and operate, develop, and strengthen leaders. I believe we're all leaders and we can we're we're to lead wherever we are, whether you're a owner of a business or a stay-at-home mom, you're influencing and affecting lives. And so how do we do that? How do we maximize that?

SPEAKER_04 2:59

So, Dan, I've I've been a part of your leadership and helping groups to collaborate to find common goals. I'm reminded when you came to Hatterburg and helped Pine Belt 360 to come together as a community and set some goals that we together, churches, businesses across racial and denominational lines, uh, were able to make some improvements. But you've done that in a number of places.

Visionaries Strategists And Tacticians

SPEAKER_02 3:30

I have. I that's my joy. I think there's there's three kinds of leaders. I mean, there's all kinds of leadership theories, but the one I operate under when it comes to leadership style is you have visionaries, strategists, and tacticians. Visionaries are people who see things they can go out into the middle of a field and see a shopping center or a development that no one else can see. Then you have the strategist that once they hear the vision, they know the major steps and sequence to do. The tactician loves a list. They love the 97 things that have to be done on their list. I'm a strategist, and so I love getting next to a visionary and hear their vision, consume that, treat it like cud. I just kind of taste it over and over until it becomes a part of me, and then I can develop a strategy. So that's what you and I have done in several situations. So that's what companies and churches were hiring me to do. I would go in and meet with the upper-level leadership, and we would work on the top leaders, help really refine their vision, their communication of that vision, the development and execution of that vision, identifying the pitfalls as well as the talking points and developing leaders around achieving that vision. That's my joy. That's my passion. I still enjoy doing that, helping people take what's inside of them and flesh it out to put flesh on the bones.

SPEAKER_04 4:55

And reminded the gift, you you listen, that's one thing, but you also part of that is asking the questions. You're actually helping those people come up with the plan to help them verbalize what is in their mind, what they're dreaming about.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

That's exactly right. And ironically, my wife's the one that taught me how to ask questions. I used to watch her. In fact, I fell in love with her. Uh we were dating, but the minute I knew I wanted to marry her was when I went and watched her. She was getting her audiology degree at Baylor, and I went and watched the one-way mirror with her instructor as she worked with children. I said, I want that woman to raise my kids. I want to procreate with that incredible woman right there. That's what we did. And she taught me one day we were I was having that kind of crisis that that that is talked about in the book Good to Great, where he he he talked about speaking, Covey talked about speaking to a group about listen first and then speak. And a guy came up and said, I talk and talk and talk to my kids, and I I just don't understand it. And one day I came in and my wife said to me, Well, that's because you don't ask questions and allow them to answer. And I began to practice, wow, they will tell you a lot more if you actually just let them talk. And I turned that into my professional world, and it's not always easy. I'm a communicator, I'm a talker, but learning to listen also allows you people will begin to say things that they don't know they're saying. And that's the strength, I think, of what I bring into a relationship. So being able to draw it out and then say, is this what you're saying? Putting vocabulary to it is very, very important.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

At that point, and I'm gonna give a shout-out to both our spouses because we outkicked our coverage. That hazel is just a wonderful lady, and I'm such a support to you. And of course, you know Steven and and he's got his own podcast, but we're a team, and and it's just wonderful when you have that kind of support behind you.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

Absolutely. There's there's no doubt about it. You and I both grew up in a time where women were a little less visible, but I can remember the first time I heard the phrase behind every successful man is a surprised woman. I feel like she has truly, and this is not a statement of deference, she has truly made me more of a man than I would have ever been uh had I not known and married her.

SPEAKER_04 7:35

You know, listening is so important, even with this podcast. I've enjoyed just throwing the question out there and letting folks talk because it's amazing the stories that are behind them. And can we just talk a little bit? I know your passion, one one of your passions is to bring positive change to Mississippi and in particular with regard to race

Race Dialogue Built Through Relationships

SPEAKER_04 8:00

relations. And you started out with Mission Mississippi. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

When I was a senior at Baylor, there was a church starting here in the Jackson area, and they were starting because one of the families in a local church had brought the children of a poor black family to church. They were trying to help them get on their feet and get school supplies, and so they began to bring them in church, and they were actually asked to help that family find one of their churches. And so they left and we started what became Cornerstone Church. And so when I came over at 21 years of age from Texas, which at that time I was raised in a very white community, I was in a white neighborhood at a white school in a white church. I actually pulled my annual out. We had about 700 in my senior class, and I was working on a book on race, so I just went and counted. And I don't think there was more than 20 black students in our school. It was mainly Hispanic. So when I came to Mississippi, and one of their goals was we really wanted race to not be an issue, in my mind, I thought, well, this will be easy. This is this can't be hard to fix. And irony of ironies, Don, that you're asking this. Yesterday I hosted a lunch at my house with many of those black leaders that I began to meet with in the 80s to help understand Ronnie Krudeck, Thomas Jenkins, Dolphus Weary, Nettie Winters, James Turner, those guys. I had them over for lunch, and I said, We have fought a lot of battles together, and so let's just let's get and reminisce. I I used to watch old men get around and tell stories, and then I realized one day I'm now that old man, and so I want to tell stories with all these guys. And it was so interesting, Dawn, because when we got through, after five hours, we got through and they go, Well, we're gonna do this again, aren't we? And just just remembering those times of of laboring together and working together and fighting and arguing and discussing race, they taught me to understand my African American brothers. I did not understand, I didn't understand the issues, and I spent years studying and digging and and coming to know it, but it really was through relationships. Nettie and I still laughed by the time we were on our way to Natchez, and I developed a thing with him, and I invited him, and he and I developed this, we called it a day of dialogue. And I think we did one with y'all at Pine Belt, where we would invite leaders to a room for at least three hours. It was three to five hours, and we had a series of questions, and they would sit around tables and we would ask the questions and let them talk to each other. And we instigated conversation between black and white leaders. We were on our way to Natchez to lead one, and he and I were having our own race discussion. And we had several rules, and one is you can't leave the table. When the conversation starts, you've got to stay at the table. You can't just leave because it's uncomfortable. So we were in the van and he was driving. It got so heated that he said, If I didn't have that commitment, I'd pull over and just kick you out of my van. We still laugh about this, you know, forty years later, thirty-five years later. It was not kumbaya-ish, but it was beautiful. It was hard, but it was beautiful. It's the marriage that goes through the darkest of valleys and then you sit together on a back porch in your eighties and go, We made it. We got through it. It was difficult, but man was it worth it. That's what it was with so many of our relationships in that time, and even celebrating them now has been beautiful. I still feel that way. And now as a disabled person, many of the principles that I learned in race relationships are just as applicable between the able and the disabled community. And I was actually sharing with them yesterday and I began to draw the parallels, and I said, Now guys, I'm not saying that I understand what it's like to grow up in Mississippi as a black person in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. What I am telling you is that I now know what it feels like to be in I don't want to say disenfranchised, I think that's a little bit too heavy of a word, but I now know what it feels like to be in the minority, to be in a community not built for me. Mississippi is not built for disabled people.

SPEAKER_04 12:34

I just have to say an amen to that. And uh, we're gonna talk about disability in a minute. Those men are just saints of God that were willing to step up and connect with in in multiracial environments, whether that be in the church or I'm on the board of Unite Mississippi, and I say that's a whole lot like going to heaven because Unite Mississippi is so diverse racially denominationally, and we're all praising God in our own way. You and those men led the way many, many years ago. Pastor Dolphus Weary and Nettie Winners and Bishop Crutup, and so many folks we thank God for that that did that. But that type of dialogue of being able to listen to others and understand where they come from is so important when we talk about race relations.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Empathy is imperative. Is one of my fears of our nation right now is that we use empathy more as a weapon than as an instrument. So we accuse each side on any topic of not being empathetic, rather than listening to each other's empathy and trying to align one another so that we can bring aggregate empathy to a situation. But learning to listen and to hear, to not be defensive, to not and and the irony of all of it is that once you see it, once I see the journey of my brothers and sisters, you can't unsee it. And now you try to share it with others and they've got derogatory phrases for your empathy. It's aggravating because you just want to go, look, we're in this together. We're all in the same planet, we're all in the same nation, we're all in the same state. It's been an interesting dynamic for me to not change in my convictions if I still believe, love God and love others, if I still believe that joy is found in ensuring that others' welfare is as secure as mine, if all of that's true, treat others as we treat ourselves, et cetera, et cetera, then I there's no way I can do that without knowing you and understanding you. That's been a beautiful part of the journey for me.

SPEAKER_04 15:08

Absolutely. That's my hope that as we talk here on our podcast about opportunities that we've had and how we've been able to exchange ideas and great things have happened, that others will be encouraged to reach out and to listen, be that listening ear and also talk about differences, whether it be racial or denominational or whatever. We're all brothers and sisters and we're all in this together.

The Night A Pulmonary Embolism Hit

SPEAKER_04 15:37

Okay, Dan. I can't talk to you without at least asking about your disability. Can you open the door?

SPEAKER_02 15:47

I did. I set myself up for cross-examination, didn't I?

SPEAKER_04 15:51

Oh, you did.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Actually, I'm coming up on my 10th anniversary on August 16th, 2016. I was in Houston, Texas on business. It was actually an emergency trip. It was a last minute trip, uh, which plays into the longer story, which I we won't take time to talk about now, but it played into the story. And so I've been traveling a lot in a very compressed amount of time, a lot of driving, a lot of flying. Got in late one night and to Houston, got to the hotel, checked in, and I had an early morning the next morning. So I crawled into bed around one o'clock in the morning, had all my clothes laid out for the next day. I had my alarm set for 5 30 to get up and go work out before I had to be in an 8 o'clock meeting. Got up in the middle of the night to go to the restroom and had a pulmonary embolism, passed out, fell into a wall, and bruised my neck in the C3, C5 area. I woke up paralyzed from my neck down, absolutely no movement below my neck. I can shrug my shoulders. So my children tell me I can dance just like I used to. Apparently, I've not had the moves that I thought I had. My life changed that day. I went from a man who traveled 200,000 miles a year, about 140 to 150 on Delta, and another 40 to 50,000 on my car and went for local clients. I was living what I called a charmed life. It was nothing for my wife and I to get on a plane on Thursday, fly to Miami, and spend three days down there and come back on Sunday night, and for me to fly out again. And it was nothing for us to spend two weeks on vacation in an eight-bedroom house on the beach with a pool. We were very fortunate. I'd just been fortunate to find my my stride and for people to pay for me to do what I love to do and I felt gifted to do. I went from a guy that would get up at 4 15 in the morning, run six to nine miles, do my workout, get in, get showered, have my quiet time, get either to the office or to a client or wherever I was and get through a day and get up and do it all over again. And I loved it. It was not uncommon for me to wake up and not know not only what city I was in, I couldn't remember the hotel I was in. And there were many nights I couldn't remember if I was supposed to get out to the right side of the bed or the left side of the bed. So I'd have to put my hand out to see, wait a minute, where am I? But I loved it. It was just the way I was wired. And I went from that man who's traveled 27 different nations around the world to a man that's either in a bed or a chair. I had been through three major life changes from the time I graduated college, and this was the third one, and there was nothing more dramatic than this one. It has altered everything, it has altered my relationships, it's altered my career trajectory, it's it's altered what I can and cannot do. I just had to make some decisions. I had to make some decisions about what to do with that. Here we are, ten years later, and we're still navigating and learning. The body continues to break down, it continues to bring challenges. You're always looking for a creative way around the obstacles. And uh, you know, you don't you but there's so many cute little phrases you can use, you know, turn your pain into purpose, or as I like to say, your wounds into wisdom, and and you you've got all these, you know, it's not what happens to you, it's how you respond. All those are true. But the reality is that every day and sometimes every minute, you're having to make a decision about what the next move is going to be. That's not unlike most people, but the options are much more limited now. So it's been a great test of faith and endurance and willingness to rise above the circumstance and and make something uh meaningful out of what's in front of you.

SPEAKER_04 19:51

Absolutely. You know, I'm reminded you are such an independent. I I'm one of those that paid a small fortune to have you come lead something, and you were worth every penny of it. Okay. But what what I would say is that you were so independent in what you did and so effective, and to have to just put the brakes on, not talking about the pain and and things, but just the role that you played, and then all of a sudden you're dependent upon others or every need that you have.

Losing Independence Learning Humility

SPEAKER_04 20:24

That had to have been difficult.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

I can't scratch my nose. Next time you itch, I dare you not to scratch it. I dare you to wait until it stops itching. I would put money, I'd put a thousand dollars down that you cannot do that three times in a row. I'll get out in the neighborhood sometimes and I'll ride around. I'll put my book on tape or my audio book. Yeah, you can tell how old we are, right? I still have a VCR that blinks 12. So my audio book, you know, I've got my audible going, and two nights ago I was out riding around and a bug landed on my cheek. And I look around, there's not a neighbor out, there's nowhere to go. I it sets me off into spasm. So I'm looking like a guy that's going through an exorcism in the middle of the road, my head's pinning against the side of my chair, which is how I control my chair. So I'm spinning in circles, having a spasm because of some mosquitoes on my face, and I can't get it off. That is a weird feeling. I have to wait for someone to get me up now, for a guy that got up in the middle of the night, and I if I woke up, if I couldn't sleep, I'd just go work or I'd go work out or go for a run. Now I'll wake up and I just lay there, and you just wait till the morning comes and somebody comes and gets you up. It's a different, very humbling. It puts you in a situation that you not only have never wanted to be in, but uh you have to learn that sometimes the greatest thing you can do, for instance, with my wife, the greatest thing I can do to love her. And to care for her is to not be high maintenance. So I had to learn, you know what? It's just okay to be uncomfortable. She doesn't have to adjust me every time I'm uncomfortable. She doesn't have to always scratch my face. And so I had to learn to not always be bugging her to do something for me. And it's a challenge because you don't realize just how selfish you are and and how learning to love someone that way. Because she has loved me. And I don't want to say by staying with me as if that's a self-pity thing. I say now there's no joke in it, there's no, again, self-deprecation in it. When I said for better or for worse, I really hope I meant it. But I know she meant it. Because she lives it every day. Learning that had that loss of that independence, she would say I haven't lost as much as I think I have. Somebody asked her, so well, can he drive? She said, Oh yeah. Well, how does he do that? Oh, he just talks to me from the back. So apparently I'm still a back seat driver because no one can drive as good as I can. And anyone that's driven with me knows I'm probably the best driver they've ever been with. And I let people on the road know that. So when you are the smartest person in the room and the other guy that thinks he is just irritates you, then you're constantly learning to humble yourself, stay quiet, to let others rise to the top. I was the guy that would walk in and immediately took charge of a room. You've been around me. And now I have to be that guy that can still serve by leading, but also I'm often having to ask somebody to wipe my nose, or could you please push me over? I've fallen over, I can't seem to get up. And that that's a humbling thing. So I'm grateful that the grace of God has allowed me to steward that better and better.

SPEAKER_04 24:13

You know, I'm thinking we're so thankful for Hazel. She's a beach babe, and so she's off at the beach right now, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:21

She is, actually. I've got a 15-year-old granddaughter who I I got so tickled one time. I was talking with a bunch of old guys. In fact, it was actually at your daddy's old church, first Bradley Sbrandon. And I met him up there, and I mean all these guys were, you know, septugenarians and up. And they were talking about grandchildren. And one asked the other, said, Do you have a favorite grandchild? They were, you know, that yeah, we're just talking and chatting. And one of them said, No, I don't have a great favorite grandchild. I do have some grandchildren that like me better. I thought, that's true. I love all my grandchildren the same, but some of them just love being with me. Absolutely. This 15-year-old granddaughter, her mom has been taking her on vacation every year since she's been by I've been taking her since she was born. But this year she didn't want to go with her mom. She wanted Nani to take her. And so Nani jumped at that. So they flew out yesterday and they're on the beach at Clearwater, and I got them a condominium right there, and they're just me and beach bums. That's where she was raised, Clearwater Beach. When I met her, she had one sundress, 501 blue jeans, and the rest were just shorts. She is a beach bum, but I'm glad that she's down there and I do everything I can to get her

The Hidden Weight On Caregivers

SPEAKER_02 25:35

down there. One of the arguments we have is that I say that as a caregiver, I think she has it harder than I do. And we argue about that very seriously. She said, I just don't think so. I said, Honey, I absolutely know that it's harder on you as a caregiver than it is on me as the disabled person. And so I know for people who care for others, it's a challenge. People look at me, they see my challenge. When they look at her, they don't see her challenge. They praise her for her strength, but don't know how many times that she's had to adjust her dreams. We were going to retire to the beach in South Florida. Now we have to move somewhere that I can make sure I get care. I am so grateful that she has never punished me for that. She's never made me feel badly about it. She and I have to have hard conversations. They're not always easy. We have to look at each other and remind each other of what's important. I'm very grateful that she could get down there and be refreshed. She called me this morning with her toes in the sand and sitting out on the beach reading, and the granddaughter had slept in, and I think she was a little grateful for that so that she could just have some time watching the sun come up.

SPEAKER_04 26:55

But we want to say shout out to caregivers because you truly are a blessing, and we want to encourage you that we know your struggle and we appreciate that. We want to say how much we appreciate Hazel, but so many people that care every day for Phelps.

Relationships Make Life Run Smoothly

SPEAKER_04 27:13

I tell you, Dan, we've got lots to talk about, but we have used our 30 minutes. Give us one message as we close.

SPEAKER_02 27:21

I do a presentation for I'm still fortunate to be able to share my story and give presentations. I think one of my five points, probably my favorite, is this relationships are the WD-40 of life. Anyone who's grown up in Texas, and I think it's probably true of Mississippi. I'm from Texas, you're primarily a Mississippi girl. We grew up with two things in our house. Every house had it. W D forty and it had what? Duct tape. Every house had duct tape. If it were loose, you taped it. If it were stuck, you sprayed it, and you could make anything last forever. WD-40 didn't make anything. It just took what had been made and helped it run more smoothly. I think if I've learned anything through this experience is the absolute invaluable role relationships play in your life. If it hadn't been for my wife, my children, my dad, I just buried my mom and my dad at eighty-five would just sit in that room and pray for me for the three weeks I was in ICU. My friends who would fly in to visit me. I had friends that flew in from all over the world. I had one guy fly in, one of my best friends, he named his son after me. And uh they only allowed two people in the room at a time. I was in the Gabby Gifford room in the Houston Medical Center and the trauma center there, the same room they took her to. They only let two people in at a time and they came out and they saw four something. They said, We didn't know you were here. He said, Yeah, I flew in. I was just sitting down here. Well, here, take one of our tickets and go in and see him. And he said, No, no, no, you all need to be in there. You're his family. Just tell him I'm here, and that will be enough. He flew all the way there just to let me know he was there. He didn't have to come in and prove anything. And he was exactly right. You value that. You look at that and you say, You can't buy that. One reason I work so hard with my caregivers, with the people that I hang out with, to treat them kindly, is I hope it's not a selfish motive, but it's to simply say people matter. And the when you're fortunate enough to have someone care for you, then I want them to feel the value that I have for them. They don't owe me anything, and their willingness to serve, even if I'm paying them, it's not an easy job. So relationships are important. That wife, that husband, that child, that grandchild, that friend, that neighbor, cultivate and value that relationship.

SPEAKER_04 29:57

That is very meaningful. And even as we close today, think about that. Think about how you can have a relationship with someone and be that person for them, but also value the people around you.

SPEAKER_02 30:11

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's no greater gift I think we give than give our attention to those that are around us.

SPEAKER_04 30:20

Dan, I'm so blessed to call you friend, and I thank you for spending this time with us to tune in again because you're gonna hear lots more stories of Hope Mississippi and how people flight bands are spreading hope all across our state. Have a great day. Thank you for joining us.