Disability Talks: Don't Dis My Ability

Two Blind Brothers: Turning Their Disability Into a Million Dollar Idea That Gives Back

Abilities in Motion Season 2 Episode 12

Having a disability is never the end of the world, in fact for Bryan and Bradford Manning, it was just the beginning. Being diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease at a young age built resilience and gave them the skills for problem-solving sooner than their peers. In this week’s episode, the Manning brothers talk about a one in a million-shopping trip that sparked the idea of consumer’s shopping blind and how Sir Richard Branson got involved to promote their mission.

 To find out more about our guest, visit these links:
Website: https://twoblindbrothers.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/twoblindbros/
Twitter:   https://twitter.com/twoblindbros?lang=en
Instagram:    https://www.instagram.com/twoblindbrothers/?hl=en

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Intro:

Welcome to DisAbility Talks, a podcast produced by Abilities in Motion. I'm your host, Shelly Houser. Join us for real conversations and no nonsense talk from everyday people with disabilities. Living their most independent everyday lives. Tune in for the latest news surrounding disability, accessibility, and independence, where conversations aren't dissed and stories that need to be told aren't missed. So let's talk.

Shelly:

Welcome back to DisAbilityTalks. I'm your host Shelly Houser. My guest today asks you if you would shop on their online clothing store blind? Yes. You heard me right. Bryan and Bradford Manning from the clothing company, Two Blind Brothers invite all of their guests to shop blind and experience their rare degenerative eye disease. And today they're here to tell us more about it. Good morning, gentlemen. Welcome to the show.

Bryan & Bradford:

Good morning. Good morning. Thanks so much for having us.

Shelly:

So one of you is in New York and one of you is in Virginia today?

Bryan:

That's correct, Bryan, this, this lovely voice you're hearing right now is in central Virginia. And Brad is up in New York City.

Shelly:

Who's older?

Bradford:

I'm older. U m, and some say smarter, but that's mostly just me who says that.

Bryan:

And frankly, I know the listeners are only listening, but if they could see they would, they would know very quickly

Shelly:

One is older and wiser and one is younger and more handsome.

Bryan:

That's what we like to go with.

Bradford:

Well, one is definitely younger. That is for sure.(laughter)

Shelly:

Okay. Tell our listeners, what exactly this eye disability is and how it affects you guys.

Bradford:

Sure, I'll go first. So this is Brad and, u m, basically Bryan and I have an eye condition called Stargardt's disease. And what it is is it's a juvenile form of macular degeneration where you lose a lot of your center vision over time. Many people with Stargardt's disease will keep a lot of their peripheral vision, but it is scary in the sense that it can have a variety of outcomes. You don't know how quickly or how dramatically you lose your vision. We were both, u m, d iagnosed. Uh, I was diagnosed at the age of seven. Bryan was diagnosed at the age of five, on five years older than Brian, but this is something that we've lived with our entire lives. But one of the things that we like to just say up front i s that we were very, very fortunate that we had great parents. And the fact of the matter is, is when you are young and yo u're h ave a unique challenge, you don't have the perspective or life experience to really pass judgment on yourself. You get your cues on how to frame it from your environment and your parents. And we were very lucky that they taught us at an early age, that this was never going to define our lives. This was going to be a challenge, like many challenges that everybody has and, you know, we we re g o ing t o m ove forward despite it.

Shelly:

Brian, what are your thoughts on having this eye disease?

Bryan:

Well, you know, it's such a, wow early for the challenging questions! I thought we would softball o r s low roll ourselves into this.

Shelly :

No I'm going to hit, hit you hard right away.

Bryan:

Having the eye disease, as Brad said at an early age was really interesting. Cause we, you know, as he said, have great parents who just like who do drill this message into us, that it wasn't an excuse. It was another problem. Like any others, people face challenges every single day. And this is your challenge and you're going to get past it. You're going to get over it. You're going to be better because of it. And you know, growing up with it, especially because it's a degenerative disease, you know, month to month, year to year, the problems get really different. You know, as you are getting older in elementary school, it starts with not being able to see the chalkboard. And maybe some kids are a little mean, but elementary school kids are not exactly bullies quite yet. And then you get into middle school and it gets even harder because a lot more is happening on the board.Kids get a little bit crueler and then in high school, your vision is getting even worse than now. You set a reading 12 point font. You can't read really any fonts. And it's just how your, the books you read, the education you get all gets more challenging socially you're meeting more people. And so the, the problems kept evolving. But one really fascinating thing if you're willing to lean into that challenge is it's like putting on a weight vest every single day with no days off, because yesterday's thing that you solve, you did it, you got past it. Okay, new problem today, are you going to be able to solve it? And you're going to be able to get past it. And that mentality actually is just so beneficial. And some people don't get to start experiencing that until their twenties or thirties even. And, you know, we felt at some level we got a head start on resilience on authenticity, on, you know, overcoming obstacles, which frankly is one of the best benefits you could have in your life.

Shelly :

So yeah, I think your parents letting you figure out the world around you and supporting you and advocating and empowering, you guys was the best thing a parent could do for their child. Is this a genetic situation that may be one of your parents or grandparents carried the gene for this?

Bradford:

It's a recessive gene. So no identifiable family members that have Stargardt's disease, but for us, Bryan and I to have it, both of our parents had to be carriers of that recessive gene.

Shelly :

Okay, All Right. Interesting. So what does science know about this disease right now?

Bradford:

So what it knows about our specific disease is it knows the gene, the eight it's called the ABC four gene. And if anybody who pays attention to medicine, you know, that they'll know that we're sort of living through a medical revolution as it relates to many conditions, but especially therapy such as gene therapy, stem cell therapies, Opta, genetics, gene editing. And so one of the great breakthroughs recently in this particular area is with a condition called Leber's congenital amaurosis, which is a rare form of blindness, uh, specifically on the what's called the RPE 65 gene. And there is now a commercially available therapy called Luxturna. That is a gene therapy that reversus that condition. And that was a huge success for this particular industry. The industry have inherited retinal eye disease, and it was actually the one of the first gene therapies for an inherited disease period. But the fact of the matter is, is when, you know, 20 years ago there was maybe one clinical trial looking at one form of retinal eye disease. Now there's over 30 clinical trials right now looking at this. So, so there are a variety of kind of new techniques that, u m, researchers are looking at to make that happen. And I c an talk about those a little bit, but it's a very, very, very exciting time for the science related to these types of conditions.

Shelly:

Bryan, were you going to add anything to that?

Bryan:

No you already did a great job.

Shelly:

He wrapped It all up, such a good big brother. He's got you!

Bryan:

Just, just, it was like poetry.

Shelly:

He just rolled off his tongue. Like he just knew exactly what he was saying.

Bryan:

You know? And the, and the notes, you couldn't even see him reading off his hand. I, you know, it was really a good job.

Shelly:

So Bryan, why did you want to start this company? You guys could do anything you wanted to do in life. Why start a clothing company?

Bryan:

Basically, We were talking six years ago about the scientific breakthroughs and it was just unbelievable because that gene that Luxturna gene therapy Brad was talking about what was made because a little donation back in 1996 by the foundation fighting blindness to this absolute rock star researcher. And so Brad and I were walking around New York and we walked into a Bloomingdale's of all places. And if you ever been with somebody, when they are visually impaired in their shopping, it's a nightmare. We first off, we lose everybody. As soon as we walk into anywhere. Then we, because we can't see the prices, can't see the sizes, can't see the brand or whatever we walk by. And we feel everything. We touch everything like we're five years old, not super COVID friendly, but you know, this was before then when you find something that you like, the feel that feels quality, you pull it off the rack, you take the picture, you do all the investigative research to see if you want to buy it. After, you know, 45 minutes later, Brad and I meet outside and we both r each into our bag and pull out the exact same shirt. And this, this just like, you know, one in a million chance. And then we got to thinking, because it felt good. It felt so soft. It was such a comfortable feeling s ure that we both happened to have p assed it. But then we had this kind of light bulb moment. Could we make clothing based entirely around this sense of touch? This softness, this comfort, this luxury, and then give a hundred percent of the profits back to retinal researchers working on a cure for blindness. And that was kind of the first day that the idea of Two Blind Brothers was born.

Shelly:

Yeah. What kind of adaptive equipment do you guys need to use if any, to get through your day to day choice-making and working and running a company?

Bradford:

So really specifically, we use a lot of the native accessibility features on Apple products. So on our phones, we'll use triple tap zoom. We'll use speech to text, text to speech on occasion, we'll use voiceover, we have some vision. So, you know, being able to read large print or zoom in on things is very valuable to us. If we get to a restaurant and we haven't looked up the menu beforehand, we'll take a picture of the menu and zoom in on it, on our Macs. We'll use a lot of the same sort of text to speech, speech to text. And, and that's really been mostly it one of the things that we do talk a bit about is one of the great tools that we often don't really think of it as a tool is the ability to trust and leverage people around us. So if I'm in a restaurant, I don't want to kind of go through all the work of trying to read a menu. That's tough to see. I can ask the waiter or the person next to me for a recommendation. And this actually was the quote tool that inspired, you know, what is now kind of the main experience on our website, which is the shop blind challenge.

Shelly:

Bryan, tell us what that shop blind challenge is to our listeners.

Bryan:

It's the most fun thing on the internet. It's the greatest way to shop in human history. Uh, so Brad and I, as Brad just mentioned, you know, this trust aspect of being visually impaired is absolutely vital. It's one of the best skills that you have in your, in your toolkit. And so we had this goofy concept, I'll give Brad some credit. He said,

Bradford:

This is the nicest he's ever been to me on a podcast! He must have done something wrong or like, or I'm not sure, but we're going to find out,

Bryan:

Just don't check your email for like a day. That would really kind of, u h, that would be that'd be better. Y eah. Well,

Bradford:

Well, we j oked that the toughest part about Two Blind Brothers is not the two or the blind. It's, it's the third one.

Bryan:

Um, so,You know, we wanted to create this idea or this concept or this experience around trust. And so what we did is we took our whole website, all of the beautiful imagery with the professional advice on how to make it, you know, delightful. It was, I took it all away and we had just a page with four price points and a question, will you trust us? Will you shop blind? Why will you buy something you cannot see? And what happened was absolutely astounding. We thought that we would get, you know, be a nice media moment, something to talk about, you know, on a podcast or in an interview. But what actually occurred was people adored the experience. They had so much fun. They had such a good time. They got to experience something. They often don't. They got to step into the shoes and at least a facsimile to, to understand and people just do unboxing. They'll do they'll shop blind. And then they'll, they'll put out a video and the abject terror you're in for the first 10 seconds as they're opening the package, because all you want to do, you put so much love and care and heart and soul into these products. And you're like, please love it, please. God love this thing. And when they open it and the smile goes across their face and they explain the story and they just have a fun, great experience and get a product, they love it just, it warms your heart in ways. I, I really can't even explain.

Shelly:

I liked the one video of a dad with his two young daughters and he's explaining what the whole concept is and the girls, they get it. You could see they're interested and that they buy into it. And they appreciate that moment. So, um, tell us about your design process and how you choose colors schemes.

Bradford:

So it's funny because Bryan and I had no experience in this prior to starting the project. And so we were very, very reliant on initially some of our friends who work in fashion as buyers and designers here in New York, and then actually my sister-in-law, Bryan's wife Cort actually joined the company. And so she was really critical. And so basically we've been able to benefit from people who have kind of helped us out Dallas Lighthouse for the Blind. After we were on the Ellen DeGeneres show, uh, Dallas Lighthouse found us and they had sort of a, a small, um, apparel manufacturing part of their business, which was being operated by blind and visually impaired workers. And so we benefited a lot from this early education, um, from, from some of these sort of mentors and friends, and that's kind of how we've approached it now. And then you, you learn some things along the way, like, you know, most of your sales are gonna come from predictable colors. Um, and you just sort of figure it out as you go.

Shelly:

Is there like the color schemes are the warmer, darker, more muted, colors, easier on your vision, or it doesn't really matter?

Bradford:

You know, a lot of people with Stargardt's disease have pretty terrible, uh, color vision. Our color vision is fine with a lot of this stuff in particular, you know, fine. Bryan and I, well sort of get advice from the team, but a lot of our existing styles are sort of informed from, uh, the perspective of kind of what sells and what the customers want. And so we've sort of when we first started, we did some crazy, crazy colors, and that's probably why we were a little less successful on the first six months that we launched. But through the interaction with the customers and feedback and from the, our professional friends, we've gotten better at it.

Shelly:

Tell us what it was like, when were you on the Ellen show?

Bryan:

On January 4th, 2017?

Shelly:

And what did, how did that change? You know, what was the experience and how did that change your business?

Bryan:

Funny note was Brad and I were starting to get little media moments, right? You know, Fox five chasing news. And we actually thought, oh my God, biggest, biggest market in the world. You know, what does it mean? Amazing champagne and sailboats. And that was probably two months into our project launching. And then we, you know, did a few more media moments. I'm like, oh my God, they're getting bigger. This is crazy. Yada, yada, yada. And then nothing really came of any of them, except one, the producer from the Ellen DeGeneres show saw us on this program, Now This. And Brad and I, for all of these would just kind of call in sick to work. So the Ellen producer, we set up this call to talk to the producer, like 3:00 PM on a Tuesday and I get home. So he had a beautiful mind style f low c hart. I l ook at this thing and I go, I don't even know what are you going t o, what is this going to turn into? I was like, a ll r ight, you know what? I'm going to go.

Bradford:

It wasn't like some, it wasn't like some psychotic, beautiful mind flow chart. It was just, it was a, it was a flow chart that handled the inevitable challenges of an introductory call with, uh, with an important, uh, media opportunity for us. But the reason we got on that show is because of Bryan, when coordinate the producer at the time, uh, like was asking us our first question. I was ready to dive into the project flow chart. And Bryan[inaudible], Courtney says, "Hey guys, it's Cort, it's me, the producer from the Ellen show. How are you doing today?" Bryan yells over my shoulder into the phone. He goes, "Courtney it's sweater, weather in New York city. Those bad boys went away last May. Now it's October. And I've never felt better in my entire life, Amen." And I'm like, I'm kinda like confused. And now this phone has gone silent, but she was actually, actually laughing. And so I just thought Bryan sort of handle the conversation from there. And they said, oh, you'd be perfect. We'd love to have you on the show.

Bryan:

It's very few things can stand up against the sweater, weather comment. And the flow chart was not one of them.(laughter) So, you know, we ended up getting to go out to, uh, out to California. We're in LA there, we're all kind of sitting in the green room backstage, terrified. You're about to walk out in front of 6 million people on like the biggest daytime television show in history. And you just, you feel out early unprepared. We've been in business for six months,

Shelly:

But didn't Bradford bring his flowchart?

Bryan:

I, he actually, they weirdly oddly...

Bradford:

They wouldn't let me bring it out onto the couch.

Bryan:

But so it's actually kind of funny that this has been kind of a theme of our whole project is my wife had had a great little line right before the whole thing happened. She goes, it doesn't matter how well or poorly it goes. You guys are doing this together and we'll always have the memory. And we get out, Interview goes great. We're having a ball. You know, we won, I barely remember any event that I kind of blacked out for a second and, you know, we get backstage and then it records the day before, and then it airs. And one kind of end of the story personally and then we can get into the business. I had to walk back into my office, the, the company that had been employing me.

Shelly:

Oh No!

Bryan:

And say on January 5th, after this has been, and I'm, I'm watching them, like I'm getting fired, like today is the last day I worked here, like no big deal! And I had told my boss and my boss's boss beforehand, but you know, they weren't the, you know, anyways, I get called into i t. I get called into my boss's office. H ere's f rom my wife showed me a really funny clip of you yesterday.(laughter) No, i t was like, y ep, totally understand. He goes, you been going to d octor's appointments have you? I go, Nope. He goes, how about we just strip a bunch of, u h, PTO away and we call it even? I go, that is a great deal for me. I am a thousand percent in. I w alked back to my desk and got right back to w ork. And then from the business perspective, I mean, we had sold 300 shirts before we went on this show and it absolutely catapulted our brand into just a 100% different stratosphere than we ever thought it would even get to. It was so outstanding because, a nd B rad can talk about this afterwards, but the community we got to meet of blind and visually impaired people, you know, o rganizations like Dallas Lighthouse as Brad said to help with production and just the sweet, kind, thoughtful, and loving messages we r eceived w ere enough to melt your heart.

Shelly:

Brad, Did you have the same experience being on the show? Would you do it again?

Bradford:

Yeah, it was, it was scary. I mean, one thing that we had to decide early on is that we, we never really cared about where the business was going to end up from a scale or a size perspective. The reason we started it was to have fun and to do something nice for the foundation fighting blindness. If we were ever going to enjoy doing this, which was the, one of the core things for us, this had to be very authentically us. And so that actually took a lot of, some of the pressure off where it was like, look, we're going to get out there and we're just going to speak from the heart. And no matter what comes out, that is what the brand is. You know, we never had a position ourselves or, or, or be something that we weren't. And that's one thing I think it helped us. Yeah.

Shelly :

Well with that, I think we're going to take a break and we'll be back with the Manning brothers from Two Blind Brothers.

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Shelly:

And we're back with Bradford and Brian Manning from Two Blind Brothers. Well, we ended with you guys being on the Ellen show, but you've also been featured in Associated Press and People Magazine, NBC and other places, and even Lester Holt had you on a feature piece. And then the one thing I found was really interesting on Bryan literally gave the shirt off your back to sir Richard Branson. Was that you, or was that Bradford?

Bryan:

That was Bradford.

Shelly:

How did that moment ever happen?

Bradford:

So Richard Branson is a very special guy and you know, he's been sort of a idol and I had the chance to meet him originally through a work colleague. And so I'm at a lunch that Richard Branson is sitting at the lunch. And, um, I want to talk to him so bad that my friend who was sitting next to me said, you know, if you want to ask him about Two Blind Brothers, just go up to him and ask him if you can get his quick advice on something. I was like, oh, that's a kind of a good way to approach it. And so I went up to him and said, Hey, you know, Sir Richard, uh, I wanted get your, your advice on something. My brother and I are working on. I gave him sort of the quick story and you know, his advice. He's like, look, you guys have a great story you need to do. He's like just, you know, try to get as much publicity and intention and get people to endorse it as much as possible. And I said, well, on that note, um, you know, I would love to take a photo with you. And he goes, I, he goes, I'll do one better. He goes, why don't I get rid of this shirt and I'll wear your shirt? And I said, okay, cool. So our friend took a video and we swap shirts there. I was, of course, extremely nervous.

Shelly:

Did he keep the shirt?

Bradford:

Yeah, he kept it. And not only that, he actually had us produce, I guess, most of the shirts for his guests when they come to Necker island. So we have our shirts in his, uh, in his store down there, which was a very generous thing for him to do for us.

Shelly:

That's really cool. So who would be your next big idol? Go-to to kind of put the shirt on their back?

Bradford:

Oh, there was Ellen, Richard, and then there was you!

Shelly :

Of course.

Bradford:

And then nobody, there is nobody really after, after that, but, you know, but you know, there's a lot of people that we look up to, you know, Blake Mycoskie of Tom's shoes, he's somebody, we would love to spend more time with the folks at Bombas socks, uh, sort of a socially entrepreneur. There's a small world of change-makers in this space. And what's so cool about it is they all come to it from their own personal perspective.

Shelly :

Good. So you guys had an interesting quote on your Facebook page not long ago. And I wanted to ask you what this meant to each of you separately. The quote was,"Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision."

Bryan:

MMMM

Shelly:

Yeah. I thought that was a really great piece that I wanted to bring up. What is each of your visions for the company moving forward?

Bryan:

You know, I would say it's threefold one, you know, we want to keep growing, right? We want to keep getting bigger. We want to keep selling more shirts, get more products, more people's hands so that we can make larger donations. Two, is we want to keep surprising and delighting customers. I mean, the people that come to Two Blind Brothers are putting a lot of faith and trust in us. And when we get to see one of our shirts on somebody on the street, it's like the greatest moment you could possibly have. And then three would be the community, this visually impaired community. They're the greatest people in the world. They're, they're the most loving, caring people, but there's a great community. And Brad and I feel so fortunate because we get to go back in time and give the advice that we wish we heard when we're 14 or when we're seven. You know, that ability is just unbelievable. So we spent as much time as we can doing that, and we want to keep doing that. And then, you know, kind of four- raise awareness for, you know, kind of the visually impaired and blind spectrum, you know, raising awareness and empowering, you know, people who have it to do better. And that kind of, that would be the, the big pillars of what I would hope for.

Shelly:

B radford. What are your thoughts on that?

Bradford:

Well, you know, kind of an interesting aspect of Two Blind Brothers is this, this was really started as, as, as, you know, a hundred percent charitable project. And, and so one of the things, and with the intention of it always being something that Bryan and I, you know, uh, have a lot of fun with. So as long as we're satisfying our mission of helping the foundation fighting minus and donating money to cures, to research, and we're having fun, we're achieving our goals. And so what we sort of think about is sort of what are our priorities are. So I, in addition to what Bryan said, you know, we are looking at a, um, we're looking at a subscription, um, and we're working on, um, partnerships. We're also looking at ways to partner with, uh, in places where we actually can have a more direct, uh, impact related to eye health. And then, you know, what we have a s our story and our cause. And that is something that we're advocates for that next, you know, really cool cause driven, y ou k now, apparel company or you tuber, whatever that product is that that actually has a very tight community and specific mission around it.

Shelly:

Bradford, what would you say to a 14 year old you and has a vision or a dream of starting a business?

Bradford:

Three things that are critical. One is to get educated and find as many resources that can help you understand diagnosed and just provide perspective on your specific problem. So number two is to, find great mentors. There are a lot of people who have just gone through that successfully. Don't waste your time, figuring it out, just talk to those people that have done it. And then the third thing, and this is really true, is that the most defining factor between somebody who's gonna kind of be longterm hurt by their disability or their challenge or their recent tragedy and a person who's going to actually become stronger because of it is small step of being willing to embrace discomfort. And never losing the spirit of being willing to push your comfort zones as long as you actually demand of yourself to put yourself in that uncomfortable situation. I

Shelly :

I absolutely agree. I think we have to tell ourselves as the best story of ourselves and who we are in every chapter of our lives.

Bryan:

Yeah, totally.

Bradford:

You know, you don't, you don't want your physical limitation or impairment to become a psychological one. That's the thing that matter. We live in a world with so much technology and so much opportunity that these things that, you know, maybe a hundred years ago would kind of preclude you from the workforce. That is not the case anymore. The big risk with a lot of these conditions, not all, but with most of these conditions, the big risk is that you think that you are less than because if that's the case, then, then you've already lost the war. That the fact of the matter is if you can just get up every day, embrace something that makes you feel a little uncomfortable over a period of time, you are going to unlock so much potential.

Shelly :

So one last question for both of you, where can I listeners find Two Blind Brothers and shop on your social media or connect with you guys on social media?

Bryan:

Yeah. So it on, if you want to find us online, our website is two blind B L I N D brothers.com. And we're the same on all social channels, Instagram, Facebook, Tik, TOK, YouTube, and we try and put out as much content as we can to empower uplift and inform.

Shelly :

All right. And with that, I'm going to say, thank you so much to Bradford and Bryan for being on the show today, guys, I really appreciate your time.

Bryan and Bradford:

Thank you. Thank you for having us. We appreciate it.

Shelly:

Absolutely. And to all of our listeners, whether you're here in the states or in Australia or Europe, we suggest go shop blind. And with that, I'm going to say thanks to our listeners for listening, please hit that like and subscribe button. So you never miss an episode of DisAbility Talks.

Music:

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Outro:

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