Meet Jason Dennen | Author and Inspirational Speaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jason Dennen and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jason, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Before I became an author and inspirational public speaker I was a trauma patient in the Intensive Care Unit of a hospital fighting desperately for my survival while being trapped in a coma for 8 days.

When I woke up in that hospital bed, it had been over a week since I had jumped out of a plane, violently thrown by the wind, and crashed through a fence, hitting so hard I ripped through the three wire strands of a cattle fence —all before colliding with impact with an exterior metal wall of an airplane hangar at over 30 miles per hour head on. I hit my ribcage so hard that 10 ribs snapped on the left and one on the right. The impact was so great when my ribs snapped, they slammed into my heart so violently that my heart exploded out of where it normally sits onto the other side of my chest. Neither my own surgeon or any other surgeon in the hospital had ever seen a patient in similar condition make it to the operating room alive. I had to have multiple surgeries, with operations to repair my collapsed lungs, spleen laceration, fractured L5 vertebrae, and ruptured diaphragm on top of a concussion. My colon had to be moved back into place. My left femur, pelvis, right wrist, and left elbow had all endured massive fractures. It would be more than 14 weeks before I was allowed to leave the hospital.

Life had looked a lot different before the accident. Raised on the East Coast, I grew up with four siblings and spent my childhood in the familiar suburbs of New Jersey. After graduating from college in 1998, I entered the workforce with a nagging sense that I wasn’t where I needed to be. I worried that I might never leave New Jersey if I didn’t pursue my own wanderlust and start exploring now. Sick of the traffic and overpopulation, I quit my job and moved to Colorado, where I didn’t know a living soul. On the weekends, I embraced my surroundings, climbing, running, and competing in races and Ironman triathlons. During the week, I devoted most of my waking hours to my work in financial services. My determination and ambition earned me a coveted promotion at the office, but success came at a cost. Soon, I was logging 70-hour workweeks.

My life was becoming a series of oppressive deadlines and seemingly uncontrollable stress. I was headed for an early heart attack as I transitioned from being in the top 1% of fittest people on earth to getting blood work done and finding out I had prehypertension and pre-Diabetes. I could no longer find the time to train for races or climb on the weekends. Desperate for a release, I considered how else I might challenge himself. I needed to find something I was passionate about that helped relieve stress and didn’t require as much time and energy as training for races, as I no longer had that luxury. I found it thousands of feet in the air, jumping out of planes. With my parachute on my back, my mind settled. The stakes gave me the sense of calm I was after, freeing me from more quotidian worries. It’s hard to fret about a 401(k) in freefall! Little did I know that my newfound habit would soon give me no choice but to be present. I had to remain in the moment and focused. This time, on survival.

In June 2018, I prepared for a weekend jump. The flight up had proceeded without incident. My parachute inflated as usual. But in the last few seconds before I landed, a freak gust of wind hurled me violently towards a fence and building at dangerous speeds. The accident itself is a blur, but I remember a brief moment in the helicopter that ferried me toward the nearest trauma center. I could hear the rotor blades above me. At least for that moment, I knew I was still alive.

At the hospital and in the coma in which doctors placed me in an attempt to help me survive, I was in a world of uncertainty with no assurance of survival. I had horrific nightmares, imagining myself in situations where people abandoned me and left me for dead. Doubts crept in. How was he going to survive? With all of my resolve, I vowed to fight.

I battled panic attacks and brusque doctors in the hospital after I was brought out of the coma. One said I wouldn’t walk for at least six months. Another suggested I might never run again. A team of therapists even told me there was no way I could walk out of the hospital on my own and would need a wheelchair. My prospects seemed dire. It was a visit from my sister that prompted my eventual revelation: I had survived for a reason. Now I had to consider what I wanted to do with a second shot at life.

As my mind cleared, I started to notice something, even from within the isolating confines of his hospital bed. The more I recounted my ordeal, the more other people opened up to me—not just friends, but hospital staff and medical professionals. Nurses confided their doubts—the nagging regrets that kept them up at night. Doctors confessed their own fears and talked about their families. So did ambulance drivers and fellow patients. I was sharing doubts and insecurities with people that I would not have shared prior to the accident. I was more open to expressing my feelings than before. I was delving deep. Sometimes, the frequent retelling triggered my PTSD, but the reaction that it provoked in others was undeniable. As I shared, people offered up their own struggles. It struck me that I could now connect to people to an extent I had never been able to. I realized I was given a gift – a gift that allowed me to connect to others in a way I had not been able to before. Going through the most difficult circumstances in my own life allowed me to connect to others going through difficult challenges in their own lives.

The accident had almost killed me. That much was obvious. But it had also granted me a perspective that too few people in life get: the chance to change my life before it was too late.

Rehabilitation took 11 months, I beat doctors’ predictions, walking in just three months and going back to work five months ahead of schedule. One year after the accident (364 days, to be exact), I raced in a triathlon because my doctor said I wouldn’t be able to, and I wasn’t going to accept limits that others were trying to place on me. Later that summer, I completed two more.

I have tied my own personal narrative of hardship to a greater purpose. My mission is now to impart the hard-won wisdom that the accident gave me to help others live lives of meaning, compassion, and conviction.

In 2022, I released 8 Days Till Sunrise: A True Story of Survival, Rebirth and Discovering My Purpose in Life. On the speaking circuit, I am regularly asked to talk about healing and recovery, my enduring faith, overcoming adversity and the power of connection. For individuals and couples, for men and women, for those just starting out in their professional lives and those reflecting on decades of experience, my introspection resonates. My ordeal forced me to ask the questions that most are too scared to contemplate: What does it mean to live a good life? What is the value of true connection? Which pursuits leave us feeling hollow? And which imbue our lives with meaning?

During my speaking engagements I share more than my hard-earned answers. I help facilitate a conversation that helps audiences find their own.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am on a mission to inspire people by sharing my story of survival and to empower people to get through life’s most difficult hardships by utilizing the lessons they have already learned throughout their lives and by taking advantage of the strength they already possess inside themselves.

When I wasn’t sure if it was possible to recover from all my injuries I used these 5 guiding principals to overcome my challenges and I continue to use them today when I am facing adversity.

1. Never accept limits other people try to place on you

2. Everyday find a way to make a small improvement as small improvements everyday make for huge improvements
over time

3. Test yourself often

4. Build a strong foundation and it will guide you through the storm

5. Fear can either protect you or hold you back from things you are capable of accomplishing

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
The best way to show my friend what Colorado is all about is to give my friend the gift of a sunrise, a sunset and a full view of the stars all from the backcountry. We are going to explore the Wheeler Geologic Area outside of the small mining town of Creede, Colorado. The drive from the airport takes 6 hours crossing over mountain passes and through beautiful forest land. We park at the end of a dirt road. We pull on our backpacks and start our hike over the rolling hills that leads us to a higher elevation. The trail disappears in some areas as we walk through the forest and we navigate by compass until after 5 hours of hiking we get our first view of the Volcanic Rock formation which sits on top of a mountain. The rock formation appears to be completely out of place on the side of the mountain We set up our camp in the valley and proceed to hike the trail up to the rock formations and stare at the hoodoo rock formations. We return to the valley in time to see the sun slowly descending behind the rock walls to the west. The last rays of light disappear behind the rocks as the temperature quickly plummets. The valley is dead silent except for a few birds chirping. Instead of sleeping in the tent we lay down in our sleeping bags on the grass so we can have a better view of the night sky. We are miles from any human created light source so the number of stars we can see is beyond description. It is like seeing the night sky for the first time as the difference between viewing the sky in the city and viewing the sky in the wild is incomparable. Every few hours we wake up and stare at the stars until we doze off again. We wake up just before daybreak. Slowly the sun creeps over the volcanic rock formation slowly illuminating the rocks as the sun climbs higher and higher into the sky until the sun finally hits us directly and the temperature warms from a chilly 32 degrees to 60 degrees within an hour. We enjoy our breakfast as the valley comes alive with squirrels scrambling up trees, birds chirping and flying from branch to branch and a deer in the distance slowly checking their surroundings as it climbs onto a plateau in the middle of the valley. Within two hours of enjoying the sun shining down on the valley, storm clouds move in at an alarming rate and rain starts with a few drops and quickly turns into a downpour and we pull on our rain jackets and we take down our tent and pack our backpacks for the walk out. The weather report forecasts two more days of rain. On the way out we smile and talk about how lucky we were to be the only people to see the sunset, sunrise and the amazing stars in this valley over the last two days. Seeing amazing places takes effort but I have never been disappointed by making the extra effort to see and explore another amazing place in Colorado. It is always worth the blisters on my feet, the bruises on my shoulders from the straps of my backpack digging in and the sunburn on the back of my neck from the place where I forgot to apply the sunblock. After getting back to the car we find the nearest local restaurant and food never tastes better than it does after hiking in the rain for 6 hours. On the ride back to the airport the car is quiet. Both of you have shared an experience that can’t be summarized in words as trying to describe it in words would lessen the experience that both of us have just shared.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My physical therapists, nurses, doctors, friends and family were there for me in my darkest hours and helped me through what they called an unsurvivable accident and helped restore my health. They put me back together, they spent hundreds of hours watching over me, they rehabilitated my body and they spent every day with me making sure I had what I needed. I could have never survived or restored my health without all of the people that helped me along my journey.

Website: JasonDennen.com

Instagram: JWDBoulder

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jasondennen

Facebook: facebook.com/jason.dennen.5