Hi there! 👋 Welcome to Lead without Limits, where I share weekly, actionable mini-guides based on real human experience (not theories and platitudes) to help you lead and build teams with more energy, creativity, and trust.
We started this Substack Live with technical difficulties, a fitting metaphor for our theme: disruption to reinvention.
Sometimes things break. Sometimes they break badly. And sometimes, how we respond defines everything that comes next.
My guest, Ron Gold, knows this intimately.
Fourteen years ago, Ron was a managing director at Barclays, building the Asian equity desk in the U.S., living the life he’d planned since college. He was an avid cyclist and triathlete, a husband, and father to three daughters. Then, on a seemingly ordinary Saturday after Thanksgiving, a driver fell asleep at the wheel and changed everything.
Ron woke up from a coma weeks later, paralyzed from the waist down, unable to speak, being told by his neurosurgeon that he would never walk again.
What struck me most when I first met Ron at our Wharton alumni networking group wasn’t his wheelchair. It was his warmth. Here was someone I’d expected to be one of the “sharks” from my Wall Street days, and instead I found someone profoundly human, funny, and present. Someone who had taken unimaginable disruption and somehow found a way forward.
This conversation isn’t about inspiration porn or making lemonade from lemons (Ron hates that phrase, by the way).
It’s about the messy, difficult, year-and-a-half-long process of accepting a new reality. It’s about finding purpose when your planned path disappears. And it’s about discovering that you’re far more powerful than you think—while also learning to accept what simply is.
For leaders navigating any form of disruption (career transitions, health challenges, market upheavals, or personal reinvention), Ron’s story offers something rare: honest wisdom about resilience that doesn’t minimize the pain.
The Weight of “Why Me?”
When Ron came home after five months in hospitals and rehab, his house looked the same. But his study had become his bedroom because he could never climb the stairs to his actual bedroom again. He threw himself into physical recovery with the same intensity he’d brought to Wall Street, but the results weren’t coming. He wasn’t getting back to what he was.
For a year and a half, Ron kept asking, “Why me? Why me? Why me?”
Then his wife, Betsy, who had been “incredibly patient,” finally said: “Enough. Shit happens to people and it happened to you, but you’ve got a family. You’ve got three daughters. They’re growing up. They need you to be a father. I need you to be a husband.”
That moment became Ron’s inflection point.
“All right, I’m just going to run with it,” he told himself. “This isn’t the life I planned. That’s not the life I ever pictured. But it is the life I have. And it’s not over. And there are still things for me to do.”
Notice what Ron says:
“I don’t know that I ever fully accept it, but I did own it.”
There’s profound wisdom in that distinction. Acceptance and ownership aren’t the same thing. You can own your reality, take full responsibility for what comes next, without accepting that it’s okay or fair or what you wanted.
Ownership is about agency.
Acceptance can sometimes feel like surrender.
Your Action:
If you’re in the middle of a disruption that feels unfair or overwhelming, give yourself permission to separate acceptance from ownership.
You don’t have to be okay with what happened.
You don’t have to like it.
But you can still own what you do next.
Ask yourself: What would ownership look like for me right now, even if I’m not ready to accept this?
When the Path You Planned Disappears
Ron had wanted a career on Wall Street since college. He lived it, breathed it, thrived in it.
He was the most senior person on the Asian equity desk at Lehman Brothers when it went under in 2008, already a massive disruption. He navigated that, landing at Barclays with even more responsibility, building out their U.S. sales team for Asian equities, including Japan.
Then the accident. And in 2012, long before work-from-home was standard, Ron realized: “I can’t do this.”
If there had been remote work options, he says, “everything would have been different.”
He could have managed the 2 a.m. calls to Asia. But the daily routine—getting into the office before 7 a.m., traveling to Boston every other week, the whole physical infrastructure of that life—was impossible now.
“Just like my whole routine, everything takes so much longer.”
The career he’d built for decades was gone.
But Ron didn’t stay stuck in that loss. Instead, he found himself exposed to a different problem: the home care system.
When he needed caregivers himself, he was shocked by the limited options. Either expensive agencies that gave you no choice in who showed up, or finding someone on your own, with no way to properly vet them.
“All these marketplace companies were forming, connecting buyers and providers online,” Ron remembered. “And we thought, well, why can’t we do something similar?”
That became Lean On We, a business that has now helped over 2,000 families in the greater New York area get better, more affordable care.
Ron couldn’t go back to Wall Street, but he found a way to have “a big impact on people in a more visceral way than I had previously.”
Your Action:
When your planned path disappears, look for the problems only you can see from your new vantage point.
Ron’s accident gave him lived experience with a broken system.
Your disruption—whatever it is—has likely exposed you to challenges, needs, or opportunities that others can’t see.
What problem are you now uniquely positioned to solve?
The Power of People Who Still See You
One detail from Ron’s story stuck with me: his network didn’t disappear when his mobility did.
In fact, they didn’t just support him, they helped him carve out a new path.
A former client who became president of a liberal arts school in Illinois invited Ron to be their commencement speaker.
Ron’s initial reaction? “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could do that. That’s a lot of work.”
But then he told himself: “If you don’t do it, you’re going to regret it.”
He went. His whole family came. Nearly 2,000 people heard him speak about living forward. “It was such an empowering experience,” he said.
A close childhood friend kept encouraging him to write and speak more:
“People want to hear from you. People are curious. People don’t know what life is like for somebody who’s paralyzed... You’re a manifestation that life isn’t over. And hearing from someone like you can make them think differently about their own challenges.”
These weren’t empty platitudes. These were people who still saw Ron—not as someone broken or diminished, but as someone with something valuable to offer.
They invited him to try something new. They pointed him in different directions. They believed in him when he was still figuring out how to believe in himself.
“I realized that I found writing meaningful,” Ron said, “sharing what I’m going through, partially for myself and partially because I could see that it had an impact on others as well.”
Now Ron is a keynote speaker, has built a growing newsletter, and is in the process of writing his first book. All because the people he impacted in his career and life needed him… in a new way.
Your Action:
Inventory your network not for what people can do for you, but for who still sees you clearly.
Who invites you to stretch?
Who points you toward new possibilities?
Who believes you have value to offer even when you’re not sure yourself?
Reach out to one of those people this week and tell them what their belief in you has meant.
Grit Without Delusion: The G.O.L.D. Standard
Ron has distilled his framework for resilience into something he calls “The New Gold Standard”—a nod both to his last name and his Wall Street career. It stands for:
Grit
Opportunity
Learning
Drive
The model came from what he’s learned since 2012 — since he took ownership of his new life. But what makes Ron’s approach different from typical resilience narratives is his refusal to traffic in false hope.
A couple of years ago, he tried an exoskeleton called ReWalk. Everyone was excited: “You’re going to be able to walk! You’re going to be able to do this and do that!”
But it hurt his shoulder, and more fundamentally, it wasn’t practical. Even in the best case, all it could do was let him walk in a park. “It wouldn’t have changed my life. I couldn’t get in this thing and get in the car and drive somewhere.”
It was like many of the other developments in spinal cord injury research that Ron has monitored. Yes, there have been exciting breakthroughs. But many of them help people with quadriplegia first—those without use of their hands and arms.
“Here I am watching with bated breath these developments, and then it’s a little bit like a mirage. I’m happy for these people who are going to be able to get this, but it’s not going to happen to me.”
There’s internal conflict in that: being genuinely happy for others while accepting that the help isn’t coming for you yet. “I’m disappointed, but I’m happy for people. And I’m just hoping that the next shoe will drop.”
This is the paradox Ron lives:
“I don’t think I have limiting beliefs. But I’m also realistic enough to know that some things aren’t possible.”
I’m consistently in awe of what Ron chooses to accomplish:
He’s run five marathons in a hand cycle.
He drives with hand controls—left thumb for gas, left hand for brake.
Getting into his car requires taking off one wheel, flipping the chair, taking off the other wheel, lifting the body over himself onto the passenger seat. “And that’s before I even leave the driveway.”
When I see Ron at our networking events, he always says, “I got it, I got it” even when I or others offer help. He does. But I also witness how much harder everything is.
Ron doesn’t deny the hard. He has simply figured out a way to live with it and through it.
Your Action:
Practice Ron’s paradox.
Challenge one limiting belief you hold about yourself or your situation:
What would you attempt if you truly believed you were “so much more powerful than you think”?
Simultaneously, identify one area where you’ve been holding onto false hope or unrealistic expectations:
What would change if you accepted that particular reality while still maintaining your agency everywhere else?
What Ron Would Tell His Younger Self
Near the end of our conversation, I asked Ron what he would tell his younger self. His answer surprised me:
“You are much more powerful than you think you are. The clichés that people have—some of them I think are terrible—but the idea that if you really put your mind to it, you can do a lot, you can do so much more than you think, that kind of cliché is true.”
Then he said something that I surprised me:
“I’m much more driven and much more purposeful now than I ever was. And I feel if I had been able to take this drive that I have now—that I so urgently need because I just need to work so much harder to get things done—if I had been able to bring that to bear earlier, I could have done different things.”
Read that again.
Ron is more driven now—in a wheelchair, navigating a world built for people who can walk—than he was as a high-performing managing director on Wall Street.
Why? Because necessity revealed capacity he didn’t know he had.
Most of us won’t access that level of drive until we’re forced to. But what if we didn’t wait? What if we took seriously the idea that we’re capable of far more than we currently believe?
Ron also clarified which clichés he hates. When people tell him he’s “taken sour lemons and made sweet lemonade,” he bristles:
“Really? Did I? I’m still in this wheelchair, by the way. That sour lemon still exists. I’m getting whatever juice I can out of it.”
Those platitudes, he says, “are meant to make people feel better, that this guy’s all right. You don’t have to worry about him. He’s got his act together.”
But he doesn’t need us to feel better. He needs us to understand that resilience isn’t about making everything okay. It’s about fortitude and perseverance in the face of things that remain decidedly not okay.
Your Action:
Don’t wait for a crisis to discover your full capacity.
Identify one area where you’ve been playing smaller than necessary—not because you lack ability, but because you haven’t urgently needed to show up bigger.
What would change if you brought Ron’s level of purposeful drive to that area starting now?
Moving Forward
Ron is working on a memoir. He’s focused on speaking, particularly to financial services audiences, the world he came from. He wants to share his perspective with young analysts and associates, with financial advisors who create wealth and independence for their clients but might not fully appreciate the importance of their work, and with leaders who want to create cultures where their people can reach their full potential.
“These are the sorts of messages that I can bestow on others,” he says.
He’s also continuing to build Lean On We, helping families navigate one of the most difficult transitions in life: caring for aging parents or managing their own care needs.
And he keeps showing up. At networking events. In the New York City Marathon (five times in a hand cycle). On Substack (Ron’s Ramblings) and LinkedIn. Doing the work.
When I watch Ron arrive at our gatherings, transferring from his car, navigating spaces designed for standing people, serving himself food while everyone else towers above him, I see someone living the truth he discovered:
You’re more powerful than you think
Your life isn’t over when your plan disappears
Ownership matters more than acceptance
The world has a habit of telling people in wheelchairs that their lives are tragic, diminished, over. Ron’s existence is a quiet rebellion against that narrative.
Not because everything is fine—it’s not.
But because he decided that even in a life he never planned, never wanted, never asked for, there are still things for him to do.
And he’s doing them.
Conversation Timestamps
[00:00 - 07:11] Introduction & The Accident
Technical difficulties set the stage for our theme: disruption to reinvention
Ron’s background: Managing Director at Barclays, building Asian equity desk
The cycling accident: “She falls asleep, crosses the center line, and heads right at my buddy Zach and me”
Waking up from a coma weeks later, paralyzed, unable to speak
Ron’s reflection on showing his wheelchair on video calls
[07:11 - 16:27] The Lehman Brothers Collapse & Career Before the Accident
Ron’s experience during Lehman’s collapse in 2008
The cash advance story: trusting his instincts when talking points didn’t match reality
His role selling Asian equities to U.S. institutions during Asia’s growth period
What it meant to be on the equity desk covering China, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan
50-mile cycling rides and physical fitness before the accident
[16:27 - 24:00] The Hospital, Rehab & Coming Home
Two months in ICU, three months at Kessler Rehab
The mental challenge of rehab: “No longer about healing you... it’s about teaching you how to live that life as a paraplegic”
Coming home to a house that looked the same but wasn’t: the study became his bedroom
The year and a half of asking “Why me?”
Betsy’s intervention: “Enough. Shit happens to people and it happened to you, but you’ve got a family”
Ron’s inflection point: “I don’t know that I ever fully accept it, but I did own it”
[24:00 - 30:00] The Birth of Lean On We
Realizing he couldn’t return to his Wall Street career (pre-remote work era)
Being exposed to the broken home care system as a patient
The two inadequate options: expensive agencies with no choice, or DIY with no vetting
Creating Lean On We as a marketplace connecting families with caregivers
Helping over 2,000 families in the greater New York area
The caregiver shortage crisis and immigration issues
Empowering caregivers through direct relationships
[30:00 - 37:06] Global Perspective & Human Connection
Ron’s memories of working with people in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore
The story of Jimmy Lai: from immigrant to billionaire to imprisoned activist
“A guy who’s a billionaire could walk away and chose to be a symbol of everything that American values are supposed to be”
Ron’s attempt to convince his family to move to Hong Kong
The importance of building relationships across cultures
[37:06 - 44:56] Finding Purpose Through Writing & Speaking
The TEDx talk opportunity
Being invited to give a commencement speech at a liberal arts college in Illinois
A childhood friend encouraging him to share his story more widely
People’s misconceptions about life in a wheelchair
The power of showing what’s possible: “If this guy in a wheelchair can do things, that is a mindset shift”
Processing the word “inspiring”: “I’m just trying to live my life the best way I can”
Ron’s relationship with technology and social media: bringing out the good in connectivity
[44:56 - 51:34] The New Gold Standard & What’s Next
Ron’s framework: Grit, Opportunity, Learning, Drive
Five New York City marathons in a hand cycle
Working on a memoir and other books
Focus on speaking to financial services audiences
The importance of financial advisors’ work: “creating some sort of independence so people can go and live their dream”
What Ron would tell his younger self: “You are much more powerful than you think you are”
Being more driven now than ever before
The clichés Ron hates: “You’ve taken your sour lemons and made sweet lemonade”
[51:34 - 57:50] Limiting Beliefs vs. Reality
“I don’t think I have limiting beliefs. But I’m also realistic enough to know that some things aren’t possible”
The exoskeleton experiment that didn’t work out
Watching spinal cord injury research with hope and disappointment
The mirage of breakthroughs that help others first
Accepting what is while hoping for what might be
The pairing of power and acceptance
How to connect with Ron: LinkedIn, Substack (Ron’s Ramblings), rongold.live, and Lean On We
If Ron’s story resonates with you, you can find him on LinkedIn, read his Substack “Ron’s Ramblings,” visit his website at rongold.live, or learn more about Lean On We. And if you know financial services organizations looking for a speaker who brings real perspective on resilience, reinvention, and what actually matters, Ron is your person.
Share this post with leader who needs to learn more about the G.O.L.D. standard.
What disruption are you navigating right now?
And what would it mean to own it, even if you’re not ready to accept it?
I’d love to hear from you—just hit reply or share a comment.
May you lead without limits,
