Health and Wellness with Former NFL Player David Caldwell

In this episode of the Rising Leaders of New York podcast, welcome guest David Caldwell. David Caldwell is a Professional Dot Connector, former NFL player, and currently the vice president of the New York City, Long Island chapter of the NFL Alumni Association.

Tune in to this episode as David Caldwell shares insights into:

• his initiatives in the health and wellness industry in NY and NJ
• what he does to address healthcare in the community
• the synergy with attorneys who want to serve their injured clients
• his latest project, providing support for people to maximize their potential

David Caldwell is a business development consultant who helps businesses increase their profit margins, and better serve their mission. He most often works with people in the healthcare space, and those who service the healthcare space.

Learn more about David Caldwell

Visit his business website:  https://www.ohgi.com/
Connect with David on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-dac-caldwell/
Connect with David on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ohgi_bigfish/

About the Rising Leaders of New York Podcast

The Rising Leaders of New York Podcast is centered around conversations with today’s and future leaders of New York City, discussing the challenges and issues relevant to New Yorkers.

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Read the full transcript:

VOICEOVER ( 00:00:01): Welcome to Rising Leaders of New York with your host David S. Zwerin of Hill & Moin LLP. They present to you conversations with today’s and future leaders of New York City discussing the challenges and issues relevant to New Yorkers. You can find this show at www.hillmoin.com and on Youtube, LinkedIn, Apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast and more. Now, here are the hosts of Rising Leaders of New York.

DAVID Z. ( 00:00:38): Good evening. My name is David Swain. You are listening to the first episode of Rising Leaders of New York. I am the senior trial partner here at Hill & Moin LLP. We’re a plaintiff’s personal injury firm focusing particularly on construction Act and premises liability cases. And on this podcast, we’re gonna be having some interesting conversations with some of today and future leaders of New York and New York State who are on the cutting edge of the relevant critical issues that you need to know about in our day to day life in New York City and New York State. Today. I have the distinct pleasure of having on the podcast as my first guest, my friend David Caldwell. David Caldwell is the Vice president of the New York City Long Island Chapter of the NFL Alumni Association. He also was a former NFL player and it’s my pleasure to welcome on the podcast, David Caldwell. How are you doing, David?

DAVID C. ( 00:01:38): I’m doing well. Always good when I can connect with you. So, I’m happy to be here. Didn’t know I was gonna, I’m gonna be the first guest, so excited about that. So, we’ll hopefully we’ll set the bar pretty high.

DAVID Z. ( 00:01:50): I’m very happy to have you, you with us to kick off the podcast. Tell a bit a little bit about yourself. First of all, what is the NFL Alumni Association? What is your role in it?

DAVID C. ( 00:02:02): Yeah. So I’m the Vice president of our New York City chapter, as you mentioned. Um as well as Long Island can’t leave them out. But my particular role, it was very important for me when joining to focus on a particular area that I was very much interested in. That’s a part of my day to day and that’s health care and narrow down to actually health and wellness. So what I do is I focus on providing a lot of the former players, different types of support that focus around health and wellness. Obviously, we all know football is a very brutal sport and it’s one where you have a lot of health and wellness provided to you while you’re playing but then when you’re gone, you don’t necessarily have that same support system. So it’s important for us. Um, when you have guys that are 20 in their twenties playing something and then 10 years down the line, 15 years down the line and so on. Uh, you know, they need a lot of, you know, they, they, they need some of their questions answered and they need, to be able to get the support, that they would, that would probably fit a lot of their needs. I mean, we have different events where we got guys that are limping around in their thirties and their forties and they just don’t feel the need to go see somebody or a little laziness on their part. But what we pretty much come in and do is make sure that we can connect them with anything that they would need, whether it’s a boxing instructor to just kind of get them up and going, whether it’s a chiropractor, a physical therapist, somebody to help them with their mental health, it’s really, just mind, body and soul healing that we try to provide to the former players.

DAVID Z. ( 00:03:35): And how did, well, first of all, tell everybody who did you play for in the NFL? And what was your position? Right.

DAVID C. ( 00:03:41): So I played safety. I can’t talk about the NFL without mentioning William and Mary my college. Uh after that was able to play about 2.5 years with the Colts was with them and then was with the Giants briefly. My home team that was exciting. And then after that went up to Canada, to Hamilton and I loved it up in Canada. Canada was an amazing place to live. The pay was a little bit different, just a little bit. But, after two years in Canada decided to come back down here and, figure out life after football

DAVID Z. ( 00:04:13): and what did you figure out when you came down here?

DAVID C. ( 00:04:14): I figured out that I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. No idea what to do. Uh, you know, here I came from, you know, I was in my, what, 21 22 23 making some pretty good money, you know, for a young, 20 year old or a young kid in his twenties. And then I had to figure out a way. But fortunately for me, I always had, you know, a strong support system and a foundation built on academics and things outside of sports. So, and that just comes from my parents. Um, you know, sports was never the number one thing for me. It was always, you know, make sure you get your grades and then if that’s ok, you can play sports. It was always just the extra thing that my parents just allowed me to, you know, compete at and, you know, wanted to take it as far as I could and then use it as a platform to whatever else that I was gonna get involved in. So it’s not that I was nervous, but I just really didn’t know, you know how my skills would transfer or what industry they would transfer to. So it was a little bit of a dilemma, but, you know, we figure it out.

DAVID Z. ( 00:05:15): Was there anything in particular about your upbringing or your time in your NFL that led you to have a, a focus on health and wellness after your playing career was over. Definitely.

DAVID C. ( 00:05:24): So on my mom’s side, I feel like everybody’s a teacher. My grandfather was a principal. My mom, she’s more popular than me in my town. She’s like the teacher of the, of the year every year. That’s what she was when she was teaching seriously, when we go to shop, right? Or whatever supermarket we go to people knew her, not me. So she was that so that established, you know, definitely, an academic foundation. And then my dad on his side, he was the youngest of nine kids. The only one not born on a share cropping farm and the first one to go to college. So college city college in New York did tremendous wonders and provided a lot of opportunities for him. So on one side and it kind of combined. But, you know, I had the academics here, but I also had this belief in myself on the other end, just based on them that, you know, there’s a lot out here that I can do if I apply myself. And, I’m willing to work hard and sacrifice for it. So

DAVID Z. ( 00:06:22): cool. I didn’t know that about you that you, your mom was a teacher of mine as well. So I also, uh come from maybe a little bit of a different but similar background in that passion for education. And that really being a guiding principle to what you want to accomplish in life. The kids

DAVID C. ( 00:06:39): that grow up where one of their parents is a teacher or two of their parents, a teacher, those are the most special kids. They say that the kids with the parents are the teacher. I just made that up. But

DAVID Z. ( 00:06:49): my kid, my kid is lucky then because his mom is a teacher. Here we go see that. You and I know each other a bit for a while. We were doing a weekly and then I think it became a, a biweekly meeting together. I haven’t seen you in a, in a little bit. So tell me what you’ve been up to and what are some of the of the work you’re doing presently, the initiatives you’re working on in the, the health and wellness industry these days, David.

DAVID C. ( 00:07:18): Definitely. So it’s been a lot and in a good way, in a very good way and I guess I’ll, you know, tell everybody what I do first and foremost. So I’m a business development consultant. What does that mean? All right. So I help companies increase, not just their profit margin but how do they increase their profit margin? How do they better serve whatever their mission is to their clients, to their customers? So, most of the time I’m working in the health care space. So I work with surgeons, other specialists. I work with attorneys like yourself. I work with anybody that’s involved in health care from a marketing perspective, commercial perspective at any of these different things to figure out how I can better help you bring a, a better value to whoever it is you’re serving. So that’s what we do. That’s a, that’s kind of not what we do. That’s what I do. So that has led me to a few different things and mainly focusing on health and wellness throughout our communities. And that’s where the NFL alumni combines with what I’m doing in my day to day because the NFL Alumni mission is to help the community, help the kids. So one of the biggest areas that I try to focus on and a lot of us in the alumni is how can we bring better health and wellness overall, overall comprehensive health care to our communities and it’s different in every community. But a lot of times when we look at and we sit down with the mayor and we sit down and like, say, hey, what are the leading causes of death in this area? Why are people dying five years earlier here than five miles down the road or two miles down the road? So we try to customize different programs to work with any of your city agencies, any of your state agencies, county agencies, anybody in your community that we think is seen as what we call them just influencers, you know, so I know we had the group health care influencers. We try to address the influencers because if we can help change the culture and, and to a more healthier culture to where people are more, well, we feel that that can trickle down and spread throughout and it’s a, it’s a big issue, you know, health and without our health, you know, obviously, you know, ee everything kind of goes away. So it’s just uh it’s just something that we’re, we’re very passionate about and that we focus on.

DAVID Z. ( 00:9:44): Yeah, having known you for a while, David, I can say it’s, it’s not an act. David is, is one of the most passionate people. I know out there about just generally keeping uh people, people healthy, which uh I guess some people might think that’s an interesting uh compliment uh talking to the plaintiff’s personal injury attorney. My focus obviously deals with situations where something terrible has happened and someone is not well anymore Uh but we both kind of like the same objective. We, we do want people to live a healthy, happy, good life. And I think there’s a lot to be gained by having good relationships uh and doing good by people out in the world and hopefully keeping them healthy and productive in their day to day job because actions are going to happen. And when they do, uh my hope is they know what legal representation to speak. But also they have all the resources they need, whether it’s from people like you or anybody else who can point them in the right direction to get good medical attention they’re going to need in addition to the legal representation if they have a case. Uh because there are a lot of serious, serious decisions to be made when you have an accident, right,

DAVID C. ( 00:11:02): David 100%. And I think what separates you personally as well as your firm. When I talked about everything with, you know, developing health and wellness programs, that’s something that you’ve actually been on board with. So it’s not like you’re the type of attorney that’s just looking for, you know, focusing on when somebody’s injured. Yes, that’s your expertise of how you can help and provide a certain level of assistance to people so that they can have the support to get back healthy. But what I’ve noticed with you is that it starts a lot earlier, you know, you want people to, you know, trust, there’s a certain level of trust and that’s something that from a business development standpoint when we talk to our clients, whatever it is that they’re saying that they’re doing, they need to establish that trust with their clients, with their patients, with their customers, whatever it may be. And that’s something that has really stood out with you. Where, where at first when I’m telling you, like, yo, you know, we’re gonna do some health and wellness. You know, a lot of people would be like, wait, you know, health and wellness that’s not, you know, the space that I’m in, you know, I just deal with this area. You’re, you’ve always shown that you’ve been completely invested in just creating a healthier communities and I would say that you’re in the health and wellness space just as much as anything that we’re doing.

DAVID Z. ( 00:12:15): Well. I appreciate that. Thank you for all the compliments, David. I tend to agree. I think attorneys, doctors and people such as you are a little bit tangential but are interested in not to be political but kind of in making health and wellness, something that’s a right for all New Yorkers. Uh at least giving them the resources and the education to know where to go and what they should be thinking about medically when they have an accident. That very much into the things I think about which from a legal perspective is when somebody comes into my office and they’ve had a serious accident. What kind of legal knowledge do we need to impart on those people to make sure they’re making the right legal decisions? As they go forward on what may be a very difficult journey or in a new time in their life after they’ve potentially had a very serious accident and they may have a very serious and significant case to be brought against somebody depending on the fact, whether it’s a car accident, or a trip and fall in and outside of a building or whether it’s a, a union carpenter that’s followed on from a scaffold. There’s a lot of decisions to be made and really, they all are pretty tangential to the health and wellness sphere.

DAVID C. ( 00:13:32): No, I agree 100% everything that you just mentioned and a lot of times just, just looking at it from different perspectives and gaining an understanding from different angles. So, we like to think that everybody has the same goals, you know, to get people healthier, but you know, not everybody does, but that’s why you connect with certain people that share the same, the same mission. And just kind of go from there and just try to spread everything that we’re doing throughout our communities

DAVID Z. ( 00:14:00): and not for nothing positive is not a bad thing in life. And I know that you David are one of the most relentlessly positive people I’ve ever met and, , I certainly try to be a positive person too, but I’ll say that, , you know, in, in my business, I work very, very hard for my client, but these cases aren’t always positive all the time. We fight very, very hard for our, our clients, but they’re going through a lot and it’s a, and it’s a tough situation when you’ve already had the accident and a client is just trying to get better and trying to get fair and reasonable compensation, but they’re already suffering. So it’s really a pleasure to be associated with someone like yourself who cares about keeping people healthy. Uh, when they haven’t had that accident yet where where they need , an attorney such as myself. And, , and it’s nice to think about what can be done to generally let people have better lives. Uh, because accidents are going to happen regardless. There’s a lot of bad drivers out there, there’s a lot of bad sidewalks or bad conditions or bad working practices on job sites, things are going to happen inevitably. Uh, but people should know what to do in terms of their medical decision making in their daily lives. And it’s, and I appreciate them having a resource such as you.

DAVID C. ( 00:15:22): No, it’s, it’s i it’s probably one of the most vulnerable feelings that you can have just being injured and then to add on to that if you don’t have somebody that can help guide you through the process that’s not trying to get over on you. Somebody that just puts your, puts you in their shoes or puts you in, you know, I’m gonna treat you as if you know you’re a relative of mine to kind of guide you through the health care, guide you through the legal aspects of it because it can be tough. II I tell people all the time, like my, how I saw health care, the legal side of it, every different part of it is entirely different than when I actually got into it. And I’m still just learning a lot of stuff, you know, so people need to be able to rely on somebody that can help guide them through this because they’re just trying to get back healthy. It’s like it would already be difficult to, you know, figure out the process if you were, you know, 100% healthy. You know, now you gotta add the fact that somebody is not the best versions of themselves and they still have to go through this process. So it’s good to have people that can help guide them.

DAVID Z. ( 00:16:26): Very true. So as we start putting a bow on the 2022 what kind of things are you focusing on in 23? What are you looking to accomplish then? And what should people know about you

DAVID C. ( 00:16:39): So I focus on two different things. So one, the health and wellness programs going to different communities in New York and New Jersey and really just figuring out customized programs that are simple, practical and just work to get not only the city, state, you know, county town agencies, but also just the overall community healthier. It’s a problem. It’s a problem throughout the country and it’s something that can be fixed. But if people don’t have the information and people don’t have the support, it’s just not gonna happen, it’s hard enough to do it when you have the information and support. So that’s definitely the focus working on a lot of the health and wellness with the community leaders. So that way we can spread that throughout the communities. That’s the one side, the other side is ohg I of what we call OG. So it’s an acronym for out here getting it and it just focuses on providing people the same support that we’d be providing for the health and wellness, but now providing it for them to just maximize their potential in whatever area of life that you know they’re in. So we’re releasing our OG dot com platform both kind of serve the same purpose but just address it from different perspectives. So we have the health and wellness programs and then we have OG, which is just focusing on getting people to have the support and to believe in themselves that they can achieve anything and everything. You know, I’m big on that. So I just wanna be able to provide a support that can get people to maximize in every area of their lives. You know, whether it’s family, whether it’s professional, whether it’s personal, all these different aspects, you wanna start a business, let’s do it and connect in the right people. So that way you can build out your network. So that’s what we’re focusing on those two things. Very cool.

DAVID Z. ( 00:18:30): And 

DAVID C. ( 00:18:32): and what about you, what about you, what we got going on your way?

DAVID Z. ( 00:18:35): What have I got going on? Well, right now, right now we’re doing this, we’re doing this for this podcast and otherwise, the mission contains, continues the same. I’m always looking to be introduced to people that may have been involved in a construction accident, in particular. Our firm is one of the top rated firms in terms of helping injured victims who suffer falls or other injuries while they’re working on a construction site. as well as people who suffer any kind of work related injury, who might have a case to sue a third party, that’s not their employer, whether they trip and fall on a sidewalk or have something happen inside a building or any kind of case like that where we can bring a case on someone’s path because someone negligent caused a serious injury. Our commission always contains the same to help those kind of people who are beyond the help that you can provide. They’re not healthy and wealthy anymore. Uh, and they need a good personal injury attorney to make sure they are pointed in the right direction to make the right direction, to make sure, they’re making the right choices on their behalf to have the best possible case, to have the best chance of recovery. Um, and we’re always looking to meet those kind of people as well as, , the people that can introduce us to those kind of people. That’s my mission in life is to help the injured victims of New York. Just like, uh, I enjoy talking to you because it’s your mission in life to, uh, hopefully keep people healthy until they hopefully don’t become an injured victim of New York. But some of them are going to be and I’m here for them

DAVID C. ( 00:20:13): and people are gonna get injured. Like you said, people are gonna have accidents even with, you know, some of us good drivers, you know, we still have, you know, every once in a while we get into something, but it’s, like you said, it makes the entire experience, I’m a lot easier to deal with. Um, depending on who you’re dealing with. So, depending on who you have on your side, you know, as your support system. So it’s, yeah, it’s exciting. We, we, we, we do the same work we do the same work.

DAVID Z. ( 00:20:43): Yeah, other than that, we’re just, working hard here and, looking forward to a good, happy, healthy holiday season. And since we’re, since I got a football player on the line, I’d be remiss to say also I’m grieving at the 49 Ers fan. Uh, the, end of Jimmy Garoppolo season.

DAVID C. ( 00:20:59): I didn’t know you were a 49. I grew up a 49ers fan. I’m not, I’m not anymore. I kind of stopped when I got to, like, I think, like college, I, I didn’t, I, now I just root for players but, I grew up a 49ers fan. Yeah, Steve Young. And then when they won it, what did they win it in 95? No, 94. They won it in 94 94 95 94 95. And then the Cowboys won the next year. But, they had everybody on the team. They had Dion Martin Hank Steve. I was a 49ers fan. But, yeah, we’re gonna get in trouble. We got to talk Giants, right. We gotta talk Giant Giants. But

DAVID Z. ( 00:21:31): because we can make this a whole different podcast, we can start talking football for the next 30 minutes. But, I think we, I think we get a little off topic so you and I can talk football at some other time. But, I would surely,

DAVID C. ( 00:21:45): is it, because this is one of those things that I always think about. Um, well, just popped up, I should say. But over the holiday season, are people, is this a time where, you know, people tend to get in to a little bit more accidents, people being on the road, people rushing to different things. Not that we don’t rush in our regular day to day lives. But, it, it would almost seem to me that, you know, there would be more accidents now than, other times maybe, or maybe I’m off.

DAVID Z. ( 00:22:13): Um, well, I don’t have the, the data on, a very micro level, but in my experience having done this for over a decade now, I, I think there definitely is an increase in almost any kind of type of personal injury case. I think people are rushing more on the road. I think there probably are more drunk drivers on the road. People, stay out late going to more holiday parties and, if we’re God willing going into a year with where COVID is less a concern, more in person, things where people can really let loose and, maybe make some decisions that aren’t the best for them. So I think there’ll be an increase in motor vehicle accidents. I think for the same kind of reasons you could see an increase in people, having accidents just, walking about in their day to day life or in their home or at their job site. Um, and not for nothing. Well, it’s a beautiful but a little bit cold, late fall day here, snow is not too far away and, all the, slippery, icy conditions that come with it are, another thing that New Yorkers need to be careful about as they head into this winter season. So, we’re here for people whenever it happens and accidents do happen around the holiday season and in the winter.

DAVID C. ( 00:23:28): And that’s a good point because I was only focusing on the car accidents. And I feel like a lot of people when they hear about it, they may think that you only take care of car accidents, but really, as, as I’m sure you’ll explain now it’s across the board, you know, it could be anything.

DAVID Z. ( 00:23:45): Sure. I would, I would say that our main focus here at Hill & Moin is to help people who are injured on someone’s premises, whether that’s in front of a building or inside a building or a particular kind of premise that we focus on are construction workers who are injured on the job. Uh, but we certainly know how to hand or handle motor vehicle cases as well as, uh many other kinds of cases where people are horribly and seriously injured due to someone else’s negligence or a violation of the law, motor vehicle, motor vehicle accidents while they, tend to be the news crappers. They’re certainly not the only case we, we know how to handle here

DAVID C. ( 00:24:27): and those, those construction workers, we talk about a brutal sport being football, they, they deal with it, in, in their own way, you know, just as much and, you know, they, I, I can only imagine some of the, the catastrophic injuries but all the way down to some of the smaller injuries that just impact you being able to, you know, go to work and, you know, do your job.

DAVID Z. ( 00:24:47): It’s very true. Uh People hopefully never have to have the kind of uh injuries that we deal with on a lot of our cases here, whether it’s a traumatic brain injury or people requiring a serious spinal injury or uh or broken bones with implantations of uh plates and screws. We really run the gamut and have clients with all sorts of serious injuries here at Helen Mone and we work very hard to make sure they get the fair and reasonable compensation that they deserve. Uh But yeah, they come in all shapes and sizes and they’re not serious. Uh sorry, they do come in all same sizes and they are quite serious. Uh So it’s nice to have someone on the line here who’s uh shares my uh passion that hopefully people can stay well and have a nice and healthy happy holiday season where none of that happens to you

DAVID C. ( 00:25:44): 100% 100%. So I appreciate you having me on, bro. I appreciate, I’m my big bro. I feel like I gotta just talk to you as if I’m talking to you in person. You know, I always call you big, bro because I appreciate what you do. No.

DAVID Z. ( 00:25:57): Same to you. Same to you. I know, I like you call a lot of people a big bro, whether they’re actually older than you or not. It’s, I know that that’s

DAVID C. ( 00:26:07): a good, you know, it’s a good point because it has nothing to do with age. It’s just a more of a respect thing, you know, people that I respect in my life, you know, that’s something that, uh you know, when we get to a point where, you know, I see you as, you know, us being close friends. Uh It’s just a, you know, a term of it’s endearment, you know. So, like I said, I appreciate you.

DAVID Z. ( 00:26:27): I appreciate you, respect to you David Calwell and uh respect for being our first guest this week on the very first episode of rising leaders of New York. My name is David, the senior trial attorney at here at Hill & Moin and we’ll be back next week with another exciting guest with uh an up and coming future leader of New York that you need to know. Have a great evening everybody.

VOICEOVER ( 00:26:51): You’ve been listening to rising leaders of New York hosted by David Zwerin of Hill & Moin LLP. You can catch prior episodes at www.hillmoin.com and on Youtube, LinkedIn, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and more. Thank you for your positive reviews, comments and sharing this show with others.