The Federal Express Story David Albin Tells Before the First Board Breaks

Before David Albin ever hands out a board, he wants the room to notice something about the people who brought him here in the first place. It took real nerve, he says, for the leadership running this event to hire a stranger, hand him a floor full of coals, and let him take a room of paying attendees through a firewalk that night. He’s spent nineteen years working alongside Tony Robbins, plus time with T. Harv Eker, Michael Beckwith, and the late Wayne Dyer, and in all that time he’s learned that fear shows up for everyone in the room, including the people who booked the event.

So before the fire, he starts smaller. A single board, held in two hands, broken with one strike. It’s a warm-up for the real thing later that night, but it teaches the exact lesson the fire is about to teach at a bigger scale.

Why does a man who charges thousands of dollars for fifteen minutes of work matter here?

Albin tells the room a story he attributes to Fred Smith, the founder of Federal Express. When the company’s entire sorting system in Memphis goes down mid-shift, costing the business real money by the minute, Fred calls the one technician he was told to call if anything ever broke. The man shows up in a pickup truck, wanders the building, opens a panel full of wires, turns a single screw with a screwdriver, and the whole plant comes back to life in about fifteen minutes.

Fred looks at it, turns to his assistant and says, go upstairs and get me $5,000 in cash. What did it say? Turning screw, $1. Knowing what screw to turn, $4,999.

Albin isn’t telling the room to go find a screwdriver. He’s making a point about where real value actually lives, and it’s not in the motion itself. Everyone in that room already knows how to work hard. What separates the people getting real results from the people spinning in place is knowing exactly which small, specific thing to do, and then doing it without hesitation.

What’s the actual story you’ve been telling yourself, and who taught it to you?

From there Albin gets to the real teaching underneath the whole session. He asks the room a question he says he learned from years of Tony Robbins seminars: why don’t people get everything they want out of life? The answer isn’t a lack of opportunity. It’s a sentence people repeat to themselves until they believe it. I’m too young. I’m too old. I don’t have the time, the money, the education. He rattles off a handful of versions of the same excuse, different details, same shape. Then he tells the room the key: “change your story, change your life.” He means it as something closer to a diagnosis than a slogan.

That’s the frame he wants everyone holding onto before a single board gets broken. The board doesn’t care about your story. It only responds to a specific kind of pressure, applied with total commitment. Which makes it a nearly perfect physical stand-in for whatever story has been quietly running the show in your own head.

What do you actually write on a piece of wood before you break it?

The setup itself is deliberately simple. Attendees are handed a board and told to find the grain, mark the center with a small X, and then do something most people don’t expect: write on the front of the board something they want to stop doing, and on the back, something they’ve been meaning to start. Not a business goal necessarily. Whatever’s actually sitting at the front of their mind right now, coded in shorthand if they’d rather not spell it out for the person standing next to them.

Albin walks the room through the strike itself, the “monkey paw” hand position, thumb tucked, wrist locked, aiming through the board rather than at its surface. This is good, this is bad, he repeats, showing the difference between a hand that will break clean through wood and one that will just hurt. It looks like a small physical detail. It’s actually the whole session compressed into a gesture: the same amount of pressure, applied the same way, gets the same result every time, regardless of what story you were telling yourself walking up to it.

What happens next, when the room actually starts swinging, is where the real teaching shows up, not in the setup but in how many tries it takes some people to stop pulling back at the last second.

Watch the full setup and see what each attendee wrote on their own board before the first strike, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

David is the, he's an expert on breakthroughs and he's brought in some fire for us. We're going to be doing a fire walk here in a little bit, not quite yet. But he's also going to help us break a board. And he's the guy that used to do this for, what was it, 17 years?

I was with Tony Robbins for 19 years. 19 years with Tony Robbins, so we've got the man himself in the house. Let's welcome him with a big round of applause. Thank you.

Thank you very much. First of all, I want to say something to Will and Dave and Mars and Bonnie and the team here. You know, he's talking about fear and isn't it interesting? If you're a business owner, imagine the fear that you would have to bring in somebody like me and have you take you guys out here and walk on fire.

Think there might be a little fear associated with that? Absolutely there is. So my hat's off to these guys. These guys are amazing.

It took a lot of guts to do this. And so my job and my team's job in here is to come out here and give you guys at least a top ten experience in your life. So with that said, before we get into the fire walk, I thought we would do something first that would give you an idea about kind of a breakthrough, if you will. So what we're going to do is we're going to show you guys how to break a board with your bare hands.

By the way, has anybody ever broken a board with their bare hand? Cool. Wow, a lot of you. Awesome.

That's fantastic. So we're going to do that. Now, if you were going to join a martial arts studio, for example, and you were going to go break a board, you would probably be with that studio for at least several months, probably somewhere close to six months. And then once you became like a yellow belt, then what they would typically do is they would, you know, show you how to do that.

So my team and I are going to show you how to do that in about 15 minutes. So we're just going to accelerate the process on that. And so in a minute, I'll have my team. We're going to bring in some boards.

And by the way, I want you guys to know something. This is an option. You guys don't have to. You can do this, but I'm going to highly encourage you to do that.

So we're going to look at fear a couple different ways here. You guys can process fear a couple different ways. One is forget everything and run, right, or face everything and rise. And so that's what it's going to be about today because today can be about a foundation.

Today can be about a completely new beginning. The foundation that you would build here on a firewalk is absolutely phenomenal. I have been doing this, again. I've.

I've been doing this for two decades, and I've worked for Tony Robbins for two decades. I also worked with T. Harv Eker. I worked with Michael Beckwith, the late Wayne Dyer.

So I've worked with some of the greats around the world. And so I've seen hundreds of thousands of people do a firewalk, and I watched them transform. And we're going to show you a video here in a little while. I'm going to show you a very famous person at one of our firewalks, and you're going to see what she went through.

As far as that process, and then because it really depicts it almost identical to what many of you are going to go through tonight. By the way, is there how many people here have actually ever done a firewalk? Whoa. And how many of you did keep your hands up for a minute?

And how many of you did that? Was that what a Tony Robbins seminar? Was everybody a Tony Robbins? Was it any of them a T.

Harv Eker? So it was. Did you go to T. Harv?

Yes. So you went to Peaks Potential. Wow. Cool.

Well, if you did a firewalk, depending on when you did that firewalk, more than likely, you can do it. You came to us, and I was out there in the parking lots somewhere around the world and facilitated that. So, you know, thank you for that. That's really cool.

So what I would encourage some of you to do is help your neighbor. Because this is going to be a pretty spooky thing. Who knows absolutely they are not going to do it tonight? Anybody?

No one? Wait. She said. Well, you know what?

We'll talk about that. Yeah, I understand. Yeah, I don't want to, you know, I don't want anybody to do anything they don't want to do. And by the way, you are.

You're going to have a piece of paper that you're going to sign tonight. And it is a whole harmless agreement. And basically, I'm going to tell you that, you know, you signed that document. And, you know, we're going to ask that, you know, you understand what you're doing tonight.

Could you be hurt tonight doing a firewalk? Can you go to Disney World or Disneyland and go on a ride and get hurt? Yes. Is it very likely?

If you keep your arms and hands inside the thing like they tell you to do, guess what? Right? So if you do something that you're not supposed to do, could you get hurt? Yes.

I'm going to be out here. And when you do this firewalk tonight, I'm going to know when you're ready. And so when you show me that you brought the right state to that fire, then I'll send you. But I won't send you unless I know you're in that state.

Because I honor that fire. That fire is, fire does what fire does. My own children, and Bonnie's got the whole harmless is when we can do that, maybe right after the board break. My daughter was six years old.

And she firewalked the first time. My son, who's outside here, is now 22, was nine years old the first time he did his firewalk. Now, some would say that was child abuse. But I can tell you that it totally transformed their lives.

And I've seen a whole variety of people firewalk. You name it. All kinds of celebrities. But, you know, the people that I've always enjoyed doing is people like you.

It's the men and women who are, you know, want to take their life to another level. They want to deal with the fear. They want to meet fear head on. And so, tonight, you're going to have an opportunity to do that.

So, if I could, again, my name is Dave Albin. And I'm the founder and the director of Firewalk Productions. And we have been putting on firewalks now for a few years. And in my career with Tony, I used to get companies that would come up to me all the time.

And they said, you know, will you bring a firewalk to our company? And Tony just didn't want to do that. This is not something that he wanted to do. So, I knew there was a market.

And so, last year, I went to Tony and Google got a hold of me. And they said, hey, you know, we want you to do a firewalk at our corporate headquarters for about 138 top executives here at Google. And I went to Tony and he said, no, I don't want to do it. And I said, I will.

So, there I was. Next thing I know, I was at corporate headquarters doing it. And we actually ended up doing a glass walk for Google rather than a firewalk. So, what I'd like to do, if it's okay with you, is I'd like to tell you a quick story, if I could.

You guys good with that? Quick? Kind of a metaphor, if you will. That I think would be valuable here tonight.

How many of you here know who Fred Smith is? Seriously? Does anybody know who Fred Smith is? If I said Federal Express, what would you say?

The man who started Federal Express, right? Well, when Fred had this idea and he went out to his peers that I think I can get a letter from Los Angeles to New York in 24 hours. And, of course, his friend said, no. You know, there's no way you can do that.

It's not possible, Fred. Well, Fred believed that he could do it. And so. He got the funding for it.

And the next thing you know, they build the facility in Memphis, Tennessee, which is the sorting facility, right? That's where all the letters come in and everything goes out of out of Memphis. Well, this place is an absolute engineering marvel. It's conveyor belts and its systems and its electronics.

And it's just it's crazy, amazing technology that in the sorting system. So as they finish it and they're ready to launch, Fred's told, if your system ever goes down, there's a guy right here. That I want you to call. And his name is Wilbur.

And so Fred takes a piece of paper. He said, OK, so if something ever happens, I call Wilbur. OK, so he puts it on his on his pegboard in his office and they go along for like a year and a half. Everything runs great.

And one day, boom, the whole system dies. Every conveyor belt stops. Everything comes to a screeching halt. Fred's out of his mind.

He's in that critical stage of his business where he's starting to become profitable. But at the same time, all the system goes down. He's losing thousands of dollars. A million dollars a month.

A million dollars a minute, literally. So he runs to his office. He finds the piece of paper with Wilbur's name. He calls Wilbur.

Wilbur, this is in Tennessee, by the way. And so Wilbur's, you know, answers the phone, you know, hello. And Fred's like, oh, Wilbur, hey, this is Fred Smith over here at Federal Express. He said, Wilbur, you know, I was told that if our system ever goes down to call you and you can help us.

And Wilbur's like, well, I'm kind of busy right now. And Fred's thinking, oh, my God, I've you know, Wilbur's. You know, if this guy doesn't come fix it, I'm out of business. And so next thing you know, they talk a bit.

Wilbur says, I'll be there as soon as I can. And so now Fred and his and his foreman and his personal assistants and his people are now outside in the parking lot waiting for Wilbur. Wilbur shows up. He's in a pickup truck, pulls up in a pickup truck, gets out, they introduce and Wilbur says, well, take me inside where I want to see where the electrical department is.

So they take him inside. And as soon as Wilbur walks in. Wilbur walks inside the plant, he's looking around. He's saying, Ma, this is a really big place you all have here.

And Fred's thinking, what? What? You know, what's going on here? So Wilbur says, take me to where all the electrical is.

And so they go into an area and it's all the electrical. And you guys, you got to imagine there are thousands of wires coming into this area, thousands of them. In fact, there's there's doors you can open up and there's electrical compartments and you would walk into it. And there's thousands.

There's thousands of wires. And so Wilbur's walking around, he's walking around, he's looking and he looks over and he opens up this one door and it's got thousands of wires in it. And now there's other boxes inside of that box. And he opens up another box in there and he looks in there and he says, hmm, I wonder, and he takes out a screwdriver and he sticks it in there.

By the way, he had one of those pocket things, you know, anybody's dad ever wear one of those little things you put screwdrivers and stuff in? And he looks in there and he puts his hand in there and he turns it about a half a turn. And booom. The whole plant comes back on.

Fred is out of his mind. He's like, oh, my gosh, Wilbur just saved our company. And he looks at Wilbur and he said, Wilbur, I can't begin to tell you how much I appreciate you. I thank you.

I have cash upstairs. I want to pay you right now. He said, how much do I owe you? And Wilbur looks at him and says, $5,000.

Well, Fred's a pretty good businessman, right? He says, Wilbur, you've been here about. 15 minutes. You turn, you know, one screw and you're charging me $5,000?

And Wilbur says, yes, sir, that's my fee. And so again, Fred's a pretty smart businessman. He said, well, could you give me an itemized bill? And Wilbur says, sure, you got a piece of paper and a pencil?

So his assistant gives him a piece of paper and a pencil. He starts to write on it. He hands it to Fred. Fred looks at it, turns to his assistant and says, go upstairs and get me $5,000 in cash.

What did it say? Turning screw, $1. Knowing what screw to turn, $4,999. Tonight, it's about you guys.

True story, by the way. By the way, go talk to Fred. He'll tell you the story. Tonight is about you guys learning what screw to turn and adding value to that process.

You guys have an opportunity here. I've looked at your company. You guys have an amazing opportunity. I'm going to tell you a story.

You guys have an opportunity here, as you well know. So if Tony Robbins was here right now, and he opened it up, and you asked some questions, and you said, so somebody asked, so Tony, why don't people get what they want in life? You guys have been to some Tony Robbins seminars. Why don't people get what they want in life?

Why don't you have everything you want in life? So here's the secret. Remember this, guys, for the rest of your life. There's a story you tell yourselves why you can't have it.

I'm too young. I'm too old. I don't have the time. I don't have the money.

I don't have the education. I'm a poor white boy from the Bronx. I'm a poor Hispanic boy from the Bronx. I'm a poor black boy from the Bronx.

Here's the key, you guys, change your story, change your life. That fire out there tonight will change your life. Why? I know for a fact it will.

Because I've seen hundreds of stories. of thousands of people do it, including my children. So, again, it's up to you. You're welcome to do whatever you guys want to do here tonight, but if I can do anything to help you, encourage you, be part of that, I'm going to be out there tonight, and if you'll talk to me, whatever it is, let me help you give yourself this gift.

So, you guys up for that? Are you guys up for that? Fantastic. Alright, give yourselves a hand.

Good job. So, what we'd like to do first is we're going to do a board break. So, I'm going to bring in my team and they're going to bring in some boards and I think what we'll do, if we can, we'll set it up about right here, and we'll have four of you. So, here's what this is going to look like.

By the way, to break a board, you're only going to have to hit it with a certain amount of pressure. Right? And let me show you what that pressure looks like. Watch closely.

Dave, if you want to bring in the boards, that'd be great. All you have to do is hit it about this hard, right here. Did you guys miss it? Let's look at it again.

In fact, take your hand like this and make a monkey paw. On behalf of… See that right there? You want to get that finger tucked in.

You want to get these fingers nice and tight. And you want to hit right here. So, go ahead and do that. Hit your hand on there like that.

Hit it. Come on. Hit it. Make it feel…

Make feel the pain there. Does it sting a little bit? Okay. That's going to break the board.

Now, you guys, it's a good thing I didn't bring bricks tonight. Because that's something else that we do. And I will tell you, you know, sometimes after you break a board, they'll come back and go, well, you know, I'll tell them. Like, if I have people that broke boards with us, and then they come back the next time, I'm going to go, oh, we're going to break boards.

And they go, oh, I've already done that. And I'll say, yeah, but last time I didn't light it on fire. So, if you, Davey, if you'll just get everybody to get a board, my son, Davey, right there, Davey Alvin Jr., he was the one that was nine years old. He's the one that turned me over to, what was it, Child Protection Services, I think, is when you did the firewalk at that time.

Davey's actually the youngest certified firewalk instructor at 22 years old in America. He's second in the world. So, if you guys will take a board, and I believe Bonnie's got some pens for you guys. And then we're going to show you a couple things here to write on it.

And to do, as well. Maybe George can give you a hand, too, Davey, if he's not doing anything with the fire. How's that fire looking? Oh, sweet!

Nice! By the way, we turned the rain off for you guys, too. Oh, show me some love for crying out loud. I mean, hey, we turned off the rain for you guys.

Stop it, stop it. So, what we're going to do, Bonnie's going to be passing out some pens. So, I'd like you to look at your board. And I'd like you to look at the edge of it.

Right in here. That's the part right there. And you'll see that, you'll see the grain. That's what you're going to focus on right now, is that grain.

And so, what we're going to do is, Bonnie passes out those pens. If you'll take the grain as it's facing you, in other words, if it's going like this, take that piece and look at it from that side. You got that, right? Does that make sense?

Kind of bar your board. I'll get right back to you. So, you see this guy's right here? See how this is facing, how it's turning?

See? Guys, can you all see that? How it's, that piece is turning? See it?

Alright, so what you want to do, is you want to face that piece towards you. Great. Alright? And then what we're going to do, with that marker, we're going to put an X right smack dab in the middle of it.

So, if you have a pen and you have a board, you can do that now. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

No, you can have it face you. How that piece, how, this part, where it's curved this way, face you. So, we're under the rainbow? Yeah, under the rainbow.

I like that. Hey, I'm going to use that. Can I borrow that from you? That's good.

Under the rainbow. For $5,000. $5,000. No one screwed a turn.

Good man. That's good. I like that. Great job.

Yeah. So, you want to put your X on that side. Just anywhere here. Yup.

And just, and by the way, that X, make sure, make it a small one. It doesn't have to be a big one, but you want to put it in the middle. Get it as close to the middle as you can, because that's where you're going to hit it. Where's, how come George is not helping Davey?

Can you show us an example? What's that? Can you show us an example of that? Sure.

I just want to make a little line. Sure. Let's see yours. All right.

So, see how the wood is turned that way like that? Yeah. So, you want to put your X there. It's facing you.

Got it? Cool. By the way, guys, if you put it on the other side, it's okay. It will break.

If you hit it with that much pressure, it will break. It's in the middle. What you just don't want to do is go against the grain, if you will. All right.

Davey's got some more boards. Who doesn't have a board that's looking for a board? Hey, why don't you get George to help you, Albie, when he comes? Oh, there he comes.

George, my man, up here in front, if you would. So, when you say the grain is facing you like it dips, like, so mine's dipping like this? Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. So, I'll write on this side? No. Put it on that side.

There you go. And by the way, guys, it's, if you, yeah. Who doesn't? Over here?

The guys? Hey, George. Yeah. There you go.

The guys over here. All right. So, here's what else I'm going to ask you to do as well. So, you're going to put your X.

It doesn't have to be a big X. Now, you guys were writing some things down a while ago, right? Some stuff you were moving towards. So, on the board, on the front of the board, there's all, everybody has something that they probably ought to stop doing.

Anybody here have something that they probably ought to stop doing? Everybody here have something that they ought to stop doing? Because if you don't have your hand up, you lie about other stuff too. Right?

So, what I'd like you to do is write on the front of the board something you want to stop doing. So, just kind of do it on your own. You can write it, so you don't, if there's something that's, embarrass you, if you will, just write it, code it, whatever you want to do. You know what it is.

Right? So, write it on the front of the board. You can write it off to the side. Same size as the edge?

Yep. Something. Something you want to stop doing. You want to break through and stop doing.

And then when you're done with that, you can write on the back of the board something that you wanted to be, something you want to do, something you've been thinking about doing. Like how many people do you want to talk to about your business every day? You guys know these numbers. So, take your time there.

Yeah, on the front, something you want to stop doing. Something on the back, something that you want to do. that you're gonna break out of and do. Make sense?

Think about it. Again, you can write some kind of a code. Don't overthink it. It's there, right in the front of your mind, right now.

You know what it is. And it doesn't have to be, it can be something very simple. So, you guys got your goggles? So how many have got, you guys, and who else is Waz?

And I'm gonna tell you a little bit about my team because your guys are doing that. All of these guys, at one time, have worked with me at Tony Robbins. My fire captain out here is a retired captain here in Dade County, Florida, in the fire department. He's also a firefighter paramedic, Justin.

Waz will be in here in a minute. And so, kind of interesting that you would have a firefighter out here. The other gentleman out there, as well as Brian, is an attorney. So we brought our A team, that's for sure.

Great guy. In fact, he just told me here recently that he's going to quit being an attorney and he wants to become a family counselor, rather than he's a divorce attorney and he doesn't want to do that anymore, which I thought was pretty interesting on his part. So how are we doing? Everybody done?

Everybody through? All right. All right, so here's what this is gonna look like. We're gonna hold these boards about right here for you guys.

And you're gonna stand up, so let's go ahead and do that now. So go ahead and get everybody to stand up, if you would, please. Somebody's gonna need some help. Mom, you can sit and maybe Dad will come in and we'll whatever to do to support you.

That's good, you know what I mean? So, to break the board, go ahead and do it for me. Why don't you just put your boards on the ground for a second, so we'll get into the physiology of this. All right?

So here's my first question to you about the board break. If I hit this board with the same amount of pressure every time, will it break the board? Yes or no? Yes.

Yes, who said yes? Raise your hands. Who said yes? Yes.

Is there anybody that disagrees with it? Anybody thinks no? You guys are absolutely correct. Yeah, you're gonna hit it with the same amount of pressure.

The board doesn't care. This board does not care about anything that's going on with your life, personally, anything else. All it knows is that if you hit it like this, let's try that again. Feel that right there, all right?

So now, you wanna also get your monkey paw, get that thumb tucked in, because you don't wanna hit that thumb. You wanna hit right here. Look at this part. This is good.

This is bad. All right, let's try that again. You guys got that? Look at this, go.

Let's do this with me. Come on, let's play out a little bit. This is good. This is bad.

You guys are rock stars, all right. So, what you're gonna do is you're gonna get yourself into a stance where you're almost in a martial arts stance, where you're facing with one foot forward and your back on your dominant leg. So, if you're right-handed, right-footed, you're probably gonna lean back. You're probably gonna lean back on this like this, all right?

And so, here's what it's gonna be. That board's gonna be about right here. And it's gonna be one, two, three. Got that?

So, guys, make that move with me. Guys, all right? Here we go. One, two, three.

All right. So, what's gonna happen is when you guys come up to do this, you're gonna have to show your holder that you're gonna do it right, because everybody goes home with a win. Now, guys, I just did this with a group of kids a couple weeks ago. I'm not gonna lie.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. Guess what? They all broke the board, right?

So, my motto is set them up to win, all right? Success leaves clues. So does failure. Pay close attention.

So, here's what it looks like, right? Real simple. Boom. That's all it is.

That's all it is, all right? So… Can you show once again? Yeah, sure.

Can you guys all see me? So, if the board's right here, it's gonna be… I'm gonna come at this board, and it's gonna be one, two, three, all right? So, you…

And typically, what you want to kind of do is if you move your body and you move your hips. Now, you don't have to do it that way, but it just makes it a lot simpler. And by the way, again, you need to thank me that I didn't bring bricks, all right? We'll do that next time.

We'll do that next time. So, I've got Brian, I've got Davey, I've got George, Waz is out at the fire, so these three guys are gonna come up here, and they're gonna get you going. I'm gonna stand here, and I'm gonna watch, so if you guys just want to come up here with me, I'll be… Hey, give my guys a hand, will you?

Hey, George. All right. All right. So, you guys are just…

Why don't you guys spread out a little bit? I'm gonna stand here, give you guys a little bit of room. Give yourself a little bit of room. All right, so who wants to go first?

Come on up. I need two more. Who's next? You guys.

Very good. All right, so here's what he's gonna do, guys. Watch. As soon as I'm out here, I'm gonna show you exactly how to do this.

So what Albie's gonna do is he's gonna line you guys up. So here's what I want you to do, all right? So George, if you'll put the board down for just a second, here's what I'm gonna do. I want you to get close to him, get your arms straight, and then hold that board out, and see there's the distance.

See that's the distance? So you're going through it, all right? So now here… All right, so go ahead and get him, so a little further.

Now put it down. Yeah. Go ahead. All right.

I want to see… Hold the board here, right? So get him lined up right there. That's good.

That's perfect. That's perfect over there. All right, so hold him up, and on the count of three, a little bit more. Get him positioned where you want it.

Yep, a little more. Okay, got it. All right, so get your knuckles back. Get your hand back.

Palm, right here, guys. Watch the palm. Hit it on the palm. Aim for that X on the board.

See where it is. On the count of three. Are you guys ready? Give him some love, you guys.

Let's show him some love. Here we go.