Category: News

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Team Trust Releases Disability Marketing Guide

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO., March 1, 2023 — Team Trust Productions, LLC., is excited to announce the release of its Disability Marketing Guide. The guide is designed to help marketers and communication professionals more effectively reach and resonate with the disability community.

“Businesses don’t know how to write, portray or talk about disability,” Ryan Wilson, Team Trust CEO and founder, said. “This guide makes it easier to feel comfortable about experiences unlike your own.”

The release of this guide comes as a Neilson report found that 34 percent of persons with disabilities are “more likely to feel they’re not represented enough in the media,” and more than half claim they’re represented inaccurately.

The same report found that the disability community is 17 percent more likely to interact with a brand that features someone with a disability.

Team Trust’s Disability Marketing Guide addresses:

– Important terms and definitions

– Language to use and not to use with regards to disability

– How to authentically tell the stories of persons with disabilities

One in four people in the United States have a disability, and the percent of persons with disabilities is rising. More kids are being born with disabilities, and more adults are acquiring disabilities. The COVID-19 pandemic also led to millions of people acquiring disabilities.

About Team Trust

Team Trust Productions is a disability production company based out of Colorado Springs. Team Trust helps nonprofits and universities nationwide tell their stories of serving the disability community through event and fundraising videos and documentary films.

Ryan was born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a rare brittle bone disease. He has used a wheelchair his entire life.

Prior to creating Team Trust, Ryan was a writer for the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee. He interviewed some of the greatest athletes with disabilities around the world, and the athletes opened Ryan’s eyes to his true potential as a human being with a disability.

For more information on Team Trust, visit teamtrustproductions.com or follow Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Contacts

Ryan Wilson:
P: 217-494-4600
E: ryan.wilson@teamtrustproductions.com

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Brands Need To Include Disability

Ryan Wilson was interviewed on the Enrollify podcast to discuss how and why brands need to include disability in their marketing.

Ryan discusses:

Easy ways to learn more about the disability community

Affordable methods to integrate disability into your current marketing plans and communications

Why building a relationship with the disability community is a win-win for everyone.

Listen to the interview: https://podcasts.enrollify.org/the-enrollify-podcast/ep-134-exploring-higher-eds-dei-marketing-gaps-why-universities-need-to-be-more-inclusive-of-the-disability-community

Access our free disability marketing guide.

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This Video Means A lot To Me. I hope it does to you, too.

By Ryan Wilson, Director

Feb. 26, 2022

Every video we produce is special. The stories we hear and tell are magical.

I feel grateful to be in a position of listening to people, and validating their experiences.

We recently had the honor of telling a rather personal story to me. It is the story of the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. The OIF helps support ground-breaking and even life-changing research for persons living with Osteogenesis Imperfecta like myself.

OI, as it’s commonly called, is a condition that causes one to have brittle bones. In other words, we — well, I — break a lot of bones.

I have broken 50 to 60 bones, in fact.

In our video for the OIF, we highlighted the organization’s long-standing commitment to support ground-breaking research for persons with OI.

The OIF often also brings together the community of us OI-ers for a number of events.

This connecting and learning from others is particularly important for anyone in the disability community.

Even with the tremendous amounts of information we can access online, persons with disabilities may not find that one resource that or person who will change their lives.

But … the OIF makes it so much easier.

If you would like a similar story told about your organization, please reach out.

We are here for you.

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Our Cost Is Your Command.

A group of men and women posing for a photo

By Team Trust

12.10.2021

Pricing is always top of mind for our clients for our clients. We get it.

When we are meeting with new clients, we always ask, “What can you afford? What have you budgeted for?”

Our primary goal is to help our clients. Sure, money matters, but it is not more important than our desire to help.

We want to meet our clients where they are, and what they can do.

Do you have an idea you’d like to discuss? Send us an email here.

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Happy Thanksgiving From Team Trust

A black and white photo of two individuals in winter jackets strapped GoPro cameras on two skiers at the Winter Park Resort in Winter Park, Co.

Hello everyone.

I hope you all are well. This is Ryan Wilson, director of Team Trust.


I wanted to personally thank each of you for helping Team Trust reach our current heights. Whether you helped us with a shoot or we helped you tell your story, we are very grateful … for each of you. I personally hope we made a difference in your lives in some way, shape or form this year. Each of you have done the same for me and our Team.


Interestingly, Team Trust started to take off after I regained consciousness earlier this year (https://teamtrustproductions.com/little-things/). That, I must admit, was unexpected, but it gave me many reasons to unplug — ahem, escape — from all those IVs as quickly and, sure, safely as possible.


Enjoy your day and family.

Reach out if we can ever be of any assistance, even if that’s buying you pizza. (We’ve got tasty connections!)R

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Now Is The Time to Help Disabled People

When we are talking with prospective clients, they, more times than not, don’t understand the importance and significance of supporting the disability community in more ways than is required by law. This is understandable, considering most business owners we talk with don’t have disabilities.


Some businesses do want to help the disability community, but are afraid their lack of knowledge about living with a disability will result in a “PR disaster.” So they will procrastinate on making changes until it is too late. However, with a little practice and understanding anyone can empathy with experiences unlike their own.


The primary goal of Team Trust is to help businesses understand the disability community. We will tell you in great deal why persons with disabilities need certain accomodations, for example, and we’ll share personal stories to deepen your awareness. Additionally, we will share many examples of the disability services that work at businesses like yours and the services that have not worked.


We can and want to help any business excel at tapping into a diverse and large audience that is the disability community. We hear “now isn’t the right time” to address their disability services frequently. If not now, though, then when is? The disability community has waited too long for your help.

To join Team Trust in making a difference, contact info@teamtrustproductions.com.

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Introducing Our Partnership with Catalyst Sports

Team Trust Productions is proud to unveil a partnership with Catalyst Sports. Catalyst Sports is a non-profit organization that changes the lives of persons with disabilities through adapted adventures.

Catalyst Sports is traveling to nine cities across the southeast to introduce individuals with disabilities to adaptive mountain biking. Team Trust is filming this tour, and is producing a short film at each stop.

Here is Team Trust’s first video, filmed in Chattanooga, Ga.

To learn more about Catalyst Sports, go to https://www.catalystsports.org.

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The Little Things in Life

By Ryan Wilson

May 8, 2021

Life is no guarantee.

When your life comes into question, you begin to appreciate the little things: From colors and food, to kindness, air and humanity. It’s all part of the life we were given.

I have been hospitalized for nearly three weeks now. I am recovering quickly.

Interestingly, it took 2 hours to correct my two broken bones in surgery. It took two days for surgeons to remove the breathing tube from my throat.

I broke two bones, and the uncertainty about my future came into the present.

I have scoliosis. It causes the curvature of the spine, and it affects my airways (throat). Doctors have long feared operating on me. My back has curved more with age, and my childhood doctor, who operated on me many times before I turned 21, blatantly said a breathing tube could now sever my spinal cord in my next surgery. In other words, the breathing tube could kill me.

This was on my mind and my parents’ minds as I headed to surgery a couple weeks ago: Will I survive? Do I need a Will or Power of Attorney at age 25? I don’t know. I broke two bones, and the uncertainty about my future came into the present. To top it off, I was transferred to a hospital I had never been to. We did not know how familiar they were with my disability — Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) — spine and airways. OI is a brittle bone disease often coupled with scoliosis.

I met with a number of surgeons and anesthesiologists about my neck, and the implications of my surgery. We took X-rays of my throat, and a surgeon shined a light down my windpipe before surgery. It all looked better than expected.

Yet, all of our discoveries did not solve all of our problems. Surgeons tried five different times to place a breathing tube down my throat. My throat began to swell up; I struggled to breath independently.

I was deemed to be in a “critical” condition, and I was wheeled to the ICU. As I moved from one unit to the other, I was surviving via an oxygen mask that a person manually squeezed air into.

My throat was swelling up; I struggled to breath independently.

Eventually, I came to, and I started breathing on my own.

My parents saw all of this before their eyes. Understandably, they were terrified. When I awoke and learned the details of the operation, I was terrified.

This is an experience my family and I will remember for our entire lives. We now have a deep, meaningful appreciation for all life gives us.