David Avrin: From A Cappella to the World Stage

You don't tell stories where you're the hero. You tell stories where you learn the big lesson.

Our children take attendance at their events. You're either there or you're not.

If you saw Pitch Perfect, that was us, but we all had jobs. I had a guy who was a PhD in biochemistry. Another guy was a sales guy. So by day, I was PR director at Children's Hospital, and by night we'd play rock star and do a three-hour show a cappella. So it was super fun.

My real struggle is just recognizing my limitations, and I just can't say yes to everything. Even if I want to say yes to everything, I want to spend my life doing things that matter with people who care.

It's a great question. As I think back to the trajectory of my life, and part of this was conversations that I had with my father, who would say in later years that he was convinced when I was young, like 12, 13, that by the time I was 16 years old, I would be on every drug. I laughed. I said, why would you think that? He says, because you were this bigger-than-life kid. I was the second oldest of six. And he says, you just knew how to push everybody's buttons. I think they wrote a book in the years back called Personality Plus. I'm probably still that guy to an extent, but he says, you were almost feral. You just couldn't keep still in class. They were wondering if it was... now, of course, they call it ADHD.

And the pivotal moment for me was in 10th grade. I auditioned for a school play, and that so changed the trajectory of my life in that I had this outlet to perform, and this love of being on stage, which I carry today at 61 years old. I've spent my life on stage. I think some people going into comedy, some people do it because they're funny and some people are looking for affirmation. Some people go to school and run for student council because they're true leaders, and other people just want to be included.

I was just one of those guys that I didn't need applause. I still don't need applause. I'm a sharer, and I loved being on stage. I did plays and I did musicals, all the way to the extent where I went to college on a full-ride theater scholarship.

It was funny, because my father was a rocket scientist, a true pragmatic engineer. We were so different in personalities, and he loved me. We had a great relationship. Years later, I actually dedicated one of my books to my father, right after he had passed away. And I wrote in the dedication, to my father, Philip Avrin, a true rocket scientist who never really understood what I did for a living, but he loved me anyway.

So to go back to your question, that pivotal moment for me was the outlet, was channeling that energy, channeling that extrovert, which I am to the core. I just love to perform. I didn't have self-esteem issues where I needed affirmation or applause. I just loved it.

Then I went to college on this scholarship, and what was interesting was it was kind of a different dynamic. Not to make any judgments, but I was like the only straight guy in the entire department, as they say. Not that there's anything wrong with that, right? But it was kind of interesting. So it was my ticket to college, but I also realized after a couple of years, I think I'm on a different trajectory than a lot of these other people. I was the only one who really had to think... I mean, generally the only one. Like, I have to support a wife and kids someday, and I don't think I can do that by doing community theater in God's Wrath, Iowa, when I'm 60 years old.

And so I had so much fun doing it, but I realized I've got to get serious and get a job. So, long story short, I ended up changing my major to broadcast journalism, because when you have a voice like mine, people are like, you should talk on the radio. I had this epiphany, crisis, whatever it was, and I gave up my scholarship and I changed my major. That was the second moment that changed the trajectory of my life. But I think going back to your—

I gave up the scholarship. But I'll tell you honestly, it was probably, as I think back, and maybe this is my own revisionist history in my brain, a mutual decision. I think they were realizing I wasn't all in as the big scholarship winner that they had at the University of Northern Colorado. They also expected your life and your time and everything else, and there were a lot of things I wanted to do. I did intramural sports and all those things.

So the day when I decided to do that, I was just driving around in my car going, what am I going to do? And I pulled in to the top 40 radio station and I said, can I speak to your program director? And she said, sure, can I tell him who's here? I said, tell him it's David Avrin. She goes, okay. I walked into his office, sat down, at 20 years old, and I said, so tell me about radio. And I walked out with a job. I loved it. Then I walked over and quit my scholarship, changed my major, and stood in a two-hour line at financial aid to try and think, how am I going to do this now?

But I love the question, because I think we can look back, especially as we get older, at some of those pivotal moments where things did change for us. It wasn't always because of a crisis. It might be because of an epiphany or a catalyst or something. I started thinking, what would my life be if I didn't have an outlet to channel that creative energy? And then even as an adult, I sang in an a cappella group for years, so I've always been on stage. Now as a professional speaker and consultant, I'm still leading from the front of the room. So it's kind of interesting, different methodologies for communicating and sharing, but it's always sort of in the front of the room.

You know what's interesting? I don't know that I was out of my comfort zone. I think it was more of a recognition that here's an opportunity to do something that really looks fun, and it was probably in conversation with friends. Are you going to do that? Oh, I'm going to do that, sounds good, let's do the fun. But in my mind it wasn't like Broadway. It was like, who doesn't want to be a movie star, or something like that.

And you think, as young men, how many things did we do that ultimately was about getting girls? Every guy who picks up a guitar, you think about it, it's for chicks. They'll like this kind of stuff. I was 16 years old, and I remember I joined the ski club because a girl I liked was in it, and then sat next to her on the bus, whatever. But what's interesting is it wasn't out of my comfort zone. I think I found a home that was really exciting for me. It wasn't really stepping out. I mean, certainly there were other things in my life, for all of us, but that was one where I think I kind of found my tribe, which was the theater kids.

I'm the second oldest of six brothers, and then I have a stepbrother and two adopted sisters.

A hundred percent. It was interesting, though, because I am very fortunate that I had very loving parents. My mom was crazy, like think Liza Minnelli with an extra 40 pounds of no filter. That was my mom. So the creative side clearly came from her. If she could have had any dream, she would have had the von Trapp Family Singers, but nobody else in the family could sing. She wanted us to be the Osmonds, she wanted to be [inaudible] and Mom.

My father was a pragmatist. Even though he absolutely supported anything, he would always throw in the caveat, have something to fall back on. So even in college, with a theater major, which I was for the first couple of years, he was supportive of that and certainly helped financially, but he's like, what are you falling back on? So I've always had that voice in my head of that pragmatic, and I'm kind of that balance between my mom and my dad.

One of the things, John, that you had said about my other siblings, we're all very different, but all in very successful kinds of careers. My family was Jewish, and in the Jewish tradition, and this doesn't sound related, but it is, there's the old conversation that we always have in any religious community: where does life begin? Is it at conception? Is it at birth? In the Jewish tradition, you're considered a viable life form when you graduate from medical school. So there's a pressure.

Yeah, but that's second tier. My son, he's a doctor. Such a good boy, right? But it's true, and it's true in some of the Asian communities as well. But in the Jewish community, that expectation of education, that expectation of success. So I have an older brother who's an attorney. I have another brother who's been in commercial insurance for most of his years. I have another brother who is the six-time AP sports writer of the year for the whole planet. I have a sister who's been in restaurant management. So there is this expectation: do whatever you love, we love you, get your education and get a good job. Everybody has their own path, but we're all close, and my siblings are hilarious. We had very raucous Thanksgiving dinners, and any family dinner growing up, the volume was off the charts. So very ethnic, kind of Eastern European.

Yeah.

And now some are scattered in different places.

Yes.

We took the pressure off. Exactly. That's what happened there. Well, that's what it was when my nephew, who is now like 30 years old, is my older brother's son. When my son was born, he was thrilled that the pressure was off. He wasn't the only golden child who, you'd better be a surgeon or something else. So, yeah, high expectations, but also just incredibly loving, ethnic kind of a background.

Oh, yeah. Food is everything. And if you didn't eat, it was an insult.

Well, there's some of those ethnic kinds of things as well. Like the lox and bagels, whatever. That's called a kugel. A kugel is essentially a noodle dish. There's a sweet kugel and there's a cheesy kugel. So we would have people over and say, oh, my kids are nuts. Like at Thanksgiving, we always have a kugel. And other people go, you've been talking about this forever. And they go, oh, it's mac and cheese. And we're like, no, it's kugel. And they said, yeah, but it's just kind of mac and cheese. Well, okay, maybe it is, but no, it's kugel. We'd make noodles and cheese, and then my mom would put cornflakes over the top, so the crunchy part...

Very working class, low-end, but it still makes me smile. But yeah, it's mac and cheese.

But the best part is, and as you know in your family, the two of you, it's just family. God forbid somebody makes it to the Thanksgiving table or the dinner table with a zit on their nose, it's on. It's relentless. God forbid somebody in high school shows up, one of the boys, with an earring to be cool. Oh yeah, it's on. It's merciless. So we always had to prep the boyfriends and girlfriends of my brothers and sisters and I before they came and joined us for dinner. We had to prepare them that this isn't the quiet clanking of the... it's raucous, lots of conversations. So I smile recalling some of these things too.

And then of course, as we get older, we get to decide what traditions we're going to pass along. What are we going to leave behind, and what are the things we want to pass along to our families?

They're not all traditions. There are certain things, and it's a different mindset. Physical punishment was part of the deal. There was never a thought in my mind that I was going to start reaching for my belt when my kids misbehaved. So I made a conscious decision, I'm not going to pass that part on. I didn't mean I didn't want to throttle my kids from time to time, but yeah, those kinds of things, I thought, we're not going to do that.

And then just being intentional about special time with the kids. Does that make sense? Because I'm the second oldest of six, which is kind of interesting. Between my wife and I, we have five. I could count on one hand the number of times I got to do something with just me and my dad. And part of that was we went through a divorce when I was young as well. So I made a decision early, especially because I traveled a bit for work and my speaking, that for my three kids, as they grew up, from the time that they were eight on, I told them each year they could all look at my calendar and the places, and they could choose a special daddy trip without their stupid brothers and sisters. It would just be us.

So every year, from when my kids were eight till 18 or 19 when they left, we did a special trip. I would go speak for an hour in Washington, DC, or something, and then we would do three days of Smithsonian and all those kinds of things, and order room service and pillow fights on the bed. My daughters really wanted to go to Broadway shows, which is great because I love Broadway as well, and my son would want to go to Disney or something like that. They're all in their 20s, 21 to 30 right now, but they all think back and they can remember at least ten individual special times where they got my undivided attention. They were just great memories for me as well.

Yeah, absolutely. The logistics of that. But here's the thing: you still can. A couple of years ago my son, who's almost 22, said to me, do I still get to do the dad trip? And I said, do you still want to? He says, yeah. So where do we go? I didn't have a gig, but I said, points and stuff, and so he and I went to London and did the Tower of London and all this stuff. He wanted to do the hits. And then we took the train up to Edinburgh in Scotland and did Edinburgh Castle and all this stuff. Just me and my 19-year-old son, or maybe he was 20, I think 19. So I'm still looking for those opportunities. He's still saying, like, Dad, next time you go to Europe, take me. I'm like, you're taking my wife. Thanks though.

But yeah, I still try and do it, because that's the nice thing about my business, that I travel internationally. I get to go on some amazing trips. My flight, my hotel are paid for, and so maybe it's extending it or picking up there. I had a presentation years ago in Barcelona, and I took my younger two, because it was spring break time. All I do is use points. They got to go with me, and what they didn't know was that I was secretly flying in their older sister, who was at college. So we all met up in Barcelona. I spoke for an hour, and the rest of the time we just laughed and saw things. I don't know how you grew up, but I didn't get to do those things growing up. We would take a van to Mexico during college to drink Coronas. That was my international experience. But those are the kind of traditions that I hope they say, I want to do special daddy or mommy time with my kids as well, and be really intentional about that.

Oh, I don't know that it started off...

Well, it happened probably because I was able to take one of my kids, and then I realized how great it was. And then probably one of the other two were like, whoa, what about me? Why don't I go? Okay, we'll do our trip too. And then I just realized I was going to really prioritize it. But it all really came from that place of the one-on-one time. Because for us, yeah, we're going to do this as a family, and it's rarely as fun as we think it is, because who's having a meltdown or who needs diapers changed or whatever else. But I really crave that as well, and I realized that I didn't have that growing up. I did not have that. And so it grew into, I want to do this all the time, every year.

OKRs, what?

Stuff like that, like date night. Like with all my father-daughter dances and things like that. Way more fun for me. I mean, for them at the time. But we also realize that a lot of times, things that happen when they were little kids, they have very few memories of. But we have cherished them. My mom passed along to me, she's passed away about 11 years ago, she passed along this one quote once when she was figuring out email or something: that we would give everything we owned to have our grown children little for just a day. And that gets me choked up, because that precious time, but every phase is amazing in different ways. I mean, you've got to be proud of your son when you realize the man that he has become. But at one point you were a little kid, and you were the squishy little kid, and he was blowing on your belly and making you giggle.

You will remember that forever.

But the other things, during the trips, that my kids still talk about today, which was really great: I always want to sort of model the kinds of behavior as well as how we treat people. When we would travel, there's no shortage of people that serve us. One of the things I taught my kids early on was that you talk to everyone. They, of course, were embarrassed that we do. But when you walk down the hall, and I would verbalize this to them, when you walk down the hall in the hotel and you pass that housekeeper who's on the cart, all day while we're at the beach, they're cleaning our toilets. And while we're at the amusement park, they're vacuuming our rooms.

To this day, and they still talk about it, they're in their mid-twenties, they say hi and good morning to everybody, because the response back is like, they don't expect it, but then it gives you that great warm feeling. Whether it's talking to cab drivers or Uber drivers or getting conversations going, at first it's really embarrassing, I do, I understand. But it's really important.

Because it's putting yourself out there. I think maybe from a pop psychology perspective you might say we've lost the ability to communicate because we're texting, whatever. I don't know that that's really true. I think it's learned behavior. You go to New York and people aren't saying hi to each other. Just busy. But you go to Oklahoma City and everybody's saying hi. All of my kids did a semester abroad in college in Europe, and they all came back and they laughed and they said, Dad, nobody says hi. I learned in the first week to stop doing it, because they just stare at you. And I said, but it's okay if they just stare at you. You can still say hi to people, and they say hi back.

But it's a great question. I think it's very regional. I think it's the communities. But I find, the older I get, the more I do it, the more I want to show grace. Instead of saying thank you, I say I appreciate you. I don't know where I heard that, but I started doing it all the time. I was on the phone with somebody this morning who was trying to help me, my kid was reviewing a contract and I was talking to my prepaid legal, whatever. And at the very end, I said, all right, great, thanks, I appreciate you. And the response is, because not enough people do it.

It's like, here's a weird analogy: handwritten thank-you notes. They're so appreciated because they're not the norm. There was a time when your parents made you write those thank-you notes, whatever, and now they're so appreciated. Those are the kind of lessons that I wanted to teach my kids, those kinds of things: you go out of your way and you do the right thing.

I'll admit, I was never very religious growing up, but very cultural. And I don't know, maybe it's more of a function of an Eastern European kind of thing, or a Mediterranean, whether you think of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, big lively families, whether it's Italian or, my family was from Ukraine. That sort of Eastern European, it's not hugs, it's bear hugs. It's not touching their faces, grabbing their cheeks. It's just what I grew up with. There's an acceptance that's quite amazing, honestly. And it's very heartfelt. My dad was this burly, I used to tell him, my dad looked like a caveman rabbi. He was a furry, hairy man, but just a heart of gold.

By contrast, my first wife was from a very German family, and I'm not saying anything negative, it's just sort of the dynamic. They didn't really talk about issues to each other, but they talked about issues about each other to their siblings or to their mom. I saw a comedian once say that these are the families where you have to say a disease and whisper. Like, I understand that Joan has... cancer. And a lot of quiet at the dinner table, and kids are to be seen and not heard. It was very difficult because my mother-in-law was very religious, a little pious kind of a, very German. And my kids were feral. My daughters, my middle daughter was, oh my gosh. That's what my dad, my stepmom used to say all the time. But my middle daughter, anything she could grab, a hairbrush, a fork, became a microphone, and she's singing at the top of her lungs and she's running around. That was very difficult for my in-laws, because in their mind, we're not disciplining enough. And I'm like, she's hilarious. That's great.

But anyway, that observation, I think it's indicative of certain ethnic communities. Mexican, Hispanic families, very family, family, family, right? As well. Very big extended families. Hawaiian families, it's the same kind of thing. It's like how many generations are together. I love that, every part of it. So cool. But I'm also much more extroverted than my siblings. I think they are to an extent, but we're all who we are.

That's a really great question. I don't know. It's hard to say, I'm such a great guy. It's just where my heart is, and I want to be a good person. But there was also stuff that came from my family, and I'll give you a really tough story. What we've learned as speakers or authors is that stories have characters, stories have lessons, and they have heroes, and it's never you. I learned that early on. You don't tell stories where you're the hero. You tell stories where you learn the big lesson.

I have this in one of my early books. I wrote The Savvy Dad. It was one of the most profound lessons of my life. I was 12 years old, and one of my best friends was this black guy. I don't know, African American or whatever else, but he was a black kid. I was a white kid. One of my best friends, and today he's a Denver cop. Seriously, one of my best friends in the world. A whole bunch of us were playing football outside or something, and I got mad at something, and we were in this deep, stupid 12-year-old thing, and I pulled out the N-word. I don't even remember the circumstance, other than somehow my father found out. I think my older brother told him or something else.

But the rage in my father. My father grew up as this Jewish kid in East L.A., and he had his nose broken seven times before he was 15 years old. The Mexican gangs. He was a 'Christ killer.' It's just what happened in those communities. He was bullied in such a severe way, and the fact that he came out of that and made this conscious decision that his children will not be prejudiced, and we will not put up with that in our family, to the extent that when my father found out what I had said, I don't even know if I remembered that I had said it, but I was stupid, I was 12 years old, he comes busting into my room, and I was listening to music or something, and he came in and he screamed, did you say this, whatever else. He grabbed me by the back of the collar and dragged me up the sidewalk to this kid's house. His name is Eric. He knocked on the door, and I'm scared to death. And he asked their entire family to come out on the porch. We had three siblings and his mom and his daddy, and he asked them all to come out, and he made me stand in front of each one of them and apologize for what I had said, and then move down to the next one and apologize for what I had said.

When I was done, he smacked me all the way back home and grounded me for six weeks. And in no uncertain way, he said to me, this is not what we believe. This will not be tolerated. I remember thinking to myself years later that if I ever encountered such a scenario with my kids, I would hope to have the courage to be as resolute as he was, because he said to me in no uncertain terms, this is not who we are and this is not what we believe. So I have to give some credit to my parents that some of this, we treat everybody well. It's not trying to be magnanimous. It's just being human.

But part of it is I had this thing on my wall early on in my career. It said, the measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out. So it's not about not being caught or anything else. It's that you do the right thing because it's the right thing. I'll give you another quick example. A year ago, my son came home. He was home for summer from college, and he'd gone bowling with his friends, and he came home with bowling shoes. I'm like, dude, what are you doing with those? He says, oh yeah, I forgot to whatever. I said, that's not okay. They're not yours. So there's bowling shoes, I said, you're going to take them back. He says, I will. It ended up being like two weeks and they were still there, and I told him, you don't sleep here tonight. Dad, why are you making such a big... I told you I'm going to bring them back. I said, you go bring them back for one reason: it's not yours. And it doesn't matter if they're a big company. There's a principle. So he took them back. That's just the kind of stuff, I hope that it resonates, because I'm not going to be around forever.

There's a guy named Noah benShea. He wrote a book called Jacob the Baker. He's sort of this prophet kind of a guy, and he had this saying that was on 40 million Starbucks cups, and this one I love. It said, do not hug your children so they will hug you back, so that they will hug their children and their children's children. I get choked up, because I think that kind of legacy is really important. It's that old line that says, my dad didn't tell me how to live. He just lived and let me watch it. That's not true. My dad definitely told me how to live. But the sentiment stands.

You know, I love that. It was interesting. When I got married, my now ex-wife, we're all good friends, had been married before, so my oldest daughter is actually from her first marriage. [inaudible] old. We sat down, and I was probably 30 or early thirties, and when we were talking about getting married, we had been together, we truly had a great relationship, but she said, we're going to talk about the hard things, because I'm not going to go through this again, and I have a daughter. We laughed that we were very adult about this. We went to a village in [inaudible] and we both came with a [inaudible] piece of paper and said we're not going to be like, when you get married in your early 20s, because people in their early 20s get married for two reasons: they're having really good sex and they can't imagine not being with the other person. It's nothing to do with how are you going to handle money and who loads the dishwasher and everything else. We weren't kids, so we sat down and we said we're going to talk about money and religion and discipline and how are we going to do those things.

So, David, as you were saying, we were very intentional. What are the things that we can agree on, what can we compromise, and what are the people that we want to send into the world? I love that line that says, as parents we're not raising children, we're raising adults. Our job is to prepare them to be loving, productive, healthy, contributing people. And so I'm proud to say that I think we did that.

I love that. I knew where you were going with that.

And some of us have people who change into different people multiple times a day. So I just call my wives sister wives, but all those people are really awesome, so that's a good part.

Well, it was interesting, because I had that outlet for ten years. I sang with an a cappella doo-wop group and we were pretty good. We traveled a bit, we had CDs out in the stores, we opened for Ray Charles. If you saw Pitch Perfect, that was us, but we all had jobs. I had a guy who was a PhD in biochemistry, another guy was a sales guy. So by day I was PR director at Children's Hospital, and by night we'd play rock star and do a three-hour show a cappella. So it was super fun.

I do. And not only did I have a mullet, I had a permed mullet. That's how John Stamos I was at the time.

But I loved it. It was a real great balance. And I was dating a lot. I'm in my twenties. So by day I was doing PR and media for Children's Hospital. And what happened, to answer your question, is I would get asked occasionally, would you come and speak to a community group, or would you serve on this panel about marketing, or whatever else. When I left them and started my own PR firm, PR marketing, one of my clients early on was a guy who was a professional speaker. And he said, can you help me get press? I was helping people get in the newspaper and things like that. And that's when I sat across from the guy and I remember talking to him and I'm like, wait, you make how much money to talk for an hour? And he laughed and he said, yes, I do, but I don't do it every hour. That was sort of the first inclination of the business of what this is, and that you can get paid to stand on stage and teach people what you know.

I've always been very comfortable on stage, and people still ask if I ever get nervous. And I'm like, no, I don't, because I only talk about the things I'm an expert on and that I know what I'm doing. If somebody asked me to get up and talk about animal husbandry, I have no idea. But I'm good at this.

That's when I sort of realized, wow, you can actually... because I was in a place where I was doing the marketing and PR and I was getting a little bit older and a little bit burnt out on doing the grunt work. It wasn't because I was above it. I was just tired of it. I learned a lot, and I was tired of working for people who knew less than I did. I'm where I am now: in my consulting work, I'll only report to the CEO or somebody who's an SVP. I don't want to report to your marketing manager, because I've earned the right to work on a higher level. So that was sort of the pivot, of realizing that instead of just doing the work, I can get paid to teach other people what I've learned. What a great industry.

People always talk about getting on the speaking circuit, and I've come to realize there is no circuit. There is no speaking circuit, there are gigs. I'm actually asked quite often to speak to other speaker organizations. I've spoken to ten of the international, in different countries around the world, and sort of dispelled some of those myths of the profession. The reality is speaking is not a business. Getting the gig is the business. Speaking is the performance. Getting the gig is the hard part. And there are systems, and reaching the right people, and being persuasive and beating out others and tailoring your content. Ninety percent of aspiring speakers leave within 18 to 24 months because they're starving. They think that if they go take a four-day boot camp on hand gestures, their phone's going to ring. Phone doesn't ring. So anyway, that's a whole other conversation.

But to answer your question, I developed a measure of expertise, and then I realized there was another venue and vehicle to share that knowledge and to monetize the content that was in my brain. One of the things that the industry has said for many years is that we're not selling speeches, we're selling wisdom. And that wisdom can be delivered across a variety of platforms: speeches, books, I've written seven books now, and consulting, and all of that as well. So it's an interesting industry, and I'm fortunate to be invited around the world to do it.

You're assuming I don't. That's fair, but it's a great way... for the first part of what you said, it is essentially the same presentation, but for a reason. I don't do custom. I tailor 100 percent. But they're bringing me in, I'm not there shilling for the company. Generally at the conferences I'm at, they'll have a number of speakers, most of them from the industry, maybe vendors and others who are sharing something. My role is to be that outside voice: here's what we're seeing across a variety of industries now, what we can learn from that. But in my mind, it's a living presentation. I know my content well enough that I can pivot. I can talk about things specifically to their industry. My slides just keep me on track, because I will go off on tangents all the time. So there's a structure to it, but in the content there's always something new, or something I'll try, and sometimes maybe it's even humor that I'll just think of in the moment, because I'm pretty irreverent. Occasionally in my mind I'll go, that worked, and other times it won't. And then I'll even say it out loud: okay, kill the bit about so-and-so. And then I'll get a laugh on that. Just like Jerry Seinfeld does.

So I do a lot of prep for the presentation. I've got a basic structure, I tailor it for their industry, but I'm always adding something new. I'm always putting in new content, new research. Throw in a new slide. I did one over the summer, actually, tailored for my industry. I did main stage for the National Speakers Association, so it was a huge honor for me to be invited. I'm in front of all of my peers on the main stage, and I did a whole custom presentation for that. And one of the things I did, a little game show in the middle, was called Truth or Nonsense. It was like Meeting Planner Truth or Nonsense. They shouted out things and I had music and I had all this stuff that I had gotten done for it. It killed. It worked so well. It's in every presentation now, and I just change all the questions to things that have to do with their industry.

It's the apartment industry, it's financial services, it's hotel hospitality, it's restaurant or retail. So I just change the question, but I've got the music and the game show stuff, just a segment in the middle to keep it entertaining, to keep it lively. I don't get burnt out on it because it always changes. When somebody hires me, sometimes they'll hire me eight to 18 months out, and they'll say, can you send me your slide deck? And I say, not until two weeks before, because what I'm going to do for you then is not what I'm doing today. I'm going to learn a lot between now and then. And a new study, I'm actually working on a research study myself that I'm funding that will drive a whole bunch of new content. So it keeps it really interesting for me. It's also one of the reasons why I write books, to stay relevant. I mean, granted, you want to be top of mind. Why are we talking to this guy? You can't keep reliving the successes from 20 years ago. But because there's something new to say, there's something new to learn, there's new research, there are new trends. So generally the title shifts a little bit, but I don't come up with a new presentation. I just keep enhancing and revising my core content.

I don't have a memorized speech. I mean, I have general content, but yeah.

But also, John, if you were to teach, because you've done marketing for so many years and been a fractional CMO, what you would have taught five years ago is different today. Strategically similar. Six months ago, tactically, very different. Because I wrote books on marketing, and my kids run circles around me. I have a lot of knowledge, but the tactics are changing and changing. So if you were out teaching and presenting what you would do for a manufacturing organization, it's going to be different than what you do for a law firm or financial services. The core messages, the core lessons, the core structure is your knowledge, what you've put together, what you've crafted, but the application is always very, very tailored to the industry.

Score, if I have that right? I think so. I'm trying to remember all the stuff. I had a recent book and I'm numb. That's the one I'm thinking about. I'm numb from my own book.

Well, here's an answer I don't think you're going to expect. The shift from marketing to customer experience, and I'll draw the distinction between customer service and customer experience, came just because the market shifted. As a longtime marketing guy, the things that we say about ourselves are less impactful today than what other people say about us. So that's what started my research and my shift from marketing. It became really that primary driver for consumer behavior: we'll go to Yelp and TripAdvisor and Rotten Tomatoes, and their jingle is less important. Marketing is not unimportant, but what's really important is that social proof, that consensus in the marketplace.

I would love to be able to say it came from this warm place in my heart and wanting to help people enhance how they serve. It came from the fact that I'm really impatient, and the things that frustrated me. My first book in the customer experience realm was a book called Why Customers Leave and How to Win Them Back. That was a bit of a stretch for me because it was a new subject matter. But I said at the beginning of it, in the foreword, to be prepared, this is a bit of a rant. We're in five languages now for that book. It's astonishing how much it resonated, because the things that, pardon the language, piss me off, apparently we're pissing a lot of people off.

What's interesting was I would be able to run some of the stuff by my wife. She's got her master's in psychology. She's a great sounding board, but part of it is because we're very different people. She's fine with certain things that make me so frustrated. She loves self-checkout. I want to take the scanning gun and blow my head off, because I'm just not very good at it. Of course, there's a lot of humor that can come from that as well. But I started really looking at what are all these points of friction, of frustration for customers and clients, and how can I be of service to help companies get better, to stop frustrating their customers and clients?

I was on a podcast and somebody asked me, if we've been talking about this for 50 years, why do companies just not get it? And I said, I think, of course, they get it. I'm a big fan of business. I think business people are very, very smart, but it's just hard. It's hard balancing predictability and profitability with changing customer preferences. There are certain things that we just don't want to do because it may not be profitable. That's why I make a living, because I help them do that better. I would love to say it came from a place of being magnanimous and wanting to be [inaudible]. No, it came because I'm easily annoyed. And once again, as my middle daughter would say, have you met my dad? The things that my wife would prefer that I just let go, now I can channel it. We always say, speakers, we don't have bad experiences, we get new stories to tell.

When I'm driving through a Wendy's and I ask if I can get the two breakfast sandwiches for two dollars deal, and they said no, you need to use the app. I said, I don't have the app. They said, well, you can pull over and download it. I said, thank you for that permission. I said, I'm at the drive-thru, can I just get it right now? And they said no. And the old me, and old me means ten years ago, would be like, I'll go online and rant about it, or tell them off. The new me pulls over and says, okay, let's see how long this takes, because there's a lesson in this. So I've created this new filter that I'm always looking for, where's the deficiency, where's the false, the bad mindset, that I can be of service. My wife's a great sounding board because she's very patient and tolerant. She's an angel. My 26-year-old assistant, Hannah, is a great sounding board because she looks at it through a millennial lens. I look at it through a boomer lens. And once again, back to business, all of these are fodder for lessons, for teaching, for consulting, for supporting my family.

I had no idea. And I define my subject matter as customer experience. Customer service is, we know how to treat people. Granted, we have younger employees, we need to train them, here's our culture, here's what we expect. But the experience is so different today from a customer's perspective. How easy is it to communicate or understand or pay or contact? When I speak, and I've spoken to so many of the CEO roundtable groups, I used to lead those groups as well, I ask leaders, what do you think your competitive advantage is? We always get some version of quality. It's our quality and commitment, caring, trust. It's about the people. And I say, well, here's what the research shows. Your customers are assuming quality. You'd better be good, I mean, you wouldn't be in business. And they're prioritizing speed. Speed of communication, speed of issue resolution, speed of answers, speed of access, simplicity of process. If I type in my username and my password and I get one letter wrong on my password, do I have to type in my username again? That's hashtag first world problems. But you'll see companies, from a UX, user experience perspective, they're trying to shave an eighth of a second. How fast can we get that transaction?

And then the final thing is convenience. The opposite of convenience is inconvenient. How convenient is the customer experience, from their perspective? They ask themselves the question: was that frustrating? Was it simple? Was it intuitive? People would ask about my book, which was called Why Customers Leave: why do customers leave? They leave because they can. Because we have choices. There was something a little negative about that. The book did really well. It's about being ridiculously easy to do business with. What does that look like? And all the case studies and everything else that I cover in that.

Companies start with the technology. What can we do? And then ask the question, is there a market for that? A solution looking for a problem. Exactly. And the tech people, and that's one of my audiences, is how do we connect the product development people with it? But it's so brilliant, such a great observation, the Steve Jobs part, which is what the customers want. How do we make that easier for them? In my business, I just deal with that one sliver of that, which is, what's that process? What's the mindset? Do we have policies that say no to stupid things? We get this all the time. Somebody will be in a restaurant with their friends and say, I'd like to do the chicken Caesar salad. Can I get shrimp instead of chicken? And they always say, no menu substitutions. And I was like, why? It's a restaurant. It's a different protein. Just charge her two bucks more and she'll be thrilled. But it's so easy to be lazy. The pushback I get all the time is, well, if we do it for her, we have to do it for everybody. And I always say, no, you don't. It's your business. Do whatever you want. And they look at me like, oh, I guess. So the whole idea of being of service is important. I don't want to go down a rabbit hole here.

The only way you can do something with one click is because behind the scenes, all of the rest of that is taken care of.

And expedited, which is really important, if you can get to what they want quickly. How often are we calling organizations and you hear on the phone, please listen closely as our menu options have changed? And now you're going to hear nine things. This whole concept of helping people get to what they want very, very quickly. Too many companies want to guide them down: here's how you do this, and then you do this, so that they have predictability. The analogy I always use is, I say, listen, nobody wants to stand in line at the buffet if they just want to refill their drink. Help them get to that quickly.

That's the other challenge with chatbots and things like that. I understand they're going to get better. But I admonish organizational leaders all the time. I say, listen, your digital assistants, your chatbots, they're not to be deployed so you don't have to talk to your customers. They're so that you can offload pedestrian issues and you have time to talk to the customers who need it. But we're yelling into our phone, real person, real person, agent. I think you said “no.”

And unfortunately, some of the conversation is, how do we develop the relationship from the business perspective? How do we give them this? And I tell them sometimes, someday your customer doesn't want a relationship with you. They want to buy something. And you want the relationship. It doesn't mean that relationship's a bad thing. It's not right now. Relationships don't attract customers. They retain customers. And I say, what's your competitive advantage? They say, it's the relationship that we have. I say, but what about for new customers? They're not coming to you for a relationship. They're coming to you to solve a problem. What's the old adage? When you go to the hardware store and you're going to buy a drill, what's the need? You need a hole. But that's the best tool, right? For people, they come to you because they need something. They need a problem solved. They need a product. They need a service, whatever that might be.

But there's so much conversation about the relationship. Now, relationship is retention. You want to build the business. Retention is important. I love what you're talking about with the unique selling proposition. It's so true. And that's the part that's universal, right? John, for you and I, marketing for so long, the tactics are all changing, but it still comes down to that.

I talk about this, and it goes back to what David was saying about even sort of the family, what are family values? Are we aligned as an organization? I'll ask leaders, if I take your top salespeople and put them all in a separate room and ask them, what's your competitive advantage, what's your unique selling proposition, am I going to hear the same thing? I've had these conversations. And then it goes to a deeper level, which is, is it really what you think it is? So often, as I've done the Convene or the Vistage or the YPO, and there are these groups, and I'd ask them that competitive advantage, the majority would say things like, it's our quality. And I look at them, it's so adorable that you actually believe that. So you're saying that your competitors are consistently underperforming? The hard truth is everybody's good or you wouldn't survive. Or good enough, sometimes good enough at a better price point. But getting them out of this mindset... I love that they drink the Kool-Aid, that we're so good.

Or I would get somebody who would say, my competitive advantage, I'm just going to say it: we actually do what we say we're going to do. And he thinks it's a mic drop. And I said, are your competitors staying in business with all of that, not doing what they say they're going to do? You think your competitors aren't doing what they say they're going to do? Or here's the other one. I was in front of 10,000 people in Bangkok, Thailand. It's from all around the Million Dollar Round Table, all life insurance people. And they think their competitive advantage is, we really listen to our customers and we tailor our solutions to meet their individual needs. As opposed to everybody else who doesn't listen? But the number of people who will just say that, here's the difference: we really take the time to listen. And I said, would you be surprised that your competitors say the exact same thing? They're like, just this delusion that they're the only ones who care. Or, we like to do business with people who love what they do. Or just the basic one of just saying, our people make the difference. I'm like, everybody's people make the difference. It's not always a good difference. Everybody's got people.

Right. And some of the stuff, it sounds basic. It's one of those things that is simple, but it's not easy. And the part that really makes it not easy is everything is changing. How we connect is changing. How we complain is different. How we pay. People ask me all the time, do you take PayPal? Do you take Zelle or Square? I'm like, yes. They're trying to pay me. So companies get a little rigid.

So here's one of the challenges of my business model. Unless I'm consulting, it's a hit and run, and so I oftentimes don't know what it is that they do with the content that I have. Part of my business model is consulting as well. I'll talk to organizational leaders, I'll say, it's really important that we keep the momentum, that we don't lose momentum, that we keep the conversation going. I have a variety of ways. I've got something called the Morning Huddle, which is a year-long video series. But hopefully I can do consulting and have a chance to really affect some real change. It's one of the realities of this business. I speak for a living. I speak at a conference, I sell and sign books in the back, and I'm gone. I don't mean in any way to diminish or minimize the value that I think I provide, because I think I do provide tremendous value. It's a challenge when I talk to certain prospects and they say, give me an example of what they do with this and how we can justify the expenditure. I don't know that I know that. That's just the reality of my business model.

But in an odd sort of a twist on this, there are a lot of people who can drive down the street and point to their kids and say, I helped build that building. I helped do that. I'm not one of those people. So there has been this part of me, this drive to create things that are tangible. I think on one aspect, writing the books is a tangible manifestation of the knowledge of what I've learned and what I've shared. It's a legacy piece for me. I mean, granted, it's a business strategy to be sure, give them a taste of that knowledge. But there's also a personal part of me that really enjoys construction projects. I do tile work. I build things. I build a mantel. When my mom passed away about a decade ago, each of us, I'm second oldest of six once again, we all got a little bit of money, not a lot, and they did different things, they took vacations or other things, but I went and bought tools. My father had this Craftsman, Sears Craftsman set, and I'm like, I want to get my own set of tools that match. And to be able to build things that are tangible.

I think maybe the process itself. It's just being proud of yourself that you're able to do something. But I think there's also a work product that comes out of it. I like to cook. That's one of the things that, when I'm home, I do the cooking. I really like that. But when it's done, it's done. The only thing left over is dishes. You've got to clean up. So to have something that's tangible at the end that you can say...

A hundred percent. That part's really fun for me, especially when it's home improvement, that you get to sort of see it every day. It's something I'm pretty good at and something I really enjoy.

You know, it's so funny. My very first book, and this is what a lot of people do, and I'm not proud of it, but I'll admit it, a lot of people for their first book look at it and say, I have two years' worth of blogs, I'll just compile all of that and turn it into a book. That's kind of what I did with my first book. About two thirds of the content was content that I'd already written. Now, granted, I wrote all of it and I was proud of all of it, but it wasn't particularly linear. When you talk about going back, I had a chapter on MySpace. That's how old. I had a deal with John Wiley and Sons for my first book, and the book was called It's Not Who You Know, It's Who Knows You. So it was pretty popular, because it's that twist on that, well, everybody says it's all about who you know, and I said, no, it's about who knows you. Good marketing title.

When we sold out and I published a second edition, I took the opportunity to update it, which was really important, because in the marketing world, everything was changing so fast that there were certain things I wrote that just didn't hold up. So I deleted the chapter on MySpace, because it clearly wasn't a thing. And I just changed Paris Hilton to Kim Kardashian. Updated. So yeah, I go back. We all look back in our youth and other things, like, God, I wish I could go back and do that again.

I was on a podcast and a good colleague, Stacy Sherman, was interviewing me. At the very end she goes, okay, so here's what I ask every guest. If you could go back and tell your 20-year-old self something, what advice would you give? I thought for a second and I said, talk to the girl. She's probably nervous too. And she started laughing. She goes, I meant business. Well, you didn't say business. What would you tell your 20-year-old self? Go talk to the girl. Be courageous. But it's the same thing for business. You look back and you're like, it was smart for the time. It was smart for what I knew. You look at hairstyles and you look dorky, but back then, that was cool.

But it's a great question. I'll still get requests for early books, and I will tell them, you don't want to read it. I just did a half-day consulting for an organization, a landscape company, and they're loving my book Why Customers Leave. It was two books ago. They were saying, we went online, we couldn't find any more. I said, because it's out of print. And they said, oh, because we're like halfway through it. We have our Why Customers Leave groups. We're all reading it together. And I was really, really honored. I sat through, and they had all of their strategy for the year in advance, and half of the concepts were straight out of my book. But it was two books ago, so it was still really flattering. I said, I've got a new book. And they said, well, we'd love to buy all the new books, but we're going to get through this one first. I'm still very proud of my books, but you're like, I've learned so much more since then. It's still recognized that there's value in that. But when somebody asks for my first book because they love the title, I'm like, you know what, don't buy that book. Well, so much of the content just isn't accurate anymore.

This is going to sound arrogant in some way, but I'm not scared or worried about anything. I'm just not that person. I see this quote all the time, and I'm going to explain so that it doesn't come across as arrogant, that says everything you want in life is on the other side of fear. You see that all the time. And I'm like, I think everything you want in life is on the other side of hard work. I think I'm so pithy and smart. And my wife looks at me and she says, everybody's not you, David. Some people didn't have really loving parents who told them that they were brilliant and beautiful. And I really recognize that. I don't come from that perspective of having trepidation or fear. I kind of look at things as the next adventure. My real struggle is just recognizing my limitations. And I just can't say yes to everything, even if I want to say yes to everything. I've got to make a living.

And so when I get asked by somebody coming by and saying, would you serve on the board for the homeowners association, everything inside of me wants to say, of course, sure. And then I look at my obligations, like, stop jumping into everything with two feet. But I'm also balanced. I don't jump into things that I don't know what I'm doing. But every kind of opportunity, and people say, don't chase two rabbits, you're not going to catch either one of them. I chase 12 at a time because that sounds fun, let's do that. And the only part that's really hard, which is kind of interesting for my business, is writing books. It's hard. A famous author, I can't remember her name, was asked if she enjoyed writing and she said, I love to have written. Isn't that great? There's nothing better than when that box shows up on the front doorstep and you open that box and you pick up that book and you're like, I did this. That's my book. Even with seven books, I still have that feeling. The thought of having to write another book, ugh. Just daunting.

I actually hold a retreat a couple of times a year called Write Your Book Retreat, and I just help other people over that hump and help people write their first book. I charge very little, just to cover my costs, but it's one of my legacy things, just to give back and to help people. I tell them that millions and millions of people talk about wanting to write a book and very few ever actually do. So that's sort of a legacy thing too.

Right now, where I am is in my third act. What do they say, the first one is learning, the second act is earning, and somebody said the third act is returning, or whatever, like, how are we giving back? I'm very cognizant, and I'm going to get a little philosophical right now, I'm very cognizant that I have more history than I have future. And I want to use that time. There's a very famous poem by a woman named Linda Ellis, and in the poem she talks about the most important etching on your tombstone. You might have heard this. It's not your name, it's not the day you were born, it's not the day that you died. It's the dash. Because that dash represents everything that you won and lost and learned and loved and everything else. I'm so committed to that. So moving to me that a year ago I sat in a chair for about nine excruciating minutes and got my dash tattooed on my wrist. I look at this every day and I say, how am I living my dash? What am I doing?

I don't know that I've always been this person. I think I've always been a good guy, but you have different phases of your life, and the stress of work and super ambitious and all of those things are still a part of me. But I'm very cognizant that I want to use this time. I did an exercise once when I was a chair for Vistage, a CEO group, like Convene and some other great organizations, but we did a retreat for all of the Denver-area group chairs. We all went on retreat up in the mountains and we did some self-discovery exercises and some other things as well. But we did this one about creating your life's mission statement. And I'll tell you, there's a part of me that's a little cynical, and, you know, yes, it's...

It's fun. It was awesome. I don't know that I had the right mindset. It was like, oh, now we're going to do touchy-feely stuff. And it was awesome. And here's what I came up with, and I have this in my office on the wall next to my desk. It's very simple, and this is much more of my third act mission statement. This is my North Star. Here's a very simple statement. It says this: I want to spend my life doing things that matter with people who care. That's it. That's my criteria. If I have opportunities, does it matter? And I know people who are detractors or naysayers, and I don't want to do it anymore, because I don't have to. When I was 30, I did. You have a lot of have-to's in your life when you're supporting your families. I still have a lot of have-to's, but I have a lot more get-to's. And being empty nesters, we got up on Saturday morning and my wife looked at me. She goes, you know what we've got to do today? And I said, what? And she goes, nothing. Let's go for a walk. Let's go grab breakfast. I love it. I'll work for the rest of my life because I like what I do. But there is a freedom.

I mean, do you feel that, Dave? I mean, John, sorry, do you feel that as well?

I am too. I'm not anywhere near, but I'm saying, in addition to the work, you're very selective about things you want to spend your time on.

So I'm like, man, there's such power in the most powerful word in the English language, which of course is no. And being able to say no to things that don't serve you. I think having some measure of success, the greatest gift of that is being able to, it's what we call, and pardon the language, the no-asshole rule, right? Everybody in business should have that. And when you're young, you don't recognize the clients that may end up being real pain. I think you have a better radar when you're older. I think I need to trust my gut. I mean, I still have to work. I'm working. More people need to trust their gut, but to do things that align with who you are.

I learned this early on, and I guess to an extent I've adopted it. Somebody had said once, when they were looking at what clients they accept, they had the three F's rule, and the three F's are fun, fame, or fortune, and if it's not two of the three F's, you say no. Fun, fame, and fortune. And they said the fortune one is really big, and screw the other two, we'll make it work. But it takes a lot out of you to deal with difficult people or to do the things that you don't want to do. I was talking to a colleague of mine who's sort of the same age as me, and we were talking about what does it mean to be kind of in your third act. One of the things, our consensus was, I don't want to do the things I don't want to do anymore.

My wife and I got together, my current and final and greatest wife, we've been together 11 years. And we also were very cerebral. I mean, she's beautiful and we're madly in love, but we started thinking about what do we want, what do we not want. One thing she said once, we were literally just pulled up to a stoplight and she just blurts out, all right, I'll go camping with you, but I don't want to sleep on the ground ever again. We hadn't even talked about it, but start thinking about, if I'm going to get into another relationship, what are the things I never want to do again? She's like, I don't want to sleep on the ground. That's okay, I probably won't take you camping. I'll go with my son. Or go glamping. But it's all those kind of funny things of, I want to do the things I want to do.

And what does this time, and I guess it doesn't have to start in your third act, what does this time afford you? It's one of the challenges, like going through a divorce, and John, you and I have both been through that. I used to do a lot of executive coaching. When I led my CEO roundtable groups, we would do two-hour one-to-ones with all of our members, so I did hundreds of hours of executive coaching. I had a member who was going through a very, very difficult divorce, and it got to the point where in our one-to-ones, that's pretty much what he wanted to talk about every time. I finally said to him once that you absolutely deserve the time to grieve, and you were very clear on what it cost you. I want to talk about, what does this afford you? In other words, if you look ahead for the next five years, if you had not gotten divorced in this very difficult situation, where would you be now? Even though you didn't want to be where you are, what do you get to do that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise? Relationships, travel, just not feeling like you're walking on eggshells in your own home.

And so this whole mind shift of, I kind of try and look at every situation, all right, what does this afford me? Where we are now is a great opportunity to travel and stay. One of the things I agreed with my wife, because she'll go with me when it's a good trip, a lot of them are just, you know, you're in, and pardon the people in Toledo or Cleveland or whatever else. But one of the things I decided to do is, in almost every case when I can, I book one extra day, because I'd normally fly in and out and do a gig. One extra day and connect with an old friend, and you can find them on Facebook or LinkedIn, who lives in that city. Part of it, it's not like the I'm-dying-of-cancer tour, you know, where you want to reconnect. But I'm having the greatest time. I'm meeting with all of these people from my past. I love it. And telling them how much they meant to me.

I had a guy, I called him an inadvertent mentor. A guy who had been a consultant at Children's Hospital that worked at one of the big public affairs firms when I was this burgeoning, unwashed, you know, 26-year-old. I ran into him at a United Club, and I'm like, I would love to grab lunch and catch up. So we had lunch or whatever. And I said, I have no agenda, but I would like to tell you that you had a really big impact on my career. He was like, really? I said, I sort of look at you as my unintended mentor. I said, but you, his name was John Barron, I'll give him credit, there was an elegance. There was a wisdom. And I was this bouncing-off-the-wall 26-year-old who thought I was funny at everything, and some of the inappropriate things I said. I said, but I want you to know that you have been a model for that. And he just sat back and he's like, that means the world. So traveling around, I'm trying to spend an extra day and find somebody and just connect.

Unlike, we always say, we're going to stay in touch, blah, blah. Generally I'll say, you know, we always say to stay in touch. We probably won't. But I just want you to know that you've been a really important person to me. And I'm actually saying that out loud. I'm not going to say let's stay in touch, because we probably won't. But let me know if you're in town. But if I don't see you again, I want you to know this. Isn't that fun? It's so much fun. I'm not trying to be an example to anybody. It's the old story of the warm fuzzies and the cold pricklies, right? I love that story. I get so much back. It just fills my tank.

So that's one of the cool things about this time of life, is I'm getting to stay. I've been traveling, spoken in 28 countries around the world... like a martyr. I've spoken in India like six times. I've never seen the Taj Mahal. I've been to South Africa, I didn't go on safari. That's not a complaint. My mom died at 69 years old and never owned a passport, but I'm afforded this time to go do a little more. Because I raced home, because my kids were in sports. They were in theater, they were in music, and I didn't want to be the dad who missed that stuff. My middle daughter played high school basketball. She's six-one. And her junior and senior year, I missed two games in two years. I turned down business.

One of the dads, all these pithy phrases, one of the dads said to me once, early on, we were at one of my daughter's softball games, and I had just gotten off a plane. I literally showed up in a suit and everything else because I wanted to be at the game. And he gives me a fist bump and goes, good job, Dad. And then he said this quote that has stayed with me so much. He says, our children take attendance at their events. You're either there or you're not. That's a great quote. Isn't that great? They make that shot and they look in the stands, like, did Dad see that? Our children take attendance at their events. You're either there or you're not. And that hit me hard. So I made sure that I was there. I loved everything.

But then again, you know, it's a busy time. People say, so what do you do for fun? I'm like, what's the F word you're saying, what's that, fun? I drive my kids to practice and I sit in the stands. There's a part of me that loves the freedom for where we are, and there's a big part of me that misses all that as well.

Oh, I can't wait.

Absolutely. My wife and I, we talked about that. We're like, we cannot wait to have grandkids, but we're like, we can wait. We can't wait, but we can wait. You don't want that bad situation, that inadvertent... and no, we're not raising your kids. But oh, we can't wait to love up and slobber all over our grandkids.

Twenty-eight I've spoken in, and 34 I've visited.

And it's a privilege. Huge privilege.

That's a great question. Everybody always asks. The biggest culture shock was Kuwait.

I've done a number of Arab countries, and I mean, the people are beautiful. The cultures are great. The first time I got off a plane in Dubai, because we're also indoctrinated here in America, I saw people in full burka, and there's this back of your mind, everybody's got bombs strapped to their bodies. It's just so naive. And then within a few days you realize, this is amazing. Kuwait was one of those tough places because it was very, very conservative, so most everybody was in full burka and everything else. I would go to the mall because it's just one of the things I'll do. What's interesting was just a quiet, there's not a lot of hustle and bustle. So culturally, my client wanted me to go to this hookah bar, so they're all smoking stuff, but it was very male dominant. It's one of those things that I get done speaking and you want to shake people's hands, and the women take a step back. It's like, oh, that's right, I'm not supposed to touch.

One of the funny anecdotes is I'm at the mall and they have normal stores, they have Victoria's Secret. What was interesting was all you could see in the pictures were women's faces, and all you could see were their eyes. They're wearing the headscarf, and you saw these beautiful green eyes and everything else. If you walked in, you couldn't see in the store, but if you walked around the corner, it's normal. I talked to them and they said, oh no, when we go home, we want to be beautiful and be sexy, we take all this stuff off, we just can't be that for other people. They said it's all human. But the culture shock was just that I worried that I was going to do something wrong or say something wrong. I did one presentation where they were all Arabic, which is all fine, we all get along great, but there were people standing off to the sides holding submachine guns. And I'm like, I'm not used to that. When I was in Tel Aviv it was very much like, oh, yeah.

But I'm so fortunate, everywhere, and we're really spoiled. English is the international language of business. But my favorite place in the world is Dubai. I've been there twice in the last three months. It's like Miami meets Vegas meets... and over 75 percent of the people there are from somewhere else. Europeans and everything else. So very small local population. But everything is excess. The biggest indoor ski area and the tallest building and the biggest water park. And the biggest mall, and the second biggest mall, and the second biggest water park. I'm watching in Ski Dubai, which is in the mall, they have an indoor ski place, but I'm sitting in TGI Fridays watching skiers. And they're from everywhere. It's 120 degrees outside, right? Well, in certain times of year, absolutely it is. But I was just there. I was at what they call the marina, which is basically a place where they just dug out a trench and built buildings around it. I'm driving a scooter, and I went out on a yacht for 50 bucks for an hour, just because I had an afternoon off. I'm going to go out on a yacht. I love it. But it's just in the food, and that's the best part of it.

With an extrovert like me, everywhere I go in the world, they treat you like royalty. My kids, I remember they would travel with me when they were younger. I think my son was probably nine and he's like, Dad, they think you're famous. You're just my dad. I'm famous. I come home, my wife's like, hey, Mr. Big D, go take out the trash.

This is a privilege. And John was mentioning this before. What a privilege it is just to break bread and just have great conversations. So I appreciate you having me on.

I've not talked about everything.

Okay. I mean, this one thing is, if you go back and try and whiteboard this conversation, I think I've gone every tangent. I hope that's great. I hope I've actually answered your questions as well.

Yeah. Is there anything I want to talk about? I think I've talked about everything. If you want to give me a prompt for something, then I'm off to the races, but I don't think there's anything that I've covered. This is such a privilege. I applaud you guys for this project and embarking on this not knowing where it's going to go and just letting the conversations happen. There's something really beneficial about saying we're going to have a minor bit of structure, but we're going to do this for a long time, and then you get a lot of content. There's so much that we do in business, in life, with artificial constraints and time limits. So this is a real treat. It's also a real treat to kind of turn off the world. Because for this couple hours, if I was in my office, I'd be dealing with nine different things and 42 different time zones. Two loving, rambunctious cats.

And to turn off the world and focus on the conversation. I just had one of those things where I went to another city and I looked up an old friend. It was somebody I used to sing with in my a cappella group. So I had lunch with my friend Dr. Bob and his wife, Gretchen, who are dear, dear friends, who I spent much of my 20s with. We were talking about the same thing, about this third act. And they said, we have a saying, and the saying is, choose people. I said, tell me what that means. And they said, it means that if somebody calls and says, hey, I'm coming to town, or are you free for lunch, or we're all getting together, and we were going to do this, I was going to clean out the summer home, I was going to whatever, when there's an opportunity, choose people. And I love that. I told them I'm going to steal that. And they said, because we can certainly fill up our calendar, we can certainly fill up our time.

It's also one of the things that my wife and I talked about, because for so many years, and John, you may relate to this, our peer group, our friends, were dictated by the parents of our kids' friends or their teammates. When my son was on his football team, we hung out with the parents of the other kids on that team, of course. We made a joke, and these were great people, we made a joke like, do we get to choose our own friends now? So one of the things that we want to do in this time, and we are, since we've become empty nesters the last couple of years, is really prioritize time with friends. And that was so precious. If I have any regret, and I do, it's that I didn't save enough time. I didn't prioritize time with friends when my kids were growing up, because the obligations are tremendous: financial, keeping the house up, the honey-do list, the practices. It's just constant. And I think about the friends who go with their buddies and they go to Vegas or they go ride four-wheelers and golfing. I didn't do enough of that. That's part of where we are right now. So this is a treat, and I appreciate you guys inviting me into the conversation.

I wasn't trying to vet you. I was just trying to say, what's your purpose of this so I can serve you?

No, but I get that question all the time. I'll try and get somebody, big deal, for my podcast, and the gatekeeper asks, how many Twitter followers do you have? And I'm like, if that's going to be your criteria. For me, I just wanted to find out what's your goal for this and how can I support it?

Good. Absolutely. Thank you.

Kind of a tree would I be, and why? Oh, that's a great— No, it is. It's a stupid question. Like, go ahead.

Boy, I'm thinking about all the pithy things that I've said so far that were somebody else's quote. Boy, what a great question. Be good people. A hundred percent, that's it. I was trying to think, how do I say that? Under that umbrella is do the right thing, and all the other kind of thing is just be a good human. A hundred percent, that takes care of almost everything else. It defines the kind of behavior. What's a good person? What would a good person do in any circumstance? We're all human, life's hard. I'm helping my kids through their 20s right now, and there's so much angst. It is harder to be young today. It is harder. I joke about this sometimes on stage. I say, can you imagine being a teenager today, and everything is documented, there's such a permanence. I joke and I say, as you know, growing up, let's be honest, we did stuff, right? There is no record of it. Can I get a hallelujah? And everybody gives me a hallelujah. We were stupid, we did stupid things, but now that stuff carries them. And so how many times when your kids leave do you say, make good choices, right? Because we know what bad choices are. Bad choices get kids drunk driving accidents or do things that hurt other people. What is a good human, and being a good person, that's a hundred percent what I would say.

My whole family did. My whole family, and they still do. Everybody's a pain at different times, but what's the North Star? What's the core that you come back to? Somebody said something to the effect of, the old saying was, don't do anything that you wouldn't want to see in the local paper. Or, what would your mom think about you saying that? But it all comes back to the same thing, right? When given a choice, be a good person.

Thank you very much. This is great. This was fun. Let's do it again next week.