Join Paul Morton and I on his Practical Leadership Podcast. We talk about everything from scaling businesses to navigating personal challenges, like overcoming alcoholism. Here are the highlights as written by Paul:
Overcoming Personal Challenges
David opens up about his battle with alcoholism and how hitting rock bottom led to transformational personal growth. “The greatest achievement of my life is getting sober, and it’s something I have to achieve again every day.”
Conscious Intention in Life and Business
According to David, one of the most critical lessons he teaches his clients is to live with conscious intention—be deliberate in both personal and professional decisions.
Why Strategic Planning Matters
David explains the power of strategic planning, drawing from Verne Harnish’s Scaling Up framework, and offers actionable advice on setting and achieving 3-to-5-year goals. Sailing the Mediterranean for 2 Years David talks about his incredible two-year journey sailing across the Mediterranean with his wife and kids—a bold life choice that forged unforgettable family bonds.
Legacy and Leadership
“Leadership is about leading people to a place they wouldn’t get on their own.” David emphasizes the importance of servant leadership—helping others succeed as the key to personal and organizational success.
Key Quotes
“Leadership is not about me. It’s about making others successful.”
“Know where you’re going—if you don’t, how can you measure progress?”
David’s story is one of perseverance, risk-taking, and conscious decision-making. Whether you’re scaling your business or facing personal obstacles, this episode will challenge you to live—and lead—with purpose.
Audio
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2JDH1G07A3Hph8CnOSshv5
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/practical-leadership-podcast/id1642528911
Transcript
00:00:03 Paul Morton
Entrepreneur of 40 plus years after 22, he started his own company where he was for 20 years, built it into a global powerhouse, and then headed for the high seas with his wife and children, homeschooling all the way.
00:00:22 Paul Morton
David Greer, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
That that, that was a ridiculously short and uncomprehending introduction for somebody of your experience in calibre. Would you do yourself more justice?
00:00:26 David Greer
Thank you, Paul.
Well, it’s hard to know where to start because you know I have done a lot of things in life. I’ve been very fortunate, as you mentioned, I’m, you know, a long-term entrepreneur. I’m now a business coach and I facilitate strategic planning for entrepreneurs and their senior leadership teams.
00:00:55 David Greer
As a work that I find really rewarding, I’m a recovering alcoholic. The single biggest achievement of my life, and one that every single day I have to get up and I have to achieve again.
00:01:10 David Greer
Like I don’t get to rest on my laurels on that one. I’m an adventurer. I’m a sailor. I live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Vancouver, BC, Canada, surrounded by ocean and mountains where if you like to go hiking and.
00:01:26 David Greer
Doing the things I do skiing, it’s really fabulous and married to someone who actually matches my energy and is foolish enough to go on some of these crazy adventures and, you know, Karalee and I, I think few people dream and then even fewer people do.
00:01:46 David Greer
And Karalee and I are a couple and individuals who do both.
00:01:52 David Greer
And as others have pointed out to me, you know we played a game of life to win.
00:01:57 David Greer
Not to not lose, like we don’t always win, but we’re always like going for the big one.
00:02:06 Paul Morton
Well.
There’s so many people just drift through life and then it’s their surprise when they get kind of close to the end and they realize that the one day will become never.
00:02:15 David Greer
Yeah, my biggest ask of my client and my coaching clients is conscious intention like you know it doesn’t. It’s your life you choose what you want to do. But I ask you to actually make a conscious choice about it and not just like, let the waves of life kind of push you around.
00:02:33 David Greer
Found this way and that that that you and some of my work is just pointing out to people they have way more choice.
00:02:39 David Greer
Then they realize.
00:02:41 David Greer
Like that, they’ve got in cells in a mental box that restricts feel it feels like they don’t have any choice and I can totally understand and relate to that feeling. But some of what I offer as a coach is a separate viewpoint where I might be able to point out.
Like, well, if you think this way, then obviously there’s no choice. What would happen if you thought this other way?
Would that open up some possibilities?
00:03:07 Paul Morton
And at some point, you and Karalee must have looked around and said, you know what, we need a little bit more of a horizon than we get where we are and it led you to spending, what, two years on a boat cruising the Mediterranean way, kids.
00:03:21 David Greer
Yeah, that one was sent.
An accident in some ways. What happened is after 20 years with this software business, I had a major disagreement with my partner and we ended up with him buying me out and like it was very unexpected.
00:03:38 David Greer
Like we just, we got along very well for 20 years, but the last year was, you know, we had a major disagreement and it ended in divorce. I’m in, you know, early 2001 being a tech entrepreneur. I have not really noticed the.com meltdown. I’m like, trying to chase deals and opportunities.
00:03:56 David Greer
Is when someone’s smarter than me, a woman who helped career individuals transition into.
00:04:04 David Greer
New careers, who I had met through networking. She took me to lunch and then we sat in her office. And I remember sitting in her chairs in front of her desk, and she looked at me and said, David, your kids will never be 11/9 and five again.
00:04:19 David Greer
Do you need to work right away? And I’m like no, I just got a pretty good check on my jeans. I’m not done, but I don’t need to work right away. And if you’re listeners can imagine the Cheesiest, biggest cartoonish light bulb going off.
00:04:35 David Greer
Over my head. Like, literally a massive aha moment.
00:04:42 David Greer
And we flew my wife’s mum down to look after the kids and we went on a driving ski trip for about 10 days and we talked about all these possibilities and we had we talked about renting a house in a different country every month for a year. We talked about going on a barge which we had friends which were in the middle of doing.
00:05:02 David Greer
In the north of northern, like in Holland and Belgium and France, or sailing the Mediterranean, and we decided to go sail the.
00:05:11 David Greer
Training and what I didn’t realize, like I’d been reading long-term cruising books and, you know by authors who traveled with their families for probably 20 years. They didn’t know how much of A dream it was until suddenly the possibility opened up. And then I was like, I had no idea just how deeply embedded that dream was in me.
00:05:33 David Greer
Until the possibility arrived. And then like it was all in.
00:05:39 David Greer
And away we went.
00:05:41 Paul Morton
So you jumped on board a boat and then two years later you docked somewhere and flew home.
00:05:48 David Greer
Basically, yeah, more or less like. That’s the. That’s the 50,000 foot view of it. You’re missing a couple of adventures on along the way.
00:05:51 Paul Morton
OK, 50,000, what did you?
00:05:55 Paul Morton
I’m probably glossing over some infesting stuff. I’m sure there’s some Greek islands, some Peloponnese or some.
00:06:03 David Greer
No living in Tunisia for five months that that was culturally and socially was by far and away the most out there experience we had in the two years we lived in the mad.
00:06:16 Paul Morton
Wow, that is, that is that is different, OK.
00:06:19 Paul Morton
But what? What did?
00:06:20 Paul Morton
You pack in your bags, metaphorically speaking, to take.
00:06:23 Paul Morton
Home with you?
00:06:26 David Greer
We packed a legacy with our children that few parents ever get to have, like an intensity of time period. Like we came back. A lot of other parents pointed out tests we’d spent more time with our children in those two years than most parents spend with their children in their entire lifetime.
00:06:45 Paul Morton
Yeah.
00:06:46 David Greer
And you know, there’s an intensity of that, as if the friend of ours, who lived in the barge, talked about, you know, it’s kind of like being in a pressure cooker, like either the lid blows off or over time, kind of the sum of the parts become something greater.
00:07:06 David Greer
You know, as you live together. And believe me, your children see you like up close and personal. Like the good, the bad, the ugly, the wonderful. Like, because there’s nowhere to hide and you know, for as my wife said likes to say, we lived on 400 square feet for two for two years.
00:07:24 David Greer
And thankfully it’s the Med, so you could dock and you know or anchor and let the kids run ashore. And the weather was, you know, usually pretty nice. So and like other legacies, like we were 18 months without being in an English speaking country. Like what’s that?
00:07:42 David Greer
You know, and the kids would watch me try and get the butane bottle that you the fuel you need for your stove. Like to get that refilled in the South of Italy.
00:07:52 David Greer
Like you know, I go to tourist information. I hold up this little blue butane bottle. They don’t even know what it is. But, you know, they speak a little English. They kind of direct me down the street. We go a kilometre, we find someone else who speaks a little English. You know, they direct us. It takes a half a day and eventually you go down a little lane and you go through a beaded curtain and you hold up the bottle.
00:08:12 David Greer
And they ohh see, see, see. And they go back and they have a full one.
00:08:17 David Greer
But you know, like the kids watch you just trying to figure out life when you can’t speak the language. I think it’s. I think it’s a great education as an adult and also you know for your children like not everyone speaks your language it’s not always easy to communicate it’s not always easy to get things done.
00:08:37 Paul Morton
Before you went off, I mean, you’re a strategic planner by trade. Before you went off, how much of A plan did you actually put in place or was this a we’re just going?
00:08:46 Paul Morton
To go and wing this.
00:08:49 David Greer
The rough plan was get a sailboat, Commission it, move on board and travel the Mediterranean for one year. And like in true entrepreneurial fashion, it took what twice as long as we thought.
00:09:04 David Greer
And you know, we roughly had an idea we, you know of that. You know, we wanted to cover the Western Mediterranean and then get to Greece and Turkey, Tunisia was I don’t think we talked actually about going to Tunisia. I think from the get go, you know and.
00:09:22 David Greer
You know, just as it worked out, we had friends with a child. Like, you’re so few families traveling in the Mediterranean that you’re really trying to stick together. And they had decided to winter over in this town, Monastir in Tunisia. And so we decided to follow them. And by then we decided we were going to do a second year because.
00:09:42 David Greer
We’d only got through a fraction of the western bed in one year, so.
00:09:48 David Greer
But honestly like you know that and we were going to homeschool the kids like that. That was the big picture plan.
00:09:58 David Greer
And my plans don’t need to be complicated. In fact, I do a lot of coaching like I think you know, your three to five year goals you should have maybe three to five.
00:10:09 David Greer
Right. Like then you got a chance of actually getting there, whereas if you have 12 like where do you start focusing like which one’s most important and a lot of the difficulty I find in planning is actually restricting like you know you have a lot of opportunity but you have to go pick which spots you’re going to go focus on at least for the next.
00:10:29 David Greer
Quarter or the next?
00:10:30 David Greer
Here.
00:10:31 Paul Morton
That gets down to decision making, which is which is always a challenge as well. Strategic decision making is a lot more complex than it sounds.
00:10:39 David Greer
It is and it isn’t. I think again, it’s just getting down to a small set of goals that you’re going to focus on, you know, in three to five years for one, the next one year, even if I’m talking just personal planning not, you know, career planning, business planning, I mean I think the model I use is the same.
00:10:59 David Greer
No matter which of those.
00:11:00 David Greer
Those areas you’re focusing on and then I’m a big believer in quarters of 13 weeks long and they’re long enough to get a lot of serious **** done and short enough that if you’ll know at the end of the quarter whether you like made the right choice or whether you need to make a.
00:11:15 David Greer
Drastic course correction.
00:11:17 David Greer
And nothing catastrophic happens in 13 weeks generally.
00:11:22 David Greer
So you know, you can of course correct without killing the business, at least from a business planning point of view.
00:11:28 Paul Morton
You can pull things back. I love the idea that priority was, as was still is. It’s a it’s a singular thing. People keep talking about priorities.
00:11:39 Paul Morton
Well, you couldn’t priority prior priority means the one at the top, the one that comes first. It’s not the ones I’ve got 17 strategic priorities. You might as well have.
00:11:45 David Greer
Yep.
00:11:47
Yep.
00:11:49
Correct.
00:11:52 David Greer
None. Exactly. Exactly, you know.
00:11:58 David Greer
Entrepreneurs and senior leaders are working with me like they always get caught up in the day-to-day firefighting.
00:12:05 Paul Morton
Hmm.
00:12:06 David Greer
And I always, you know, they say, well, I’m not making progress on my strategic plan and I say well, I worked with you and your goals, what’s the number one goal for the quarter? I make sure they can articulate it like they have forgotten it. Because I build plans that you’re supposed to like post at your desk and look at every day. Not they don’t. They’re not supposed to go in a binder and beat.
00:12:26 David Greer
Lost in the top drawer and I’m like, you know.
00:12:31 David Greer
You should take the first. The best I would say first, because it’s not always the first part of the day for an individual, but take the best two hours of your day and focus on your number one priority until it’s done. And if it’s not done and if it’s you can’t do any more on it or it’s done, then focus on the number 2 priority and if you’re not spending two hours on your strategic priorities.
00:12:53 David Greer
Every day.
00:12:55 David Greer
You’re not going to get there.
00:12:57 David Greer
Like, they’re not really your strategic priorities.
00:13:02 Paul Morton
If.
00:13:02 David Greer
Like our, our behaviours always tell us like you know, if we don’t focus on things, why? Because either it’s not important or because we don’t believe in them or because we think they’re too hard.
00:13:02 Paul Morton
You can.
00:13:14 Paul Morton
I think the two hard one probably comes up quite a lot when people will give a lot of lip service to yes, I’m doing this because I believe in that. Yes, I’m doing this because I’ve said.
00:13:24 Paul Morton
It’s my priority.
00:13:27 Paul Morton
But the too hard box and the getting started challenge I think is a real a real deal for people. You said you had a model.
00:13:37 Paul Morton
On how you go about helping people prioritise and how you’re helping people think their way through this, you talk us through what that is, what is it you do with people when they.
00:13:46 Paul Morton
When they have come to you with this problem.
00:13:49 David Greer
The framework I use comes from a guy Verne Harnish published a couple books, the Rockefeller habits and scaling up.
00:13:57 David Greer
And he has I. In the early 2000s, I kept hearing all my entrepreneur friends kept talking about the one page strategic.
00:14:04 David Greer
Plant and that comes from this guy Verne Harnish. And you know, the idea is you can articulate all the important aspects of your business in one page. Now, I will tell you, you got to print it out like.
00:14:18 Paul Morton
Really small.
00:14:18 David Greer
You know.
00:14:19 David Greer
No. Well, or you take 2 sheets of A4 paper. Whatever. I forget what size that is, right?
00:14:24 Paul Morton
Yeah, it’s big.
00:14:25 David Greer
Or two 8 1/2 by Elevens. If you’re Canada or the US, but if you print it on that size of paper, you can actually, it’s quite readable, and it starts with like, what are your core values? What do you believe? How should people behave in you?
00:14:28
Yeah.
00:14:38 David Greer
The company what are those out of? You know, they should be articulated. Then what’s your purpose like? Why are you here? What change do you want to bring in the world? A lot of times with new clients, you know, I asked them like, why did you start your business?
00:14:52 David Greer
And they’ve, like, they started a business for a certain reason and then they started to get successful. And then it grew, and now they’re, like, managing this wildly successful business. But that’s not what gets them out of bed in the morning. Like, it’s because they could help certain people. I mean, so I just have to remind them, like, This is why you started the business. This is the bigger purpose.
00:15:14 David Greer
And then there’s some other aspects that are business specific. I mean, a lot of these could apply in any organization, not profit three to five years. Where are the key capabilities and trusts that you need to achieve in like the next three to five years. So pick some future date.
00:15:33 David Greer
Where you going to aim for? And I’ve used this in personal planning as well. Like where you know, what do I want to be twice as good at in three years?
00:15:42 David Greer
Right. And then four or five goals for the year that are going to get you moving in the right direction for where you want?
00:15:50 David Greer
To be.
00:15:50 David Greer
In three to five. And then what are you going to achieve this quarter again three to five goals, no more and then from again from a business perspective.
00:16:02 David Greer
What are the key productivity indicators? What’s the number you need to focus on to go so you can achieve your?
00:16:07
Goals.
00:16:08 David Greer
Is it more calls to prospects? Is it more leads? Is it you know better delivery of the things that you deliver like?
00:16:17 David Greer
You know, and how you measure that on a daily and weekly basis. So you know that you’re making progress. I do a lot of work as I as I coach people. I believe that core values and our behaviour should be demonstrated through storytelling like I think that’s the most powerful way to make it real and to demonstrate it. But you should run the business on the numbers.
00:16:39 David Greer
Because here’s what I know as an entrepreneur, and I’ve done this many times in my career.
00:16:43 David Greer
It’s all too easy for me to buy in the last.
00:16:45 David Greer
Conversation.
00:16:46 David Greer
The salesperson that said Ohh I couldn’t close the sale because you didn’t have feature XYZ.
00:16:51 David Greer
Right. And like to now do a whole quarter where we’re working on feature XYZ, but it turns out there’s just one person in the world that wants that feature, which is the one who that salesperson was talking to.
00:17:03 David Greer
And you know what? Most of the time when you do XYZ, like when? That’s the objection. Even if you do it, they’ll find another objection like.
00:17:12 David Greer
I find it’s very dangerous to run a business on this anecdotal. It’s very easy as a human to do that, right? I just like, it’s very easy. What are the numbers? What are the true numbers? What are the numbers telling you? What are your financial numbers? And I do a lot of work with entrepreneurs.
00:17:32 David Greer
Just helping them to understand their financial statements as it actually relates to the business like not these different line items on the income statement, but like how this number relates to the number of.
00:17:43 David Greer
T-shirts you shipped today.
00:17:45 David Greer
You know what it costs to make them like I have a client that’s in the T-shirt printing business.
00:17:51 David Greer
So as I help them untangle like or relate the financial statements to the actual specific operation of the business, and then how do we make it more efficient?
00:18:00 Paul Morton
Unit economics, I mean the number of people who don’t understand the unit economics of their own business.
00:18:06 David Greer
Oh, it’s. It’s shocking. Absolutely. And I think that every person in the business needs to understand your business model and the underlying economics cause that’s why everyone gets paid.
00:18:19 Paul Morton
Yeah.
00:18:20 David Greer
You get paid because you have an economic model that makes sense, like there’s pain in the marketplace. Your company has some pain pill that solves that.
00:18:28 David Greer
Pain. And then you need to be able to consistently deliver whatever product or service you have in a way that the market that your customers get to be put out of their pain. And the bigger the pain, the better your pain pill, the better you are at delivering it. The more value you create like.
00:18:49 David Greer
Big picture that. I mean it’s simple to say hard, hard to do sometimes, but it really boil a lot of my work is boiling things away to make them simple.
00:18:54
Yes.
00:19:02 David Greer
Like.
00:19:02 Paul Morton
That’s.
00:19:03 Paul Morton
That right problem solving? You talk to anybody about problem solving and this what we’ll do is we’ll add this process. We’ll, we’ll do this as well and we’ll start doing this thing said, well, how about you stop doing some stuff? How about you pair it back to some point where it’s simple, everything is exposed.
00:19:24 Paul Morton
And it’s the number of simple questions, even in some incredibly sophisticated modern you think organizations of our sales force size, that’s a really serious organizations. You go to them and say to senior people, what do you sell?
00:19:42 Paul Morton
Who buys it? How do you make money? Where do you find your customers? Why do they come back? Why do?
00:19:48 Paul Morton
They leave.
00:19:50 Paul Morton
And as I love me, I’ve got a list of about 7 or 8 questions like that, and then the trick is you go to the next senior leader and you ask the same darn questions you see if you get different answers you get different answers that speaks to another.
00:19:59
Yeah.
00:20:02 Paul Morton
Problem entirely. Let’s go to strategic alignment, shall we? Ladies and gentlemen, you know.
00:20:08 Paul Morton
That’s a test.
00:20:08 David Greer
Yeah, lots of lots of nuggets and what you just said. You know, one of the one of the questions I ask people is, is it strategy or is it execution strategies, your plan?
00:20:21 David Greer
Execution is how well do you do your plan and my belief is it’s neither.
00:20:27 David Greer
It’s about alignment.
00:20:31 David Greer
You have to get alignment like. It doesn’t matter what the strategy or the execution is. If you’re not aligned.
00:20:39 David Greer
I liken it to if you’re all on a boat and you’re all pulling on your oars and you’re pulling really hard and like you’re splashing, and there’s a lot of action and all the water around you is moving, but you’re totally uncoordinated and not moving in the same direction. The boat just goes around in circles and that’s what happens in that example you gave, where the two senior leaders.
00:20:59 David Greer
That have totally different takes on who the market is, how you get the customers, how they’re making money, how are you ever going to row the boat in a direction that you know makes more revenue and makes a lot more money if you don’t have agreement on those basics of your business model and of your markets and your customers.
00:21:17 Paul Morton
Yeah. And to continue the watery analogy, given that we started with yachts, you think sometimes you’ve got a CEO at the back of the boat and the CEO thinks that he or she has their hand on the tiller and they’re pointing in the right direction, and that alone will, you know, move things in the correct direction. And yet if your leaders, your rowers are out of sync. You can do an awful lot of damage for one of those orders. They’re really big and they’re really heavy. You can cuss.
00:21:38
Sure.
00:21:45 Paul Morton
Somebody you know?
00:21:47 David Greer
Exactly and.
00:21:48 Paul Morton
There’s blood in the water, half the sharks.
00:21:50 Paul Morton
You know.
00:21:51 David Greer
And if there’s eight of them and one of you, it doesn’t matter how powerful the tiller is like they can out or you right. So, yeah. And I, you know, I see the CEO’s role as, yes, the tiller and setting the direction and the vision for where we’re going. But then it’s that constant checking in and making sure that all of the team members are aligned. And the things that they’re doing.
00:21:53 Paul Morton
Well.
00:21:57 Paul Morton
Exactly.
00:22:12 David Greer
Are moving you in the direction that you’ve set.
00:22:17 David Greer
And making them individually successful like leadership is not to me, leadership is not about me. It’s about the people I lead in making them successful and making sure they have the resources, the tools, the knowledge to be useful.
00:22:30 Paul Morton
Yeah, yeah.
00:22:31 David Greer
Right. My success comes from their success.
00:22:36 Paul Morton
I did find it as leading people to somewhere that they would not ordinarily get in their own.
00:22:41 Paul Morton
Coupled with magnanimity.
00:22:43 Paul Morton
And that, seeing the greatness in others exposing the greatness in others, making other people exactly as you said, successful servant leadership.
00:22:50 David Greer
Yeah. You know when I, a few years after I came back from the Med, I was visiting with a woman who started at the software company the same month that I did and.
00:23:01 David Greer
We worked 10 years, we didn’t work we you know we worked together but not directly she was an admin. I’m in software development delivery and marketing but when I bought out one of the founders of this company she became my first report. So for 10 years she was my right hand person and so.
00:23:22 David Greer
I had the courage at lunch one day, a few years after we’d both been out of Robelle to say.
“Kerry, what was the biggest challenge of my being your boss? “
And she didn’t pause.
And she just looked me and she said “David, over and over and over again. You asked me to do things that I knew in my heart of hearts, I couldn’t possibly do. “
And every single time I did the.
00:23:52 David Greer
Now I think I probably had quite a bit of room to support her better because I didn’t know that.
00:23:59 David Greer
But on the other hand, if that’s my legacy, I’m OK.
00:24:01 Paul Morton
Yeah.
00:24:02 David Greer
Right. If that’s my legacy, I’m OK because I only ever asked Kerry to do things that I believed she could do.
00:24:10 David Greer
And apparently I was pretty accurate in that because in the end, she figured it out.
00:24:17 Paul Morton
As legacies goes, that’s pretty nice. I mean, I know for sure that my leadership legacy is a trail of destruction, at least certainly in the early days. There’s a lot of victims of my bad practices and experimentation.
00:24:32 Paul Morton
Which hopefully I’ve made-up for overtime. But that’s a lovely legacy, OK?
00:24:37 Paul Morton
I mean, if you took then and you had to distill down this magnificent career and all this reflection.
00:24:44 Paul Morton
Because I think I like to define wisdom.
00:24:46 Paul Morton
As knowledge with experience applying the knowledge and then reflection upon that, and then my son came.
00:24:54 Paul Morton
To me and.
00:24:54 Paul Morton
He disagreed with my definition, he said. It doesn’t matter, but darn what you’ve got unless you share it. So it’s knowledge plus experience applying it, plus the reflection upon that. And then you actually have to get it out of your head.
00:25:07 Paul Morton
Otherwise, it’s selfish.
00:25:10 Paul Morton
Take that then and apply my wee boys last idea of sharing it. What’s your how to what’s the biggest, most viable thing that you can share based on this?
00:25:23 David Greer
Well, if we follow up in kind of the strategic planning part we’ve been talking or just planning is you know?
00:25:32 David Greer
Is to know where you’re going.
00:25:34 David Greer
And again, back to this conscious choice like if you don’t have some idea of where you’re going, like how you know, how do you know whether you’re making progress or not?
00:25:46 David Greer
And I think you know, a lot of us.
00:25:48 David Greer
Just and.
00:25:50 David Greer
And again I missed earlier like we just let things happen to us, whereas I think we actually have way more power. We have way more power and way less power than we think. I think we have a lot more power over ourselves and our.
00:26:03 David Greer
Choices.
00:26:04 David Greer
And we have a lot less power.
00:26:06 David Greer
And we think to control others.
00:26:08 Paul Morton
Yes.
00:26:09 David Greer
Yeah.
00:26:10 David Greer
Right, like.
00:26:12
And.
00:26:13 David Greer
I I’ve come to believe, you know, the only thing I really can control is my response to something someone else says, and my next choice.
00:26:24 David Greer
Like that’s really it. You boil it all away. And now if I have a vision for where I’m going and I have a plan for where I’d like to be, then the next choice I make is much like, more likely to be in a path that’s going to take me where I want.
00:26:42 David Greer
And I I’m not saying you have to, like, spend oodles of time doing this. I mean, you know, once a year spend two or three hours and figure out, you know, what you want to do. And I break it down. I my former coach, Kevin Lawrence. He has this model that I use.
00:26:58 David Greer
Which is to focus on three areas of your life. So first is career like career/finance.
00:27:07 David Greer
That’s the first area. Then the second is what I would call your life, your relationships, the people you want to be with your interactions. And then there’s a piece in the middle that almost all high performing people squeeze out. So like, I work with a lot of high performing entrepreneurs. They’re super passionate about their business.
00:27:27 David Greer
For passionate about people, they want to help. They are very, very focused on their lives or their spouse or their children or, you know, their hobbies or racing cars or whatever it is that they do.
00:27:40 David Greer
But they squeeze themselves out in the middle.
00:27:43 David Greer
And they don’t have a plan to build resiliency for themselves.
00:27:47 David Greer
And I think it’s as important to set specific goals like what are the things that completely renew you. You know, for me it’s like go sailing.
00:27:58 David Greer
Right. No, no real surprise there. And you know, like sometimes in the last couple of years, my wife hasn’t want to come with do as much sailing as I want to do. And so I set things up so I can solo sail. And in fact, I’ve been setting some pretty ambitious challenges for myself and some of those solo sail.
00:28:18 David Greer
And that’s all just pure for myself, like and as I do those challenges. And I overcome them and you know, take some chances, I build more resiliency for myself, which then I can bring to my coaching practice and I can bring to my life with my wife, with my children, with my friends, with my.
00:28:37 David Greer
Recovery. Those three things and I, you know, I asked, I suggested a question like in each of those areas, what do you want to be twice as good at in the next three years?
00:28:48 David Greer
You know what’s the number one thing you want for your career this year? What’s the number one thing you want for yourself, and what’s the number one thing you want for your life? And if you just had one goal in each?
00:28:56 David Greer
Of those areas, I think you’d have a really powerful plan.
00:28:59 Paul Morton
One property.
00:29:01 David Greer
Yeah, I think two or three in each of those are doable.
00:29:05 David Greer
You know, because you’re kind of splitting it off.
00:29:07 David Greer
And.
00:29:09 David Greer
Coach Kevin encourage us to like what’s your passion ratio, which I kind of think is energy times time. So you know like if you want to put 80% of your passion into your business, I’m OK with that.
00:29:22 David Greer
Which means. Then what you’re going to do 10% for yourself and 10% for your life? OK, so I just again, conscious choice. Make sure you understand or make sure that your spouse and your children and others around you understand that you’re going 80% of your passion’s going to go into the business.
00:29:38 David Greer
And they’re then you’re going to give them a solid 10%, but it’s only going to be 10%.
00:29:43 Paul Morton
Yeah.
00:29:43 David Greer
Right. And it doesn’t have to be 1/3 a third and a third, unless that’s what you want.
00:29:51 David Greer
You know, some business, some entrepreneurs are so passionate about their business, like, you know, less than 70% is just not going to cut it and they’re going to do whatever it takes, you know, and if it’s a global business and you have to travel to trade shows like, you know you’re going to be away a certain amount of time. But at least when you’re back.
00:30:10 David Greer
When you make sure that you’re giving a full that 10% of passion or 15% of passion, you’re going to give to your, to your life that you’re doing it consciously and not so exist.
00:30:21 David Greer
Tested every single time that you have nothing left to give, which is back to that self. Like what do you need to do? You know, renew yourself so.
00:30:31 David Greer
Like maybe after a big trip, you don’t go into work on Monday and you actually take a day off. I mean, some entrepreneurs are like, that is such a radical like it for them. It’s a radical concept.
00:30:44 David Greer
But I point out like you, you you’re planning a trip. Are you going to work 20 days in a row without a break?
00:30:49 David Greer
Like, it’s perfectly reasonable to come back and say I’m going to take two days off even.
00:30:53 David Greer
Though they’re business days.
00:30:56 David Greer
Right. Like your business will survive, it survived 20 days with you on the road. It’ll survive two more.
00:31:03 Paul Morton
You told.
00:31:03 David Greer
Or come in Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and take Thursday and Friday.
00:31:07 Paul Morton
There you go.
00:31:08 David Greer
Come in, bite the fires.
00:31:11 David Greer
You know.
00:31:12 David Greer
Be a face show yourself, but you know, take the last two days off and do a day. That’s something just for you. And do a day.
00:31:18 David Greer
That’s something just.
00:31:19 David Greer
For your.
00:31:19 Paul Morton
Family. Yeah, it was one of the nicest pieces of advice I got as I was stepping up in my career, I had a I was very fortunate to have two great managers over.
00:31:29 Paul Morton
Time.
00:31:30 Paul Morton
And one of them, a great guy called Jacques.
00:31:32 Paul Morton
He encouraged me to #1 learn how to delegate properly, to delegate tasks to people, and then to reserve that time. So aim to find yourself back 2025% of your time and see when you’ve got it. Go watch a movie.
00:31:47 David Greer
Yeah.
00:31:48 Paul Morton
Look what? Seriously. My boss. You should be telling to work hard. I said, yeah, I am. Get better. Then go watch a movie.
00:31:54
Thanks.
00:31:58 Paul Morton
- And I, I’ve actually done it, I did it. I mean I think I went, I went to.
00:32:02 Paul Morton
See.
00:32:03 Paul Morton
Two movies, the course of like six weeks, six, six months. Actually, when I was trying to do this, learning how to do this and I went to see two, I went to see a movie I was like.
00:32:12 Paul Morton
OK, well when on my own right, some mad film, whatever it was.
00:32:20 Paul Morton
I came out feeling quite naughty but wonderful because it had. It was the result. It was a rewarded result I’d given myself the reward because of having delegated out all this stuff and other people were doing the travelling. Other people were doing this stuff. That was that was the.
00:32:36 David Greer
Yes.
00:32:39 David Greer
And smart, both because he consciously or consciously understood about the self peace about the having to renew yourself like that going to a movie just because.
00:32:50
This.
00:32:51 David Greer
Right. And also how a radical idea would be for you and experience, right? I love. I love that story because it’s really an insightful boss who, who, you know, probably guessed that your discomfort around that but still push you to do.
00:32:55 Paul Morton
No, that was it. He was, yeah.
00:33:06 Paul Morton
It anyways, totally he was he was.
00:33:09 Paul Morton
He was a very he’s a he’s around, he’s a, he’s a sharp, sharp guy, really sharp, really quiet, really calm. But he’s one of those guys.
00:33:17 Paul Morton
I can see your soul based on the wrinkles of your nose, that sort of person you like. Amazing. Is there something perhaps in your long career that has taught you the most? What is the one thing that has just smacked you in the head? Other than perhaps the?
00:33:37 Paul Morton
The light bulb moment where you realize that you didn’t.
00:33:39 Paul Morton
Have to work.
00:33:41 Paul Morton
For that moment in time, is there something that’s actually?
00:33:46
Yeah.
00:33:48 David Greer
Yeah, I guess you know it’s take chances.
00:33:51 David Greer
It’s.
00:33:53 David Greer
UM, you know, even joining like when I joined Robelle, I was in fourth year at university. Now I had worked with the founder for a year and a half on a big rewrite of a project for a cable company here in Vancouver. So it wasn’t like I didn’t know him, but, you know, it was starting with this company who had the two founders and nothing else.
00:34:15 David Greer
And you know, kind of a couple years of track record.
00:34:19 David Greer
And always taking the chance to go on the Mediterranean trip. And another thing. I took an enormous chance on, or it felt like at the time was getting sober, like when I got sober. I could not imagine a meal without wine.
00:34:36 David Greer
Like I like my imagination was completely limited as to how I could possibly ever survive day-to-day life without having alcohol in it.
00:34:48 David Greer
And you know, Coach Kevin, this coach I referred to earlier, like he’s the one. I trusted her enough to.
00:34:54 David Greer
Admit that I had.
00:34:54 David Greer
A problem and he coached me to go to 12 step recovery and maybe do a commitment to go which I did the day that I made the commitment.
00:35:04 David Greer
And you know, it’s completely changed my life. Like I was scared, took me 5 or 10 years before I really admitted how scared I was.
00:35:13 David Greer
But I took a chance on what he said was going to be right.
00:35:16 David Greer
And it, it turns out that over the years he had met several people in 12 step recovery and had lengthy conversations with them. So like he knew the process and he knew that was the right thing.
00:35:27 David Greer
To coach me to do.
00:35:30 Paul Morton
You can see the signs.
00:35:31 David Greer
Yeah, and well, he had no idea until I admitted to him like, because I was a high performing alcoholic, right. Whenever we were on calls and I most when we were on calls was the afternoon. And, you know, I’m a proper gentleman. I didn’t start drinking till 4:00.
00:35:46 David Greer
I wouldn’t have even had a drink when I was talking to Kevin and yeah, so it was a complete shock to him. But it didn’t matter. He knew what to do when I admitted.
00:35:58 David Greer
That that was my problem.
00:36:01 Paul Morton
And it’s I think it’s a blessing that you had that sort of level of trust with somebody who could point you in the right direction.
00:36:08 David Greer
It took us 18 months. It took us 18 months of working together and we’d like cleared the table of kind of all the other clutter until, like the elephant in the room. Like, that’s all that was left.
00:36:21 David Greer
But.
00:36:23 David Greer
I will say I knew it was a one way St. because I had built such a strong trust relationship with Kevin that I knew when I admitted it to him like he was never.
00:36:33 David Greer
Going to let me off the hook.
00:36:35 David Greer
Like I didn’t know what that would look like.
00:36:37 David Greer
But I knew he was never. He would always bring the subject back if I didn’t do.
00:36:42 David Greer
Something about it?
00:36:44 David Greer
Like so, I just knew that once I did the admittance to him like.
00:36:49 David Greer
He was going to he’s that kind of person. He was going to bird dog me until I did something about it so.
00:36:55 Paul Morton
Terry.
00:36:56 David Greer
You know, because we’d worked on enough other things which he’d bird dogged me until I got there. And so I really knew that that admittance was. And then that night, you know, I went to a 12 step meeting and I stood up and I said, I’m David, I’m an alcoholic. And I just said it.
00:37:14 David Greer
I don’t think I really knew what it meant, but it was really admitting my truth and later I came to realize that, like, really owning my truth.
00:37:25 Paul Morton
What I mean and again, just because I’m asking a question, does it mean you answer it? But what was the?
00:37:35 Paul Morton
The defining moment, the epiphany moment that led you to say that to coach Kevin.
00:37:41 Paul Morton
What was it?
00:37:41 David Greer
I got sick, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
00:37:45 David Greer
Like literally, I just.
00:37:49 David Greer
It’s an internal story. It’s an int like it just you know, I just got sick and tired of being totally beholden to the alcohol. I got sick and, you know, and 4:00 became 330, became 3. And, you know, I had a whole bunch of red lines I’d never drink in the car. And then I never drink in the car when it’s moving and, you know.
00:38:08 David Greer
I just it.
00:38:09 David Greer
Crossed all of these and crossed all of these and.
00:38:13 David Greer
And I just.
00:38:15 David Greer
Internally, I just was stunned. I just was. I just sick and tired of being sick and tired.
00:38:22 David Greer
And didn’t want.
00:38:23 David Greer
To live my life that way anymore. You know, when I came into recovery, you know, I had a house and I had a couple of cars. I had a wife, and I had three children and 15 years on, you know, I have a house. It’s a different house.
00:38:36 David Greer
When the cost?
00:38:36 David Greer
Last and you know we have two cars and we have 3 kids and now we have 2 grandkids.
00:38:42 David Greer
And so if you looked just at the outside and looked at me, you’d say, oh, wow, David, like nothing really looks different 15 years on.
00:38:53 David Greer
And on the outside it doesn’t look all that much different, but on the inside I’m here to tell you I am a completely different person than I was 15 years ago. Completely different.
00:39:07 David Greer
And in so many different ways.
00:39:11 David Greer
And that that’s truly the story of recovery. It’s not about your outsides, it’s about your insides.
00:39:18 David Greer
It’s about how you feel. It’s about how you behave.
00:39:22 David Greer
And the, you know, the alcohol is like an iceberg. The alcohol is the 20% that’s showing up above the surface and it’s the 80% underneath, which is, you know, what’s inside you, what drives you to drink like that, is how what you really have to go work on.
00:39:40 David Greer
Because it’s that 80. If you don’t work on that 80%, eventually you’ll go back and pick up a drink again.
00:39:44 David Greer
Drug. So you know and in 12 step recovery we have these things, the 12 steps, it’s really just a process for you to work on.
00:39:52 David Greer
That 80%?
00:39:55 David Greer
Internal stuff. I mean, there’s other. I’ve done therapy work. I’ve done relationship counselling work. You know, there’s learnings I did for my coach training.
00:40:06 David Greer
Like all of these things have contributed to my personal growth in my being just a very different human being today than I was before.
00:40:15 Paul Morton
Well, I don’t know if you’ll accept congratulations from somebody you hardly know, but congratulations.
00:40:20 David Greer
Thank you so much.
00:40:22
Really.
00:40:23 David Greer
It’s the single biggest achievement of my life and you know, every day I have to get up and I have to achieve again. The single biggest achievement of my life.
00:40:33 David Greer
Like, because that’s the nature of addiction, it doesn’t go away and it, like we talked earlier about the number one thing.
00:40:40 David Greer
For me, the number one thing every day stay sober.
00:40:47 David Greer
Like and that you know, that’s my lot in life. That’s the cards I’ve been dealt, and I understand that.
00:40:55 David Greer
And you know, it gets a lot easier, like, but I don’t know. I sit in my cushion and I ask something bigger than me to keep me sober for today.
00:41:05 David Greer
Because I got a lot of practice saying I can’t keep myself sober.
00:41:08
Yeah.
00:41:11 Paul Morton
So other than that.
00:41:14
Yeah.
00:41:15 Paul Morton
Other than that.
00:41:17 David Greer
Other than that minor little thing.
00:41:19 Paul Morton
What you working on?
00:41:22 David Greer
Well, I’m doing a podcast like this. I think that I have a lot of experience, strength and hope to share both from the business perspective, the planning perspective.
00:41:33 David Greer
You know, I do, you know, strategy and business execution and people and you know I do a lot of work with my clients around people because it turns out you can’t run a business.
00:41:44 David Greer
Without people and.
00:41:45 David Greer
And every time you have people together. Yeah, there’s stuff that happens and.
00:41:46 Paul Morton
Testing thoughts on it.
00:41:53 David Greer
I want to share about my recovery so.
00:41:57 David Greer
You know, if all I can do is come on podcasts like yours and help one person, I will be thrilled.
00:42:03 David Greer
Like just to be able to share my experience, strength and hope, which you’ve allowed me to do today, and I want to.
00:42:09 David Greer
Really.
00:42:10 David Greer
Thank you for that. And to have the opportunity to have an impact on one of your listeners that that’s you know I would like to get more clients than I have capacity at the moment for more especially coach one-on-one coaching clients.
00:42:24 David Greer
That that would be fantastic and I hope eventually it’ll be an outcome of doing this work, but it’s not the primary purpose that drives me.
00:42:35 Paul Morton
Well, my mum always has never underestimate the power of 1 conversation to change the course of your.
00:42:41 Paul Morton
Life.
00:42:42 Paul Morton
Perhaps this has been a thing for somebody if.
00:42:45 Paul Morton
Good luck if you’re listening, where can people find you apart from LinkedIn?
00:42:51 David Greer
So first of all, I just want to remind listeners that I offer free one hour coaching call to anyone that wants and my promise to you is you’ve spent an hour with me. You’ll have three ideas that accelerate.
00:42:59 Paul Morton
James.
00:43:00 Paul Morton
Good.
00:43:06 David Greer
Who in your career and your life within the next 90 days, and to do that go to my website, coachdjgreer.com Coach D as in David J as in jamesgreer.com and my phone number and my e-mail address is in the top left corner of every page on my website.
00:43:26 David Greer
And just reach out, try and make it as easy as possible.
00:43:31 Paul Morton
Wonderful, David. Just before we wrap what’s the one thing you would want to thank your younger self for doing?
00:43:46 David Greer
Yeah, that’s a hard one. I’d so maybe go with this one.
00:43:51 David Greer
When I was in Grade 9, I got taken for a tour of the government buildings in Edmonton, AB, which is the provincial capital of the province of Alberta.
00:43:59 David Greer
And I saw a lot of I saw computer room.
00:44:01 David Greer
And spinning tape drives. And I had a math teacher that taught me octal arithmetic. Turns out that you don’t have to have that. We count to 10 because we have these 10 digits on our on our hands.
00:44:03 David Greer
Oh.
00:44:13 David Greer
And I knew then that I wanted to combine business and computers. I don’t know how where that came from, but I just literally had that vision and.
00:44:23 David Greer
You know that’s I just want to thank my younger self for having that vision because it carried me a super long ways.
00:44:31 Paul Morton
It’s a good vision, coach djgreer.com, thank you very much indeed for joining me.
00:44:38 David Greer
Thank you so much for having me.
