Solve your business problems by listening to my interview with Flavia Berys on her Lifestyle Solopreneur Podcast. We cover these topics:
- How having a vision propelled me through the first 20 years of my career.
- I lived my dream of living on a sailboat for two years in the Mediterranean from one critical conversation.
- An amazing coach created space for me to admit I had a drinking problem.
- Who then coached me into 12-step recovery where I have been 16 years sober.
- The prevalence of alcoholism and addiction among entrepreneurs.
- Why I recommend planning and execution be done 13 weeks at a time.
Audio
Lifestyle Solopreneur: https://www.lifestylesolopreneur.com/accelerate-your-business-in-the-next-90-days-with-david-greer/
Transcript
Announcer (00:01):
Welcome to Lifestyle Solopreneur, the community for entrepreneurs who put Lifestyle First, join your host, Flavia Barris as she interviews successful lifestyle solopreneurs and shares ideas to help you find the perfect balance between lifestyle, business, and self. Flavia is an attorney marketing expert and founder of several online academies. She’s been featured in major media, including BBC World News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, ESPN Television and More. Join us for this episode of Lifestyle Solopreneur.
Flavia Berys (00:38):
Hey, lifestyle solopreneurs. Today we get to speak with David J. Greer. He’s an entrepreneurial coach, author and facilitator. He is the catalyst who gets you to fully live your dreams. Now, spend one hour reading his book called Wind In Your Sails. Attend a one hour talk with him or get an hour of one-to-one coaching and you will have three concrete action items that will shift and accelerate your business within 90 days. He specializes in working with entrepreneurs challenged with alcoholism or addiction. He and his wife Karalee are committed to each other and their three children spending time supporting them in the many and varied activities they are all involved with. They live in Vancouver, Canada. Welcome to the show, David.
David Greer (01:21):
Thanks Flavia. I am really thrilled to be here today.
Flavia Berys (01:24):
Well, I love you’ve had this career with so much in it. I mean, you’ve been at this for over 40 years, so tell us a little bit about that journey because it’s fascinating.
David Greer (01:34):
Sure. I’ll start at the beginning. I grew up in Edmonton, Canada. My father was an entrepreneur, took over the family business from my grandfather. And when I was in grade nine, a couple events happened that just I knew that what I wanted to do was to combine business and computers. I had this very early vision. I didn’t know the shape and what it looked like, but I knew that’s what I wanted to work on. And then in high school I was in Edmonton, this is in the seventies, so got a cast back. PCs hadn’t been invented yet, and my high school had a data processing department and a data processing teacher. And I’m writing computer programs in grade 11 at a time when almost no young people ever had that opportunity. I got this exposure really early on and then I ended up not long after high school, moving to Vancouver, chasing my high school sweetheart, who then broke up with me nine months later.
(02:35):
But that’s another story because we’re focused on the business story. And I went to the University of British Columbia to get my computer science degree. Through some contacts I ended up getting a part-time and summer job writing computer programs for the local cable company, which was one of the largest cable companies in North America at that time. And there was a consultant who was helping rewrite the application because it wasn’t scaling. And I worked hand in hand with that consultant. And in fourth year I joined his young software company as the first employee after the founders. And the company was, so the two founders were Robert and Annabelle, and the name of the company was Robelle, which was a concatenation of their first names. And even today it Google’s, well, because it’s a made up word. So as a condition of my employment, Bob insisted that I create an abstract for a paper to present at the 1980 International Hewlett Packard User Group convention, which convention for people that use this specialized computer from Hewlett Packard.
(03:45):
That abstract was accepted. Then I had to write the paper and I had to take a week off of school in fourth year. I remember going to all my professors and letting them know, although they were excited for me and going to San Jose and giving my first presentation. I can remember standing on the edge of the stage before I got introduced and how fricking nervous I was. But at that convention I was standing on the San Jose convention floor telling a bunch of other computer geeks about this cool software and what it could do for them. And little did I know years later I learned that’s the essence of marketing and sales, like showing people the pain that they’re in and having a solution that will put them out of their pain. And we were really, really good at it. And I liked the place.
(04:29):
I stayed 20 years, built it into a global powerhouse. Ten years in, I bought out Annabelle and became partners with Bob. And 10 years after that, Bob and I had a really major disagreement about the strategic direction of the company. We knew that the computing platform that HP made was coming towards the end of his life. We didn’t know if that was two years or five years or eight years. Turned out it was one year and he wanted to milk the market till the last customer left and turn off the lights. And we built this incredible team of people who could do amazing things that most tech companies couldn’t do. And I wanted to take some more money and risk and move it a little bit of risk and a little bit of money, not a lot, and move it in a new direction. I still believe both strategies, both of those were viable.
(05:19):
They were not complimentary. And I like to tell people, Bob and I only had one disagreement, one serious disagreement in 20 years, but it ended in divorce. I’m on the street, this is early 2000’s, like 2001. I haven’t noticed this thing called the dotcom meltdown because our local market was kind of insulated from that busy chasing deals at which there aren’t any because of the meltdown. And someone much smarter than me sat me down and took me out to lunch and we talked. I was sitting in her office and she looked at me and said, “David, your will never be 11, nine and five again. And she said, do you need to work right away?” And I’m like, no, I just got a pretty good check in my jeans. I don’t need to work right away. And she said, well, when I had a career transition kind of about the same age, similar age to what you are, I went to Australia and I bought a VW van and I toured around for a year.
(06:18):
And if your listeners can imagine the most cartoonish, cheesy light bulb going off over my head, that would be me sitting in the chair in that moment. It was literally an Aha moment. And I’d sailed since I was a little boy. We’d had sailboats on the west coast here in BC since, well, since I was still in university and had sailed up and down the coast. And so my wife and I hatched a plan where we commissioned a sailboat in the south of France. We took our three kids and homeschooled them for two years while sailing more than 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean and had amazing adventure. That is still a legacy that our family draws from today, more than 20 years on from that. And I didn’t realize how much that was a, I’d read so many books about cruising families and cruising offshore, and I didn’t realize how much of a dream it was really buried inside me until this opportunity showed itself.
(07:22):
And I’m so thankful that I seized it and came back from that. And I did three years of angel investing looking at kind of a hundred deals a year, investing in one being the director on the board, doing work for options. And I didn’t realize how completely unfulfilling that was until I went to an event. A guy by the name of Verne Harnish, his claim to fame is this thing called the one page strategic plan, which many of my entrepreneurial friends swore by as part of their strategic planning and running their business. I took one of the young CEOs I was invested in and on the board of to this event. It turns out I learned quite a bit that really changed my thinking about strategic planning. And at the back of the room were two coaches. I talked to both of them. One of them made me more uncomfortable than I had been in four or five years.
(08:17):
I literally had tears in the corner of my eyes just from a few questions that he asked me, which was, that was the start of this realization of how unfulfilled I was in my career. And Kevin gave me his card and it sat next to me on my desk and I probably thought once a week to call him. And every time I thought of picking up the phone, it weighed maybe 10,000 pounds. Too scared to take that next right step. But three weeks after the event, Kevin called me and he said, “Hey, this is coach Kevin.” And he said, “I met you at the Vern Harnish event. Do you remember me?” And said, yeah, I remember you. I didn’t say, probably haven’t thought about much else for three weeks, but yeah, I remember you and I hired him and Kevin, I’m like an all in or all out kind of guy.
(09:06):
That’s just the way I play the game of life. I play to win as opposed to not to lose. When I go for it, I go for it. With Kevin, it’s the same thing.
The first coaching session with Kevin was on my 50th birthday August 9th, 2007. And the opening coaching was two eight hour days, 16 hours of coaching. Anyways, we learned a lot about each other in that time. And I worked with Kevin for nine years. But after 18 months of working together, we had cleared off all the clutter. We got reestablished in my career, and the only thing left was the elephant in the room. And on January 27th, 2009 in my coaching call with Kevin, when he said, what’s the topic you want to dig into today? I said, “it’s my drinking.” I had been a daily drinker for over 20 years, and I finally had got sick and tired of being sick and tired and my drinking was the elephant in the room.
(10:08):
And Kevin, in his personal life, he had become friends with a few people in 12 step recovery, and he had had many conversations with them. He knew what to suggest, which was go to a 12 step meeting. And I committed, that was a Tuesday was January 27th, 2009. And I committed to go to a meeting by that Friday and I said I’m all in or all out. So a little bit later that afternoon, I went online and I looked up 12 step meetings and I was going to be at a networking event downtown until that ended about eight o’clock. And I looked and lo and behold, at 8:30 was going to be a meeting, a half a block off the road I was going to be driving down to go home.
Flavia Berys (10:50):
Wow.
David Greer (10:52):
Meant to be, meant to be, totally meant to be. And I went to that meeting and it probably took me half a dozen years before I really admitted to anyone just how scared I was at that meeting, including to myself. But I was literally facing the unknown. I could not imagine how I was going to cope in life without having alcohol. But a couple young women came out, I was hiding out in the back as one typically does when they go to their first meeting. And they were very, very welcoming. And I ended up sitting kind of in a middle row, but on the very edge so I could escape if I needed to. And three quarters of the way through the meeting, the chairman paused and said, “iI there anyone new to our program of recovery that would like to stand and introduce themselves?”
(11:35):
Thankfully, the chairperson that day waited probably 30 seconds and I just sat on my hands and took the last possible second. I stood up and I said,” I’m David, I’m an alcoholic.” I don’t in that moment really think what I knew. I didn’t know what exactly I was admitting to. It turns out it was to my truth. But it was a watershed moment. And a few weeks later, I made that group my home group meeting, which is in 12 step recovery, you’d make a group your home group. You commit to going to it every week and you volunteer for service positions with it. And this Tuesday, this week I was at. I joined that home group and it’s been my home group for all of the intervening time. And if I am sober for another four, three days today, yeah, I think it’s four more days. On the 27th of January, I will be 16 years sober.
Flavia Berys (12:33):
Wow.
David Greer (12:34):
And at the meeting on Tuesday night, there were at least three people that were there who were there the night that I walked in.
(12:42):
To have that level of continuity in my recovery has been so, has been very special. I started down the recovery path. At the same time I’m working with Coach Kevin. I reestablished my career. I do two or three senior executive gigs with always in senior sales and marketing roles with entrepreneurial friends of mine. But all behind the scenes, I was often working with them on strategy. And the last of those gigs was like VP of marketing for 35 million a year, publicly traded telematics company. I came out of that gig and I realized I had worked as hard those three years. I was there as I had probably at any time in my career. And I decided I did not need to prove to anyone in the world that I can work hard and I wanted to figure out a way where I didn’t have to work as hard.
(13:33):
I also came to the conclusion with Kevin’s help that what I wanted to do was give back to entrepreneurs the gifts that Kevin had given to me. I made the decision to become an entrepreneurial coach and a facilitator because it turned by then I built quite a bit of expertise in this scaling up methodology and the one page plan. I specialize in facilitating strategic planning with that tool, and I do a lot of one-on-one coaching. I wrote my book that you refer to in the intro and started off on that journey being a coach and an entrepreneur. And then about three or four years ago, I decided to break my anonymity about my recovery and to become very, very public about my alcoholism and my recovery. And I see it as my mission to share my experience, strength and hope in business and in recovery.
(14:30):
I’d like to reduce the stigmatism of alcoholism. I can almost guarantee every listener, there’s someone in your life that you may or may not know it who has alcohol use disorder or substance use disorder because roughly 10% of the population have one of those. I became very public about this. I mean, I have lots of clients who are not challenged with addiction and I have a lot that are, but I’m one of the few coaches, business coaches that I know of who’s public about that aspect and really let people know that I do specialize. I know the challenges of operating business while drinking every day. And I know the challenges of running a business when you’re sober. And I think it has some special challenges because you’re an entrepreneur, because alcohol is so prevalent in many, not all, but at many businesses, alcohol is very present, it’s kind of lubricant to get deals done to network, to do a lot of things. So how do you be a sober entrepreneur in that environment? I just got a lot of personal experience of how to deal with that. There’s kind of 45 years, give or take in however long that took, but that’s the arc.
Flavia Berys (15:50):
What an amazing story. And so inspirational. You’ve probably helped more people than you could possibly count because there’s people that read your book that hear your messages that aren’t even necessarily your clients that you’re helping just through being transparent and open. And there’s been, I think more movement in society in general towards acknowledging that addiction, alcoholism, I mean, it’s out there, like you were saying, it’s much more prevalent than people think. In one of my industries, which is law. Now I don’t know about every state, but in California you have to actually take a continuing legal education class regularly. Every time you report your CLEs, your continuing ed for that period, you have to have taken at least one hour of education on addiction. And that’s because in the profession of law, it’s very prevalent and it could just be certain professions sort of attract certain personalities or people with tendencies or the stressors of legal practice like lead people to go down that path. And so I’m hopeful that there is less stigma as we go forward, less and less over time and more and more people seek help
David Greer (17:09):
To add to your lawyers, so my sponsor is a former lawyer, he’s retired now, but he was very, very involved in the lawyers assistance program here in British Columbia, which is like a model across North America, which is not just for addiction. It could be that someone died who’s a lawyer, and then they’re there to help with spouses and with children. But a big part of their work is around addiction and alcoholism, and it’s separate from the law society. Everything that you share with them is confidential and it has been instrumental. And every year they have a gratitude lunch. And I’ve been very fortunate to be able to go to it and just hear judges, lawyers, how many who’ve been helped by that program on a path to recovery.
Flavia Berys (17:59):
Well, I love that you wrote a book. I’m a big proponent of taking your knowledge, your story, what people pick your brain about anyways, and putting it into that medium, into a book that people can take with them, read it, absorb that information. And like you said, spend one hour with a book. You can read a book in a day, but sometimes these books are a capsule of like for you, 40 years of experience. So tell us about this book. It’s called Wind In Your Sails. Tell us a little bit about what is in the book, who is for,
David Greer (18:34):
The book has really targeted owner founders who’ve been with one business being fairly successful, but are getting stuck for one reason or another. And I wrote 10 chapters, which I call strategies, or we could call ’em 10 functional areas of a business. My experience is there’s the entrepreneur, him or herself, there’s corporate strategy, there’s innovation, product marketing, sales, exit finance. I probably missed one. And my experience is those kind of owner founders are really, really good in three or four, pretty decent in three or four more and probably have two they’ve never heard of. And it’s kind of a quarter a theory book about how to think about your business and then all the rest is practical hardnosed things you can do. And again, that experience. And then a third of the book is other entrepreneur stories. Every chapter I interviewed entrepreneurial friends of mine who I thought were particularly good in that area of the business. And there’s a 2,500 to 3000 word case study at the end of every chapter featuring these entrepreneurial friends of mine and their experience and challenges and how they overcome them in their business. You get that whole package. And I mean if you buy the print copy, I did include a very extensive index. And my thinking is if you’re stuck, pull it down from the shelf, look in the index, find the right four to eight pages to read, and you’ll have a couple ideas for what to do next.
Flavia Berys (20:14):
And so you’re the catalyst who gets people to fully live dreams out. Tell us a little bit about that. Do you think that a lot of people out there are not living their dreams?
David Greer (20:24):
Well, I just take my example that I shared with you here. I come out of this business, I mean by all outside, I’m very successful, made lots of money. I love the business, I love the customers. And yet here was this very dream that I didn’t even realize I had and it took someone else to be a spark to either realize it or give myself permission to do it. I’m not quite certain which of those, and it doesn’t matter. Like she was my catalyst to let me live my dream that I didn’t even realize I had. And that’s part of the work I do with entrepreneurs is just to help them to explore maybe things that are really important to them, that their business has overtaken them or their life or whatever. They haven’t pursued that aspect and we just explore what that dream means to them and maybe what’s holding them back from living it.
Flavia Berys (21:20):
And so if someone’s sitting out there thinking, am I the kind of client that David Greer coaches, what is your typical client? Because someone may be sitting there thinking, I don’t have an addiction issue. Or maybe that issue, they do have it, but it’s something they don’t want to talk about. What industries and client types do you specialize in? Companies of a certain size or solopreneurs, give us a little bit of guidance so that if we know somebody that could use your services, we can steer them towards you, you’d be the right coach.
David Greer (21:54):
The majority of my clients are entrepreneurs. Typically owner founders built a business at least a million a year in revenue or more and 10 to 200 employees. That’s definitely the majority of my business. And I think some of the skills I bring to the table are around relationships, culture, people, as well as the part around strategic planning. And I think those people, if you’re a solopreneur, you probably don’t have employees, you might have subcontractors. The people issues may not be as big. But having said that, I do have a portion of my clientele who are solopreneurs, and it’s really about what are you stuck on? If anything, you’re not stuck. Your business is going well, great, and you got the life you want, great. You don’t need my help most likely. But if you’ve grown your business to a certain size and now you’re stuck and you want to grow it bigger, but you’re just keep hitting the ceiling, I also work with people where you start a business so that you can be free of the corporate jungle, so to speak. And I love that one of your early, I went through your website and one of your early posts or recordings talks about the idea that your time is all your own as a solopreneur or an entrepreneur is not correct. It’s really because it’s about the customer. However, you still can put up boundaries and you still can structure your life and have more control than maybe you think. So people sometimes come to me because the business has them pinned to the ground and they don’t know how to get out of that.
Flavia Berys (23:39):
I think a lot of parents too are like, if you’re a parent, your time is absolutely not your own now responsible for this other little human or two or three or four or five. And so it’s true. I mean it’s a constant sort of we design each day, but there are some limitations and some boundaries that we can design, but others that are sort of out of our control. I love that you focus on 90 days, you’re like, you help people shift and accelerate within 90 days. What’s the magic of 90 days? Why not 30 or 60 or 180?
David Greer (24:14):
My basic tenant around strategic planning business is a quarter has 13 weeks. So roughly that’s 90 days, slightly more whatever, but roughly 90 days is 13 weeks. And in 13 weeks you can get a lot of shit done. And if you go wildly off course or you choose the course of the beginning of 13 weeks and you end up someplace you didn’t expect to at all, at all, there’s still three quarters in the year to recover from it. There’s always enough time to recover. Enough time to get a lot of stuff done and decide whether you’re on the right course and if you’re totally, totally off, there’s still enough time to recover. I think it’s a very natural and really good pulse point to plan and execute around.
Flavia Berys (25:02):
Well, you have offered very generously a one hour coaching call for people who are interested in getting to know you better and having that conversation. So give us a little bit of detail about how someone reaches out to you, how does someone connect? And we’ll also put up the way to connect with you in our podcast guest gift vault. So it’s podcast guest gift.com. Anything that our audience can benefit from that our guests generously offer, we like to put in there as well. There’s two ways you can get this information
David Greer (25:34):
For me. It’s coachdjgreer.com, Coach D as in David, J as in James Greer.com. Every page on my website in the top left corner has my phone number and my email address, and there’s a contact form. Reach out via one of those methods. It’s literally that simple. And we’ll book a time and we’ll spend an hour and we’ll help you get unstuck and figure out what the next step is to move you forward.
Flavia Berys (26:02):
David, thank you so much for what you do out in the world and everyone that you help, not just with your story, which is profound, but your book, your coaching, I mean, you’re out there just helping others live their dreams and achieve what they want and their goals. I’m very grateful to you also for taking the time today to talk with us about all of this. So thank you, David for being on the show today.
David Greer (26:25):
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Flavia Berys (26:29):
Hey everyone, thank you so much for joining us and I hope you enjoyed the show. Don’t forget to subscribe to this podcast and if you leave a review on iTunes, I promise I will read every single review. If you know someone who makes a full-time living from part-time work and maybe this is you, please visit lifestyle solopreneur.com to nominate a guest or to nominate yourself because remember, this money doesn’t buy happiness, but money in the hands of a happy person, there is no greater tool.
Announcer (27:07):
Today’s episode was brought to you by the Get Shift Done program. It’s a lifestyle changing online class to help you define your business and lifestyle ambitions and to set goals in a way you’ve never experienced before. This class will 10 x your daily productivity with methods that will blow your mind. And if you use a coupon code podcast, the class tuition is 99% off. Visit get shift done.com to enroll today.
