Discover your greatest talent by listening to Don Hutcheson’s Discover Your Talent Podcast. I was fortunate to be interviewed by Don to talk about how I discovered my own talents. The result is Episode 913. His Greatest Talent Is Getting Things Done. Follow the link to listen to the podcast on the Discover Your Talent Podcast site and to see Don’s show notes. You can also listen directly to the podcast below.
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Full Transcipt
Don Hutcheson:
Hello, world. Welcome to Discover Your Talent–Do What You Love. I’m your host, Don Hutcheson. Every Monday, I interview someone from around the world who’s discovered their talents to do work they love to create a life of success, satisfaction and freedom. On Fridays, I interview an individual with many years of experience from one of the most popular occupations or professions, who shares an insider’s look at what it’s really like to do what they do.
Don Hutcheson:
I’m delighted to bring you our featured guest, David J. Greer. Welcome, David.
David J. Greer:
Thanks, Don. It’s great to be here.
Don Hutcheson:
Thank you, sir. David, are you using your talents doing work that you love?
David J. Greer:
Absolutely. Every day.
Don Hutcheson:
All righty. Well we’ll want to hear that whole story. David J. Greer is an entrepreneurial coach, author, and professional speaker. He’s the catalyst who gets you to fully live your dreams now. Spend one hour reading his book, Wind In Your Sails, attend a one hour talk with him or get one hour of one on one coaching, and you will have three concrete action items that will shift and accelerate your business within 90 days. David and his wife, Karalee, are committed to each other and their three children, spending time supporting them in the many and varied activities in which they’re involved in Vancouver, Canada.
Don Hutcheson:
David, that’s a pithy summary of your career. Tell our listeners around the world what you’re engaged in now that has you excited and motivated, please.
David J. Greer:
Right now, I created some extra time this year so I could take on more coaching clients. I am excited about that, that I can take on more one on one coaching. And I’m starting a new program called Grow Your Biz Quiz. It’s GrowYourBizQuiz.com, and that’s for any entrepreneur that’s stuck. The idea is you come to the site and there is a short list of questions which I hope will get you unstuck in pretty short order.
Don Hutcheson:
It’s pretty amazing work, to say the least. It’s a complex world out there and people need all the positive feedback and constructive strategies that they can get. Congratulations on that.
David J. Greer:
Thank you.
Don Hutcheson:
As we discussed, everyone’s life is about turning points or passages, from the day we’re born until we leave this plane of existence. Please take us into the backstory of David Greer, family of origin, and tell us about the people and places, and events and choices and changes that have gotten you here today.
David J. Greer:
I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And I was relinquished for adoption immediately at birth. And I was adopted into a delightful, upper middle class family in Edmonton. And three years later, my parents adopted my sister, Jane, and three years after that, my mother got pregnant with my brother, John.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, interesting.
David J. Greer:
My first role models were my mom and dad. My dad was second generation entrepreneur and my grandfather started a hardware business in downtown Edmonton in 1923. And he then changed it into a wholesale sanitary supply business and my father took that over after the Second World War. And actually, my brother runs it today, and if he makes it three years, which I’m confident he will, it’ll be 100 years in business.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, that’s impressive.
David J. Greer:
That is very amazing. Very, very amazing. And people, no matter what the economy, they need to clean. And then oil is a huge part of the Alberta economy, so that’s an industry that needs a lot of cleaning, and so that’s been a good business.
Don Hutcheson:
What were you like as a very young boy? It’s in our DNA. Were you a studious young boy? Were you outdoors? Were you athletic? Were you artistic? Were you social? Were you a leader? What were you like?
David J. Greer:
I think I was a little more isolated. I had friends but I was my own person. Some of the earliest stories, like my parents would get so frustrated because I, probably when I was three, four years old, I would open the door to the basement stairs and I’d go downstairs and I’d climb up on dad’s bench and get a screwdriver, and I’d come upstairs and I’d take off all the faceplates on the wall plugs.
Don Hutcheson:
While you were three or four years old?
David J. Greer:
Yeah. When I was three or four years old. I mean, my parents tell the story, when I was five, they had friends over and they were really engaged with their friends and didn’t notice that I’d got in behind the TV and taken off the back of the TV and was pulling out the tubes. And it cost them half the price of the TV to get it repaired. And of course, in tube, you have really high voltage. There was significant risk. I could have electrocuted myself.
Don Hutcheson:
That’s a special ability of one of 19 abilities that people have been measuring for 100 years. You were clearly spatial and structural from an early age.
David J. Greer:
Yes. I had that, and then growing up… I’m a big guy. I’m 6’2″, 240 lbs. I’ve got a big chest, and you can probably tell, fairly big voice. I mean, I grew six inches or so in grade seven, and my parents had me involved in badminton and tennis when I was younger but was mostly uncoordinated. And then in the middle school years, which in Alberta is from grade seven to nine, I didn’t know where the end of my limbs where. And then I had the PE teacher in grade nine, Dave Bembo, I remember him, he encouraged me to try out for the volleyball team, which I thought was a crazy idea. How could I ever make the volleyball team? Because I was this uncoordinated klutz. But he believed in me. And in fact, I did make the volleyball team.
David J. Greer:
I mean, I remember one game, just having a really awful game, and afterwards Dave took me in his office and said, “What happens when you fall down? The answer is, you get up.” But I didn’t in the moment really hear his message. But later, I heard it. [crosstalk 00:06:32] that I was too self-judgemental. And then he encouraged me to get on the basketball team, and I played basketball. And then when I went to high school it turned out I was an academic geek jock.
Don Hutcheson:
I’ll be darned. Interesting.
David J. Greer:
Playing football, basketball, rugby, and track and field. I threw discuss and shot put.
Don Hutcheson:
Good heavens. Football, basketball, rugby, and track and field. Well, man, you didn’t have much time to relax.
David J. Greer:
Oh, and I was a straight A student and I was also on the social… I got minor awards in the social committee, and another minor one, and I was sportsman of the year in my graduating class.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, my word. Those are serious credentials, to say the least. [inaudible 00:07:22] talents, to say the very least, but were there other people in your life that saw different aspects of you that allowed you to just have reflection on different talents that you had, that you could deploy?
David J. Greer:
I don’t know about talents, but I had this vision for what I wanted to do with my life and my career from grade eight. We had a field thing at school where we went and we visited… Edmonton is the provincial capital and we visited the government buildings which are in Edmonton. And I remember looking through these glass windows. We never actually got to do in at a computer room, and I remember seeing all this computer equipment spread out in front of me and then the tape drives spinning in the background. And I just remember, I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.
David J. Greer:
And then I remember, and I think it was my grade eight… I remember a woman science teacher, but I can’t remember her name and I don’t… I think we did our field trip with her, and I can’t remember if she was also my math teacher, but in grade eight I got taught octal arithmetic. When we see one and zero, most of us think 10, and that’s because we have 10 digits. But it turns out, it can represent all sorts of other things when you change the base, is what we say. We do all of our arithmetic in base 10. But you can do it in base two, which is what computers do. They do it in ones and zeros. And you can do it in base eight, which one and zero would actually mean eight because it means one times eight to the first power, plus zero.
Don Hutcheson:
Okay.
David J. Greer:
And these were just blow my mind away concepts. And literally, at that point, I had this vision, I want to take business and computers and combine them.
Don Hutcheson:
And this was literally in grade eight?
David J. Greer:
Grade eight or grade nine. I can’t remember exactly when. But it was a crystal clear vision.
Don Hutcheson:
Good heavens.
David J. Greer:
I don’t know exactly where it came from. I have this super analytical, mathematical brain. I just kept getting better and better at math. I took advanced math in grade 12. Regular math, I was usually finished all the in class stuff halfway before the class was over and the teacher would let me sneak down to the cafeteria as long as I didn’t tell anyone.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow. I don’t know how old Bill Gates is or how old Steve Jobs was, but you were in their… It sounds like a model that they…
David J. Greer:
Yeah. It’s very similar. In fact, like Bill Gates, I got, in the same high school, I was one of the few in Edmonton that had a data processing teacher. And I took data processing and we had a way where we could use key punches and do programs and then send them to the principal’s office. And they got put in a bag and got sent to the Edmonton school board where it was run through their IBM computer. And then two days later you got your results. I was running the computer programs in grade 10 or grade 11. And then I got my student account at the University of Alberta by grade 11 and I’d go over there and create programs.
David J. Greer:
In fact, my dad hired me to do one of my first real programs in that it was the transition from Fahrenheit to centigrade in Canada. In the United States still use Fahrenheit but in Canada we use centigrade. And because in the warehouse they made chemicals, they made cleaning supplies by actually combining chemicals together and my dad wanted a chart of Fahrenheit to Celsius conversion. And so I took the bus over to the University of Alberta, and I wrote the [inaudible 00:11:09] program and it came out on the old impact printers and printed sideways. And I don’t think I got paid for it, but it was one of my first real, do, create a computer program for some useful problem [inaudible 00:11:24].
Don Hutcheson:
Yes. Yes. Where did you decide to go to university? Did you go to the University of Alberta?
David J. Greer:
I started at UofA, but I had been in love with my high school sweetheart and she had moved out to Vancouver. And I was chafing under my father and he also really wanted me to take over the business. And there wasn’t enough computers in the wholesale sanitary supply business. In January of 1976, as my second term started at UofA, I actually upped and moved to Vancouver.
Don Hutcheson:
Okay.
David J. Greer:
And then later, of course, broke up with my girlfriend.
Don Hutcheson:
Of course.
David J. Greer:
Of course.
Don Hutcheson:
We all know that story. Well, where did you go to school in Vancouver?
David J. Greer:
Then, after a year and a half, I decided I did want to get my computer science degree and so I entered into the University of British Columbia in second year of computer science. And then I hadn’t completed chemistry… And so UBC requires two physical sciences in first year if you’re going to get a science degree. That’s chemistry, physics or biology. And I hadn’t completed chemistry at the University of Alberta because it was an all year course, and so, when I’d left after one term, I had to take it at the University of British Columbia.
David J. Greer:
And that turned out to be fortuitous because in November of 1977, after a three hour chemistry lab, I asked this young lady from the country if she would like to go out on a date, even though she didn’t know who I was and she had never met me before. But I knew who she was because there was five girls in the class and 250 guys. Anyway, she said yes. That was 42 years ago that we went on our first date. And we’ve been married 38 years.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, my word. You started dating her right then and you’d courted for four years and you got married?
David J. Greer:
Yeah. Yeah.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh. How wonderful. Wow. Well, how interesting and coincidental that out of 250 guys and only five young women that you were in a class with her and that you actually met her and liked her and everything else? That’s fortuitous.
David J. Greer:
Yes. Yeah. I think the universe conspired to put us together.
Don Hutcheson:
Yeah. Yeah.
David J. Greer:
So far, it’s worked out.
Don Hutcheson:
Yeah. That’s just incredible. You had all these ideas because you’re very creative as well as very analytic. What were you thinking when you were at UBC about the world of work? How you were going to deploy your talents and interests and personal style into the world of work? What were your ideas?
Don Hutcheson:
… Can certainly back up. Forgive me. As you were in school, did you have other jobs that might be related to some of your interests while you were in school in the summer or whenever?
David J. Greer:
Well, let me go back to your previous question. It will actually answer this one, too.
Don Hutcheson:
Good.
David J. Greer:
I’d gone back to university. I’m taking these first year science courses because I have to and I’m really in second year computer science. And so in February 1978, I get a call… Summers in Edmonton, I ran a sporting goods warehouse, so when I came to Vancouver, what’s the one thing I knew how to do? Run a sporting goods warehouse. I drove around and I opened up the yellow pages to sporting goods wholesalers, because that’s what you did pre internet, and I drove to every single one of them in the Vancouver area and left a cover letter and a resume. And eventually I got a job with two brilliant, innovative entrepreneurs running their sporting goods warehouse. I had done that.
Don Hutcheson:
How did you know… Forgive me again for interrupting. You’re super bright but a lot of super bright people don’t know how to leave a cover letter and resume. How did you figure that out? Sounds obvious in this world, in a way, but I guess it wasn’t obvious. How did you figure that out?
David J. Greer:
I probably read a book or went to the library. I, honestly, Don, I can’t remember.
Don Hutcheson:
Nine out of 10 people would have just dropped by and met them and whatever. But that was really very tactically smart.
David J. Greer:
Yeah, like I say, my parents… So again, were some of the role models. My mother had been taking me to the library since I was seven or eight years old.
Don Hutcheson:
Okay.
David J. Greer:
So, going to the library as a resource and learning stuff, it was just normal.
Don Hutcheson:
Yeah.
David J. Greer:
I needed to tell you about the wholesale stuff because one of the people I worked with there, he calls me in February of 1978 and he says, “David, David. I met this guy at a party on Sunday night, and he’s the MIS”, which is management information systems. Today we’d think of it as IT. “He’s the IT manager of Premier Cable System. And he’s got this brand new computer system and you need to meet him.” And so that was, I think, Monday. I called Greg Fleck who was the IT manager, and he said, “Yeah, I’d come by. Let’s have a chat.” Thursday afternoon, after my classes, I went and had a chat.
Don Hutcheson:
You’d worked with the fellow that gave you the tip. You’d worked in his wholesale store. You’re back in school, and he saw this opportunity, he calls you up.
David J. Greer:
Yes.
Don Hutcheson:
Well that’s incredibly thoughtful.
David J. Greer:
I know. And I’ve totally lost track of Billy. I have no idea where he is today.
Don Hutcheson:
Very few people would be that thoughtful and detailed to follow up. And especially to put you in touch with Greg Fleck for heaven’s sakes, who was right in your sweet spot, right?
David J. Greer:
Right. And so, Greg hires me, and literally, at the end of the interview, behind Greg, which turned out is where the computer room was, this 6’7″ tall dude walks through and introduces himself. It’s Bob Green, is his name. And he starts showing me this computer stuff and all the cool stuff it could do. And I didn’t have a clue of anything that he was telling me. Completely over my head.
David J. Greer:
Well, it turned out that Greg hired me to work on this project to rewrite the system that wasn’t working for Premier and Bob was the senior consultant. I worked equally with Bob. And in fourth year, I made the decision to join Bob and his wife, Annabelle, in their software company that they had just started. And it was about 18 months or 24 months old at that point, as their first employee. After the two of them.
Don Hutcheson:
My word. You’re saying in the fourth year when you were at UBC?
David J. Greer:
Yeah. Yeah.
Don Hutcheson:
Okay. After you graduated, or during the-
David J. Greer:
No. I’m still in fourth year. And then a requirement of my coming to work for Robelle is that I had to… You take Robert and Annabelle, and you concatenate it, you get Robelle, which is the name of their company.
Don Hutcheson:
Okay. Okay.
David J. Greer:
Because it’s a made up name, even today, it still Googles pretty well.
David J. Greer:
As a requirement of working for them was… Bob had a strategy of thought leadership in this brand new area of this computer system that HP had just started making a couple years before and selling a couple years before. And so I had to write an abstract and submit it to the 1980 international HP Users’ Group convention. And my paper was accepted, so then I had to write the paper. And I was still in fourth year and I had to fly to San Jose and give my first technical presentation. Basically, my first presentation. And it was still, in fact, that that paper’s been archived and it’s actually available on the internet, amazingly.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow. What’s the title of it?
David J. Greer:
Check stack and controlling stack sizes.
Don Hutcheson:
Check stack and controlling stack sizes.
David J. Greer:
Yeah. I think that’s the title. I was 22, standing on the San Jose convention floor, telling people about this cool software and what it would do for them, and I had no idea that that’s the essence of marketing and sales. Right?
Don Hutcheson:
Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, again, with great confidence and insight, et cetera, et cetera, but still giving presentations is the number one fear of most human beings. How did you man up to do that? Or was it easy for you? Was it natural?
David J. Greer:
I wouldn’t say it’s natural but it’s like I really, really wanted to work for Bob and Annabelle. And if I wanted to work for them, I had to give this talk.
Don Hutcheson:
There you go. There you go. Okay.
David J. Greer:
When you’re highly motivated, you push through the fear.
Don Hutcheson:
Sure you do. Of course you do. Okay. Okay. You did this paper. Still out there. What was the next step? How did it go with them? How did you move through their company and what were the other challenges and opportunities that you had?
David J. Greer:
Well, the big picture summary is I liked the place. I stayed 20 years and helped build it into a global powerhouse.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow. You were the first employee?
David J. Greer:
I was the first employee. And a good friend of mine, Kerry Lathwell, was the second employee, who was hired a week or two after me. And the four of us, Bob and Annabelle, Kerry and I, we grew that company, probably at 20% revenue growth per year for another four or five years before we hired anyone else. We were just doing what we do. It was way, way later on that I started telling people outside our industry and what we did, and it’s like, “Really?” We just did our stuff.
David J. Greer:
And some of it was, Bob and I did turn out to be really brilliant software developers and product managers. How we kept staff low was we kept engineering problems out of the product so that people wouldn’t need to call us. We’d like, “Hey, 10 people in the last couple months called us about this issue. Is there a way we could actually design the product so that they wouldn’t need to call because it would just behave the way they needed it to naturally?”
Don Hutcheson:
Well, it’s clearly in sync with so many aspects of yourself. I guess, in all those years, it was just a continual learning experience because so much was going on so fast on the internet-
David J. Greer:
And Bob and I invented three products that didn’t sell well. But we invented two that were home runs. Most people only get one.
Don Hutcheson:
Exactly.
David J. Greer:
And one of our not successes was we co-invented host based email around 1985, which probably several hundred people around the planet did at that time. But we did it independently, as did most others. We were out preaching to people. One of the talks I gave in 1986 was the [inaudible 00:22:23] office, and it was about how you could use electronic mail to work at home and remote working, and we were doing that. I only went in the office one day a week and I’d worked at home since 1982.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, gosh. Amazing.
David J. Greer:
And we went through… I’m kind of glossing over 20 years. There were lots of challenges and we grew the business. And we did luck out and we were pretty good about the people we hired, and built this amazing team.
David J. Greer:
And in 1990 or ’91, Annabelle wanted to retire and so I ended up buying out her portion of the business and becoming partners with Bob. But there was very significant financial risk and the terms of that buyout were fairly stringent in terms of if I didn’t make payments. I mean, I remember leaving an accountant’s office when we were talking about this whole deal. And at this point, I’ve got a two year old and a one year old. And there’s tears streaming down my face as I’m getting on the elevator. Just the stress, how big this is, the financial impact on the family. And of course, I’m fiscally conservative so I immediately made sure that I somehow managed to put an entire quarterly payment that I would owe to Annabelle into the bank, into savings bond so we could have a horrible entire quarter and not make any money and I still could pay Annabelle, which was almost impossible for us to do that. But that’s how I risk managed that piece.
Don Hutcheson:
Okay. Okay. Brilliant. Brilliant. Wow. Well how did that go, with you buying her shares and being a partner?
David J. Greer:
It went very well for 10 years. And Bob and I had a 20 year relationship and we only had one major disagreement. But the one we had was a doozy. And so in late ’99 or 2000, we could see the end of the runway of this computer system. It was one of the longest lived computer systems in the history of computers. It was, I think, launched in 1977 and they finally stopped selling it in October, November 2001. And so we were world global specialists in this computing platform that Hewlett-Packard make. And there’s thousands and thousands of businesses ran their whole, most important part of their business off these platforms. Remember, back to my grade eight vision. I got computers and I got business because we sold technical solutions but we sold technical solutions to solve business problems for our clients.
Don Hutcheson:
Did you have a really large staff that did all that consulting? What was the structure of the company like?
David J. Greer:
At the end we were about 20 people. On a pretty decent seven digit run rate. And the thing that Bob and I, we were equally good at generating top line revenue and profit. We knew how to make money.
Don Hutcheson:
Okay. Okay.
David J. Greer:
I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who are good at growing the top line but they’re not good at making money.
Don Hutcheson:
Right. Exactly.
David J. Greer:
We were really good at both.
Don Hutcheson:
When you hit this bump in the road or this turning point, or this disagreement, what did you finally resolve?
David J. Greer:
We had had different corporate vehicles in our time together. In fact, we had an R&D company from ’85 to ’90, or so that we co-owned. And I eventually became president of the R&D portion. And I had hired lawyers to craft this shareholders’ agreement for the original R&D company. And a fellow of Merrill Leckey, who’s no longer with us, but he coached me and worked me through the shareholders’ agreement. And he introduced something in it called a shotgun clause, which is where one of the two partners makes an offer for all of the other shares at a price. Bob, I offer to buy all of your shares at X dollars a share. And then Bob has the choice. Either he sells me the shares for that amount or he turns around and says, “Okay, David, I’m going to buy all of your shares at that price.”
Don Hutcheson:
What’s this called?
David J. Greer:
It’s a fairly standard… In a shareholders’ agreement it’s called a shotgun clause.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, shotgun clause. Okay.
David J. Greer:
You’re basically holding a shotgun up to the other person.
Don Hutcheson:
Right. Right.
David J. Greer:
And I remembered, I was in love with Bob and Annabelle and they’d hired me and we were doing so many exciting things. And I said to Merrill, “Why do I need this kind of clause?” And he said, “Well, maybe one day, you don’t get along. And this is the only way to get out.” And I’ve since learned, met a lot of entrepreneurs who either don’t have a shareholders’ agreement or they don’t put in a shotgun clause. There are other kinds of termination clauses that are not quite so all or nothing. But you need something.
David J. Greer:
And so in very late 2000… What happened was Bob and I had two visions for the future of the company where it’s like, we’re coming to the end of this market. We don’t know when. Could be five years, could be 10. Could be more. Bob wanted to downsize, let go of most of the staff and service the customers that we had until they were all gone, and turn out the lights. And I said we built a really special team, we have a lot of special capabilities. I want to take a little more money and a little more risk and grow the company into new areas. And I think the truth is, both strategies were very viable. They were not complementary. They were diametrically opposed ideas. And so in December 2000, I made Bob a really good offer with the shotgun clause. And at this point, we had become really acrimonious and really hateful emails, and it was a very, very emotionally tough time. And anyways, he turned around and bought me out.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh. Okay.
David J. Greer:
There I am, January 2000, on the street. Got a pretty good sized check in my jeans. Because like I say, I made Bob a pretty good offer. And I still hadn’t really noticed that the dot-com meltdown was happening. I’m busy chasing deals.
David J. Greer:
And then I met a woman who, through networking, I got introduced to her. And she specialized in helping really senior executives who are laid off transition to what’s next. That was her business. We went out to lunch and we went back to her office and she sat me down across from her, and she said, “David, do you need to work right away?” And said, “No. I got a pretty good sized check and I’m not done for life, but I don’t have to work right away.” And she told me that in one of her career transitions, she’d gone to Australia and bought a VW van and just drove around for a year. From that, figured out what she wanted to do next.
David J. Greer:
And you see in the cartoons, the literal light bulb moment?
Don Hutcheson:
Yes. Yes.
David J. Greer:
Well, that was mine. Bing. It’s like, “Oh. We could do something completely different.” My wife Karalee and I, we have this plan. I’d been a sailor since … even though I grew up in the prairies. My parents had a summer cabin and I spent every summer out there and I water ski during the week and I sailed and raced sailboats with my dad. And post university, I’d bought sailboats. Our children had been on sailboats since they were 10 days old. Every summer, I spent three or four weeks on holidays with the kids on sailboats. And so we hatched this plan to go commission a sailboard in the south of France and to take off, rent our house in Vancouver, and to go sail the Mediterranean while we homeschooled our three kids.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, my word.
David J. Greer:
And we did that for two years.
Don Hutcheson:
My word. Two years.
David J. Greer:
We sailed more than 5000 nautical miles in the Mediterranean basin.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow. We’ve had some fascinating stories on the 850+ interviews and some people have done some wonderfully exciting things like this, but it’s very, very few, and I don’t know that they’ve done it for two years, and… That’s amazing. That’s amazing. That must have been, from every perspective, one of the most exciting adventures of your whole life, to say the least?
David J. Greer:
It’s so many things. Our lives are divided into before the Med and after the Med. Everything is relative to that. And people pointed out to me that in those two years we spent more time with our children than most parents spend with their children in their lifetime.
Don Hutcheson:
You saw all these amazing countries. I’m looking at a map right now, coincidentally. You just saw all these amazing countries and explored all these different cultures, and-
David J. Greer:
How do you describe to people? You go 18 months without being in an English-speaking country. And you still have to operate. You run out of propane, the stuff to fuel your stove. And it comes in a little blue bottle. Well, when you’re in a little town in Italy and you’ve got to get a new propane bottle, it’s like a half a day project.
Don Hutcheson:
Good heavens.
David J. Greer:
And you take your kids with you so they see it, and you go to tourist information, you hold up the blue bottle. It’s actually butane, it’s a little smaller than a propane bottle. And he or she doesn’t have a clue where to get it, probably. But it’s like, oh, there’s a store. It’s a kilometer this way. You kind of walk that way and then you find someone else who speaks a little English, and you get them to point you somewhere.
David J. Greer:
And after an hour or so, you go down a little alley and you move aside a beaded curtain and lo and behold, there’s a little store stacked with stuff up to the ceiling. And the proprietor looks at you and doesn’t speak English but goes out back and gets a replacement bottle for you.
Don Hutcheson:
What an adventure, to get some propane. Well, okay. Two years later, you’ve got this epic journey. How did you decide to re-enter of being an entrepreneur? What was the first step you took?
David J. Greer:
First step I took was a lot of networking locally. And then I ended up with a lot of entrepreneurs who exit out of something and end up becoming what’s called angel investors. I became an angel investor for three, four years. I looked at average, 100 deals a year. I invested in an angel fund and I did a lot of work on board of directors, working for stock options.
David J. Greer:
It got to a point in 2007, I just didn’t realize how unfulfilled I was. And I went to an event with a guy, Verne Harnish. He wrote a book called the Rockefeller Habits. And he’s the founder of EO, the Entrepreneur’s Organization. And he has this framework, and a lot of my entrepreneur friends believed in this framework, called the One Page Plan.
David J. Greer:
I took one of my young CEOs of one of the companies I was invested into his training event for her and me to learn about the One Page Plan. At the first break in the morning, there were two coaches in the back corner and I went over to both of them. But one of them, Kevin Lawrence, he talked to me for about five minutes and then he made me more uncomfortable than I’d been in a long time. I had tears in the corner of my eyes, just from a few things that he said. And I had Kevin’s business card next to my phone for three weeks and the phone was way too heavy for me to pick it up and call.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow.
David J. Greer:
And then he called me. And he saw a spark that day and his intuition told him that there could very well be something there and that we might work well together. And I ended up hiring him.
Don Hutcheson:
What’s his last name?
David J. Greer:
Lawrence.
Don Hutcheson:
Kevin Lawrence. Okay.
David J. Greer:
On my 50th birthday, we met for eight hours. Kevin’s process at that time was, your first coaching sessions is two eight hour days. We were all in together. Literally on my birthday on August 9th, 2007, was our first day together. And we had another day, and then we started on a journey together.
Don Hutcheson:
Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Remarkable. Wow. Bravo. To say the very least. This is an epic story. What do you say, with this amazing career and all this experience, David, about what Gallup has told us, since 1990 by the way, about the workplace and people’s satisfaction or lack thereof. 84% of people not engaged around the world, 67% in this country, 92% of people in Japan, coincidentally. It’s an arduous journey to say the very least. Maybe the hardest part of our existence in many ways. Why’s it so hard for people to use their talents and create a strategy and a plan in life to use the best of what they are and create a life on their best terms?
David J. Greer:
I just think there’s a lot of systemic stuff. I think that there’s a lot of media, Hollywood, parents that, to be successful, you have to be financially successful. And so there’s this notion of success. Just even from old fairy tales and Hollywood and Disney, the prince meets the princess and they happily ever after. I’ve been married 38 years. Let me tell you, it doesn’t work that way.
Don Hutcheson:
No. No.
David J. Greer:
You got to work at your relationship. A lot, sometimes.
Don Hutcheson:
Yes.
David J. Greer:
Right? And you have to change and grow, as does your partner. I think that a lot of us buy into this whole myth about you’ve got to grow up and you’ve got to buy a house and you’ve got to have kids. And to do all that, you’ve got to have a job because that’s how you pay for it all.
Don Hutcheson:
Right.
David J. Greer:
One is, you’re breaking to the norm if you don’t follow that path.
Don Hutcheson:
That’s right.
David J. Greer:
I think that’s part of it. And then, I do a lot of work around culture. A lot of my work is helping people understand their culture, really decide and make a conscious choice of what they want their culture to be. And in most corporate cultures, you cannot be vulnerable. It is totally unacceptable. I spent a fair amount of time yesterday with a good friend of mine who works for one of the five richest companies in the entire world, and at that company it’s a sign of massive weakness for you to be the slightest bit vulnerable. And you are not rewarded for being honest. Even when it’s plain to everyone what the elephant on the table is, you are not rewarded by saying, “Hey, why are we not looking at the elephant?”
David J. Greer:
When you have such pervasiveness in our corporate cultures that look that, how the hell can anyone be happy in that kind of environment, I guess, I would say. And I don’t work with those kind of people. I mean, I don’t state to my clients what kind of culture do you have, but it’s just certain kinds of CEOs that I’m not going to want to work with.
Don Hutcheson:
Exactly. Exactly.
David J. Greer:
And I only want to work with people that I love to work with. Just like for 20 years, I loved being at Robelle. It was never a burden. I shouldn’t say that. There are days. Everybody has off days and there were times and challenges were hard enough that you wonder why you’re doing this. But my belief is you learn more from your failures than you do from your wins. And every challenge you had in your life has set you up perfectly for wherever you are right now.
Don Hutcheson:
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. You attract those kind of people because you see the people that are stuck in the matrix and don’t know they are and don’t care or don’t have enough insight to realize it. What is your process? We don’t have a lot of time left here but I want to hear just briefly what your process is for getting them to get outside the box.
David J. Greer:
I exclusively work with entrepreneurs or super, super high performers. I have a client who’s gone to four Olympics and she decided this year, even though she’s building a fantastic executive coaching practice, that she’s going to go for her fifth.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow.
David J. Greer:
That is high performing. And I’m very confident she’s going to be there. I need people who are open to some help. I meet tons of entrepreneurs who need help. They’re not open to it.
David J. Greer:
I just stay in touch and maybe one day they will be. Kevin saw me and he caused me to cry, and I realized I fricking need a lot of help.
Don Hutcheson:
Right. Yes, yes. Exactly.
David J. Greer:
And so, I was ready. And then my process is, I have an intake sheet, so part of that is you’ve got to tell me at least two or three goals you have for six months for 12 months and for 18 months. And since most people come to me with business problems, usually we start with business goals. And as we work together they’ll probably start adding some personal goals and some life goals. But I don’t necessarily insist on that to begin with. You have to have some kind of vision for where it is you want to go. I know I have to help coach you to get those down.
David J. Greer:
And then I have a coaching agreement. I think that’s critical, and what I’ve been taught in my coach training is that you need… I will ask people, when we get to the point of signing the contract is, “Are you okay having me coach you?” Because if they say no at that point, there’s no point signing the contract. And I offer pretty much anyone one hour free coaching if they want, and if I do that, then the first thing I’ll promise them is that everything they’ll say to me will be confidential, and the second thing I say is, “Is it okay if I coach you today?” And so that’s a part of the coaching agreement.
David J. Greer:
My coaching agreement is not that arduous, but if I’m coaching you and then a coach then called you and you agree to do something, then you promise that within 24 hours, you’re going to send me the list of things you promised to do.
Don Hutcheson:
Yes.
David J. Greer:
You can email it to me. That’s a core accountability piece. If you want to work with me, that’s part of what you have to agree to. And I agree to things like, if something doesn’t work in a session, I want you to tell me. And if you tell me, I promise you, within 24 hours, I’ll have some solution.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow.
David J. Greer:
Might not be the perfect solution but it will be, next time we will try this. Again, there’s the commitment on me to get back to you right away.
David J. Greer:
And so, intake form with some goals. And then a coaching agreement and then we book your first month or two of meetings. I try to make it as easy as possible, but we do have to have some of these agreements and mechanical things in place because they’re the final testing ground of, can I work with you and can you work with me?
David J. Greer:
And when people approach me, I’ll say, “Are you talking to two or three other coaches?” Because I want you to. I want you to find a coach who you relate to the most. And that’s way more important to me than whether I get another coaching client. As much as I would love to coach you, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re not ecstatic or at least pretty excited about it then you should find someone else who you are.
Don Hutcheson:
Right. Exactly, exactly.
David J. Greer:
It comes back full circle to, so what’s wrong with corporate America? Well, because people go take jobs they’re not super excited about and they work with people who they don’t love working with.
Don Hutcheson:
Right. You hit the problem on the head. I coauthored a book, one of my first books, I coauthored with Dr. McDonald called The Lemming Conspiracy. And he was a genius psychologist, great friend of mine, and I knew about systems conceptually, but that’s what he had his PhD in. When you understand systems, whether it’s family, organization, school, religion, doesn’t matter. Systems, that’s what happens. That’s what The Lemming Conspiracy is. You get into the system, it doesn’t matter how, if you’re brilliant, the system doesn’t know you. It has its own protocols and it just moves forward. It doesn’t have a heart and a soul and a brain. It’s just a good structural way that works. Systems are important, just like a structure on a building. But it’s not the heart and soul. It can’t get to you.
David J. Greer:
And one advantage I have, because as a computer scientist, everything in software is a system.
Don Hutcheson:
Exactly.
David J. Greer:
All my training is around systems. That, very much, for better or for worse, but I think mostly for the better, colors my thinking. Because I can see everything as an interacting system.
Don Hutcheson:
Yes. Yes. It’s amazing. In just a couple of sentences, what’s your personal vision going forward?
David J. Greer:
My big, hairy, audacious goal, career wise, is to help 100,000 entrepreneurs step into their single biggest challenge.
Don Hutcheson:
Wow. Okay.
David J. Greer:
And my personal goal is to stay married to Karalee in a healthy, supportive relationship, and connected to our three children and their significant others. And then on top of that, 10 months ago, our daughter had her… Our firstborn had her firstborn.
Don Hutcheson:
Oh, congratulations.
David J. Greer:
And then of course, connection to our grandchildren, which we now have one of, a beautiful grandson, who we’re very connected to. That’s my personal vision.
Don Hutcheson:
Yes. And your single greatest talent is…
David J. Greer:
Getting things done. I’m serious.
Don Hutcheson:
No, no, I’m laughing because …
David J. Greer:
Really it’s getting things done.
Don Hutcheson:
No, no. You can’t do better than that. You can’t do better than that. Just do it. Just do it, right?
David J. Greer, what a great pleasure being with you today. We so much appreciate you sharing the highlights of your remarkable life journey and I know that listeners around the world have learned many lessons that will help them on theirs. Tell those listeners how they connect with you.
David J. Greer:
The easiest way is my website. I’m David J. Greer, and my website is CoachDJGreer.com.
Don Hutcheson:
Excellent, excellent. Listeners know you can go to DiscoverYourTalentPodcast.com, click on podcast in the navigation bar, and there you’ll find the show notes of this fine, fine interview.
Don Hutcheson:
In closing, every one of us is born with unique talents and gifts. We don’t learn them. We can’t ignore them. They’re just a part of who we are, our DNA. Whenever we discover them and use them in our lives and careers, we do not merely survive, we thrive in every way possible. Until next time, all my best. And whatever you do, have fun out there today.
