Building a Legacy Through Entrepreneurial Coaching.
This is one of many topics Wayne Veldsman and I discuss on his Your Journey to Legacy Podcast. Big takeaways from our conversation:
- Start with a vision for what you are interested in or the change you want to make in the world.
- Focus on what customers need, then create solutions they value for solving those problems.
- Grow your business faster by focusing on your own personal growth.
- Get others to help you.
- Start with a 3-year vision of where you want to go, then work backwards to this year, and this quarter.
- If you suffer from alcoholism or addiction, now there is help. Don’t try and go it alone.
Audio
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0PXldNFsIPgiPN1fc2PWmt
Transcript
David Greer (00:00):
I meet a lot of entrepreneurs that need help and probably 95% of them are not open to being helped. Really. And if you want to slave away and torque away and haul big rocks around on your own, like go for it. But I’m here to say you don’t have to do it that way.
Wayne Veldsman (00:23):
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Journey to Legacy podcast. Thank you for being here. My guest today say he has a wealth of knowledge and wisdom is such an understatement. He’s a coach that has struggled with severe alcoholism for almost entire life, even while for a 20 year career, he built a massive business actually in the computer science, the programming industry. David shares a bunch of stories, some really amazing insights on how you can grow your mental self, you can grow your entrepreneurial self, and even focusing on how just you focusing on your wellbeing and personal development is the way to develop your business and to develop others. Tune in. I’m super excited to bring to you. So please enjoy my guest today, Coach David J. Greer. David, thanks for being here today.
David Greer (01:26):
Thanks, Wayne. I am super excited and looking forward to this conversation.
Wayne Veldsman (01:31):
Absolutely. David, you have so many years of experience. We’re going to dive really deep into everything, but lead us off. Tell everybody what are you working on today?
David Greer (01:43):
Today I’m doing a few interviews like this. My current mission in life is to share my experience, strength, and hope in two areas. One business. I’m a 45 plus year entrepreneur and in alcoholism and recovery, and I’ll soon have 16 years of sobriety and I come on podcasts like yours to share with people some of my experiences and offer hope to people in both of those areas. If you’re stuck in your business or if you’re someone challenged by alcoholism or addiction or if you’re the combo, I specialize in working with entrepreneurs that are challenged with alcoholism or addiction
Wayne Veldsman (02:30):
Specializing in helping entrepreneurs that are challenged with addiction. It’s so great also that you immediately kick us off saying that you are here to share your experience, strength, and hope and business and recovery. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs, especially younger ones that are just a lot of times in for the money, for the fame, fame. Where did that shift happen for you? I’m just curious.
David Greer (02:54):
I don’t think I was ever in it for the money or the fame,
Wayne Veldsman (02:57):
Really.
David Greer (02:58):
Yeah, I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I do come from an entrepreneurial family, but a couple of things happened. By grade nine. I knew I wanted to take computers and business and put those two things together, and this is in the mid seventies where computers are not prevalent like they are today. I went to one of the only high schools in Edmonton that had a data processing class and was able to write computer programs like in grade 11, get a student account at the University of Alberta where unbeknownst to me, I was using one of the most modern operating systems in the world. A lot of my story is I’ve been on the bleeding edge of a lot of things without knowing I’ve been on the bleeding edge. I just do what I do and there it is. And I went to the University of British Columbia here in Vancouver, Canada, got my computer science degree, had a part-time job where I met a consultant who I worked with and who had just founded a software company. And in fourth year I joined that software company as the first employee after the two founders. And the two founders were Robert and Annabelle, and the name of the company was Robelle, which is a concatenation of their two names,
Wayne Veldsman (04:13):
Robert and Annabelle,
David Greer (04:13):
And it’s a made up name. It’s still Google’s well today.
Wayne Veldsman (04:17):
Right, wonderful.
David Greer (04:21):
But a condition of my employment was I had to submit an abstract to the 1980 Hewlett Packard International User Group convention and
Wayne Veldsman (04:32):
Submit an abstract. Sorry, what do you mean by an abstract?
David Greer (04:33):
To give a presentation at this big user group meeting of this new mini computer that Hewlett Packard had only introduced like three years before, and which I had done all of my student, all of the work that I had done, my part-time job was working on this computer system. Anyways, my abstract was accepted, I had to then write the paper and in the winter of 1980, I had to take a week off of my university classes and fly to San Jose and give that paper. By the way, I was really effing scared when I walked on stage for the first time. I can still actually picture that in my mind
Wayne Veldsman (05:19):
Probably. Was that the first time that you actually were doing a lot of public speaking?
David Greer (05:22):
Yeah, that was probably, yeah, certainly there probably 40, 50 people in the audience, which since then I’ve talked to much bigger audiences and a lot in that kind of size range. But yeah, that was the first time, and I’m 22 years old, I’m standing up 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 it took me years to get outside consultants to come in to say “David, that’s basically the essence of marketing and selling,” but I was just doing what I do and having a blast doing it.
David Greer (06:03):
Share your experience. Convincing people. Again, we were like, and my former partner, Bob and I, we were writing very advanced software. We didn’t think of it that way. We were just solving problems for customers. It turns out we were both really, really good software engineers, and it turns out we became very good entrepreneurs as well. But for decades, I called myself a computer programmer. I did not self-identify as an entrepreneur.
If I flew to London, England and I was going to go attend a UK meeting and give a talk, and I arrive at the border and you fill out the little card and it says Occupation, I’d put computer programmer. Even though 10 years in, I bought out Annabelle and I was co-owner of the company, but that’s how I thought of myself,
Wayne Veldsman (06:50):
Computer programmer. That’s interesting. It sounds like, right, Interesting, you said from grade nine you realized you wanted to take computers business, put ’em together. You didn’t think, though, I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to run my own companies. It was almost a passion for computers and even along the way and Business First Venture.
David Greer (07:11):
Again, it’s just the passion for making those happen. I didn’t have a vision of the form or what it would look like. I just knew those two things needed to go together,
Wayne Veldsman (07:24):
Two things needed to go together. And then that’s what happened. You kept calling yourself a computer programmer, you said it almost was just passion for solving problems. You didn’t even realize almost what you guys were building. Do you think it’s more important to focus on your day to day, just the problems at hand versus this bigger picture of, oh, I want to grow a multimillion dollar company?
David Greer (07:52):
Today I do a lot of facilitation around strategic planning, and I use the framework from Vern Harnish has a book Scaling Up, and you can download his framework for free. And I coach and facilitate a lot around this idea of you look out three years and where do you want to be in three years and what are the core thrusts? Is it a new market, is it new product? Is it some key hire or capability? Do you need to be able to do something in three years time that’s completely impossible for you to do today? And then working backwards, what do you need to do this year? And then working backwards, what do you need to do this quarter? And it’s a quarterly planning rhythm that I think is, and when I first went to Verne Harnish training event, and he said that it blew my mind not how we built Robelle, we built Robelle in the traditional kind of entrepreneur fashion, which is, “Hey, look how we did last year. Why don’t we do 10% better?” Not looking at the market, is the market growing? Is the market shrinking? Is it reasonable to be 10% better? It was just kind of pie in the sky. I worked with some entrepreneurs today, basically do the same thing and then I challenged them, okay, so where’s that 10% of revenue going to come from? Show me,
(09:16):
Hey, we built a fantastically profitable multimillion dollar global software enterprise, I don’t knock it.
Wayne Veldsman (09:27):
Yeah, I was about to say you did so well, and then you learned this new way through the scaling up system, right?
David Greer (09:33):
Yeah. And I wonder, but if I knew that when we started and we started that kind of planning mode and rhythm, what might we have built in addition or because, but when we started, we weren’t ready for that and we just grew it by the seat of our pants. It turned out that Bob and I were also really good product managers, we’re very good at listening to the market and our customers and figuring out what to put in the products. I would say by the third year, I remember I think in 1983, or 1984, being at the international user group meeting for Hewlett Packard, which that year happened to be in San Antonio, I probably gave 80% of the demos in the booth that year because I just got really good at, someone would come up to me and say, oh, I heard about your Qedit product.
(10:32):
And I’d say, that’s great. And I’d say, tell me about how you develop software. Qedit was targeted at people that developed software to make them more productive. I would ask them, what’s programming languages to the you use? What’s your environment? How big is the team? And I would ask all these questions for five, maybe eight minutes, and I just listened, ask a few more questions. Then I turn around and I would show them less than 5% of the product, but I would show them the exact 5% that applied to their situation so they could see themselves in using the product. And I just did this very naturally. It is just one of the skills. I am a strange computer scientist that can walk and chew gum at the same time, I can articulate business things and articulate very deep technical things that hold space for those simultaneously
Wayne Veldsman (11:31):
And do the coding, actually do the technical work and need to explain it.
David Greer (11:36):
Yeah. As well. Yeah. And aren’t a lot of us. That is a fairly specialized skill and is certainly why we built such a valuable software company. We were both really good at it.
Wayne Veldsman (11:49):
That’s Great.
David Greer (11:49):
And also in partnership, Bob always more of the visionary and I was more of the ops, get it done, build the systems, and that’s a really good combination actually. I think you need both. I needed his vision to pull me out of my comfort zone. He needed my organizational skills to make it all come to be, and I became chief technology officer and built all the programming systems, and Bob, to his credit, didn’t fight those. He integrated his workflow into those systems that I built.
Wayne Veldsman (12:26):
Great. If I can interrupt you there, because that’s super interesting. You’re saying that you guys had very complimentary skill sets almost, and you need both of ’em. Lemme also just say that you all focus on listening to the market and to your customers, and would you credit that to the majority of your growth, that piece of the puzzle?
David Greer (12:50):
Yeah, and we were a product company, a software product company specialized in selling a product that only worked on this special platform from Hewlett-Packard, but it was a relatively large market. Most of the customers were a hundred million to 500 million divisions of Fortune 500 or privately held companies of that size. And we tracked every single enhancement and bug request for all of our product lines. And then in the course of a year, if we had a really good year, we might do 5% of the enhancements that were asked for.
Wayne Veldsman (13:26):
There just so many,
David Greer (13:27):
Because there’s so many, so 95% of the time, what are we saying? No. And there’s a real discipline actually in saying no and holding to a product vision and a product architecture. And yeah, that’s an interesting idea. Yeah, we could do it, but it would be orthogonal to what we’ve built here and probably no one outside of this one customer could ever figure it out. We’re going to say no to that. And we also were one of the only vendors in the space that every year issued a new version of every product that was under support and sent it to every customer who had a support contract with us worldwide. Almost none of the other vendors in the space were able to come close to doing that.
Wayne Veldsman (14:14):
Wow. What do you think that is? What’s the reasoning why you all were able to make these updates? Are you guys focused on every year putting out a new software where nobody else was doing it?
David Greer (14:24):
A few things. One is just super, super focused on the customer and then super focused on quality. One of the products I was the chief architect of ran under the hood, if you like, at a level where if I made a programming mistake, I would cause this computer with a thousand users on it to crash and to recover from that and get everyone else logged in and again, would take between 30 and 45 minutes. A lot of pressure to make sure you don’t screw up.
Wayne Veldsman (15:00):
Yeah. Yeah. Thousands of users if you screw up, there’s significant downtime.
David Greer (15:04):
But also Hewlett Packard is changing their fundamental operating system and our product, if it didn’t change with them, it would crash the computer. We needed to be issuing updates in pace with how Hewlett Packard was changing its operating system, and that’s why you’d support contracts with us because we made sure that you’ve got it in time for the new update you were going to install, and that our product had been verified, tested and we knew it wasn’t going to cause problems. And then I built a huge, I built systems, so on Friday afternoon we could launch a single script is what they’re called, a little piece of computer code, and over the weekend it would build a million lines of source code and then run tests on six different product lines.
Wayne Veldsman (15:55):
Wow. The script would write the source code and run the test.
David Greer (15:57):
Well, it would start firing off other scripts to start rebuilding all of the software. And we started doing what’s called Scrum today, which is this idea you do two week sprints of software development. We actually started doing that in 1982.
David Greer (16:20):
Wow. Really?
David Greer (16:21):
Again, this, we were way, way ahead of our time and our philosophy was we tried to do a new internal version of our product in roughly two week cycles, and then we’d actually send it to the customers who asked for that change and see if it met their needs.
Wayne Veldsman (16:38):
Sure. Get more feedback from them.
David Greer (16:41):
All year. And then at some point we close it off and then there’s kind of a two or three month window where now we’re building the production version, next version, and then we’re doing all massive checklists to a lot of automation and massive checklists to get to the point where you are sending new versions of that product. Every person on support worldwide.
Wayne Veldsman (17:07):
That’s where very early on in developing very advanced software.
David Greer (17:11):
Hey, we’re sending tapes that are, your listeners won’t be able to see what I’m showing you on the screen, but they’re kind of six inch or bigger. They’re kind of 12 inch plastic reels that have to go on a reel to reel tape drive. That’s how you actually shipped product. We had to send a physical medium to every one of those customers.
Wayne Veldsman (17:33):
You had to move fast. David, here’s a question for you, a little bit different. You mentioned that you partner’s name was Robert, is that correct?
David Greer (17:42):
Yep. Yeah. Bob.
Wayne Veldsman (17:45):
You and Bob.
David Greer (17:45):
Formerly Robert, but we all called him Bob.
Wayne Veldsman (17:49):
You and Bob had really complimentary skills. A key lesson that you shared with me before the interview is you say, don’t do it alone.
David Greer (17:58):
Yes.
Wayne Veldsman (17:59):
Where did that come from? Because it sounds like you a little bit fell into that situation with Bob, but what makes that a big key lesson that you want to share today?
David Greer (18:10):
I meet a lot of entrepreneurs that need help, and probably 95% of them are not open to being helped really. And if you want to slave away and torque away and haul big rocks around on your own, go for it.
But I’m here to say you don’t have to do it that way.
Wayne Veldsman (18:34):
What’s the reasoning? Why aren’t they open to help?
David Greer (18:38):
I think it’s partly, I work a lot with owner founders who start their business and grow it, and then usually I come in when they’ve grown it to a certain to significant level, say a million a year, but then they’re stuck. And you build businesses like that just basically on self-will and just powering through everything and every challenge. And in the early days, you can’t afford to hire anyone else. It is somewhat the nature of the beast, and most entrepreneurs are pretty smart, but they’re also very stubborn, which is really good how they manage to build a successful business. But that stubbornness gets in our way when we’re not open to new learnings or to getting help or looking outside and being open to other ideas. And my belief is the entrepreneur is the single biggest limiting factor to his or her business. The businesses only grow as fast as they themselves can grow.
Wayne Veldsman (19:43):
How can entrepreneurs see this stubbornness within themselves have the realization to let go, to get help?
David Greer (19:54):
Either they just come to an aha moment somehow or other because they talked to other entrepreneurs who got help or hired really good people or however, or they just bang their head against some really hard ceiling or problem where they just can’t figure out how to move past it.
Wayne Veldsman (20:16):
It’s either through others speaking with them, convincing them, or else it’s just such a hard ceiling. They’re so stuck that they are forced to explore
David Greer (20:28):
Otherwise. Yeah. I was with Robelle 20 years and we didn’t really have many outside strategic or marketing consultants until the last 18 months when we were getting stuck in our market, we’re starting to shrink, and then I brought these outside people and they’d look at me and they’d hold up the mirror and would say, entrepreneur. And I’d said, no, no, no, you don’t get it. I’m a computer programmer. And then they’d hold up the mirror entrepreneur. Then I eventually figured out, oh, actually I’ve been doing that for 15 years. I just didn’t, I didn’t think of myself that way.
Wayne Veldsman (21:03):
Wow. 20 years. And then finally the last 18 months, getting that outside help.
David Greer (21:07):
And then that led to Bob and I only had one major disagreement in 20 years, but it was a doozy and it led to divorce.
Wayne Veldsman (21:16):
Wow.
David Greer (21:17):
We got to a point where I wanted to take a little more risk and a little more money. We built this extraordinary team and it could do a lot of things that most tech companies couldn’t do, and I wanted to move it in new directions, and he wanted to just milk the market until the last customer left and turn out the lights and downsize. Half the staff go. I think they were both viable strategies and they were not complimentary strategies. It was a lot of emotional stuff and a lot of name calling by email and a very, very painful experience
Wayne Veldsman (21:55):
Divorce in the end.
David Greer (21:57):
But in the end, we settled it by him buying me out.
Wayne Veldsman (22:00):
By him buying you out. And then you sort of went the direction that you wanted to go.
David Greer (22:04):
Well, I didn’t. Exactly. That’s another part of my legacy and story.
Wayne Veldsman (22:09):
Yeah. What happened next?
David Greer (22:10):
I’m in 2001, I haven’t noticed this thing called the dot com meltdown. I’m busy talking to entrepreneur friends of mine in town here in Vancouver trying to chase my next deal, not realizing it’s a terrible time to be chasing anything. When someone smarter than me sat me down and said, “David, your kids are 11, nine and five, do you need to work again right away?” And I’m like, no. I got a pretty good check in my jeans after selling off my half the business. And she shared with me that when she had a similar kind of career transition, she went to Australia and bought a VW van and toured around Australia for a year.
(22:48):
And it was an aha light bulb moment, literally. And I hadn’t realized. I’ve been a sailor from a very young age, had sailboats, had our kids sailing by the time they were two weeks old, sailed up and down the west coast here of BC and I had read a lot of books about people who’d done offshore cruising, and I didn’t realize how much of a latent dream it was until this opportunity came. Karalee and I decided to commission a sailboat in the south of France and take our three kids, and we homeschooled them for two years while sailing 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean. Yes. It’s a true entrepreneurial story. It was only supposed to take one year, and then it actually took two years to.
Wayne Veldsman (23:38):
That sounds like absolutely a dream. I’m sure so many people have this dream, but let ask you this, how big of an adjustment, it must’ve been difficult to go from 20 years career building a huge business to boom. Now you’re off two years on a sailboat.
David Greer (23:55):
Yes. Not really, because I tell you to run a sailboat and to homeschool three kids is actually as hard or harder than running a business. We decided that at the end of February in 2001, and we left on June 26th. And I probably never worked less than 10 or 12 hours a day, seven days a week. I mean, I also was doing some consulting for other people in my market and I was doing some other business things, but I kept dialing that back. But just to be prepped and to most people plan for a year or two to do that kind of adventure, and we just went pedal to the metal. And then once you’re there, again, just the demands of every day it’s an adventure. And I’m my engineer, am I travel agent and I’m route planner. I’m captain, I’m teacher, I’m supply officer, I’m cook. I mean exhausting and incredible. It’s like the biggest legacy we have as a family. It’s one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my life.
Wayne Veldsman (25:10):
Amazing. Amazing. I know mean you told me also that you specifically mentioned in your bio that you’re married three kids and just the focus on that. And so that’s so great to hear. But let me ask you right before I get so lost in all of your stories because we’ll talk about sailing for two years. You guys, you sold your company and then you sail. I think you went to venture capitalism a little bit, but pretty big shift happened after that. Tell us a little bit about that interim portion Between your businesses today.
David Greer (25:43):
Came back from two years, adventure started reconnecting. Tech business is starting to pick up, I’m trying to find people to work with. Can’t really find anyone. I decide to go into angel investing. I look at a hundred deals a year, invest in one. I’m being a director on boards, and it is so, so hard.
Wayne Veldsman (26:10):
What’s hard about it?
David Greer (26:12):
It was so hard to bring CEOs along because it’s like, oh, between age 23 and 24 and a half, I climbed that ladder and I’d spend two years trying to get them partway up the rung and I couldn’t get them there. I just found it very, but I didn’t really realize how unfulfilling it was until I mentioned this Verne Harnish guy and his framework scaling up and his claim to fame is this thing called the one page strategic plan. I took one of the companies I was invested in. I took the CEO of that company to this event because we were using that framework in our planning or we were starting to, or thinking about it and did an all day training event. And in the back of the room were two coaches. And I talked to two of them and one of them me asked me a couple questions and I had tears in the corner of my eyes. I hadn’t realized how completely unfulfilling the work was that I was doing. And I think his question was, David, there’s probably a hundred people in this room and probably every one of them need your help.
(27:17):
And why do you think that you’re not helping them? I’ve been working on that for three years, and I didn’t know why and no one wanted to work with me. I took his card, his card sat next to my phone for three weeks. About once a week I thought of calling Kevin, coach Kevin Lawrence, and every time I went to pick up the phone, it weighed a good 10,000 pounds.
Wayne Veldsman (27:43):
Wow. Wow.
David Greer (27:45):
Just scared to call, just scared. Then three weeks in, he called me.
Wayne Veldsman (27:49):
Oh, no way.
David Greer (27:50):
Yeah. And said, “Hey, do you remember me from the Vern Harnish event?” I said, yeah, I didn’t say, I haven’t thought about much else for the last three weeks. And I ended up hiring him. And our first coaching session was on my 50th birthday, August 9th, 2007. And at that time was Kevin, when Kevin is my kind of guy, I’m all in or all out. No halfways. All in for Kevin, when you hired him as your coach was, your first coaching session was two eight hour days, 16 hours of coaching.
Wayne Veldsman (28:26):
Wow.
David Greer (28:28):
We were all in, and I worked with Kevin for 18 months and we started getting my career reestablished and kind of cleared off a lot of clutter on the table, and there were a lot of different issues that needs to be dealt with. And we kind dealt with all of those until there was nothing left except the biggest elephant in the room,
Which was my drinking.
Wayne Veldsman (28:53):
Oh, drinking problem,
David Greer (28:54):
Drinking problem. And so the way I worked with Kevin was the night before we had a coaching call, I would send him an email saying some wins, some successes from the previous week or two, and then what the topic for the coaching call was going to be. I had my last beer about 10 o’clock at night on a Monday night, and I sent an email to Kevin saying the topic for our call tomorrow is my drinking. And once I pressed send on that, I knew there was no getting away from it because I had built enough of a trust relationship with Kevin, I knew Kevin would never let me off the hook. The next day in the afternoon, we had a coaching call. We talked about drinking, which is I was an alcoholic drinker for a daily drinker for over 20 years. And it turns out that in his personal life, he had had an opportunities to interact with a couple of longtime members of 12 step recovery.
(29:57):
And so he’s a very curious guy. He doesn’t have a problem with alcohol, but he talked to them about 12 step recovery and how it works. And so he knew what to do and he coached me to go to, I made a commitment to him to go to 12 step meeting by that Friday. And this was a Tuesday afternoon, and again, I’m all in or all out. That afternoon I looked online and I had a technology networking event downtown that was going to finish at eight. I looked online for 12-step meetings that night, and lo and behold, half a block off of the main road I was going to drive down on my way home from the networking event was a meeting at 8:30.
Wayne Veldsman (30:39):
Wow. Meant to be.
David Greer (30:41):
And I went to that meeting on January 27th, 2009,
(30:49):
And stood at the back, scared to death, although it probably took me half a dozen years before I was willing to really admit that. A couple young women came out and greeted me and said, hello and welcome me. They were very kind. And I ended up kind of sitting towards the middle, but on the edge I could escape if I needed to. And towards the end of the meeting, the chairperson asked, is there anyone new to the program that wants to stand and introduce themselves? And then thankfully, he waited about 30 seconds, and at the last possible moment I stood up and said, “I’m David and I’m an alcoholic.” I don’t think at that moment I really knew what I was admitting to. It took me years of being in the program to really more fully understand that. But in many ways I was truly admitting my truth, even if I didn’t totally understand it in that moment.
Wayne Veldsman (31:41):
That’s super powerful. Thank you for sharing. You said that even it took you half a dozen years to even admit that you were scared to go there. Right. You’re probably putting on this face of bravery. Oh, it’s no problem to go and talk to people, whatever. Here’s something I’m confused about. You grew a massive business for 20 years as an alcoholic. How did that work?
David Greer (32:10):
Well, if things weren’t going well, I used the alcohol to feel better about it not going well. And if things were going well, I made alcohol, try and make the highs feel higher. I mean, it was rocket fuel, right? It just powered me up, which for a lot of high performing alcoholics, that’s what you do.
Wayne Veldsman:
High performing alcoholics. Interesting.
David Greer:
Which is a huge group of alcoholics. Roughly 10% of the population suffer from alcohol use disorder. If you look around you at 10 people, there’s a reasonable probability one is suffering from alcohol use disorder.
Depending on your social group, whether alcohol is common to it or not. I’m being a little simplistic, but if you randomly walk down the street of your town and looked at a hundred people, there’s a good chance 10 would have alcohol use disorder.
Wayne Veldsman (33:11):
I mean, want, I’m really curious, how can people evaluate for themselves if they have this order or not? And David, if I can just pause you there. Do we have a hard stop in two minutes.
David Greer (33:26):
Nope. We have a hard stop in 17 minutes
Wayne Veldsman (33:32):
In 17. Okay, perfect. I just wanted to check there, and so me re-ask that question for you here. I’m curious, high performing alcoholics, entrepreneurs out there, this is who you specialize in working with. How can we do a self-evaluation almost like do I have a problem that I want to fix, that I want to change? That I need to change?
David Greer (33:57):
I mean, you can go to aa.org and it has, I think, a self-assessment. We look at the NIHAAA in the United States, the National Institute of Health, Alcoholism and Addiction group, which is the primary group in healthcare and primary government group in the United States who studies alcoholism and addiction. And basically the same criteria in Canada. Few like binge drinking or heavy drinking would be five drinks in a single session without having something in between.
Wayne Veldsman (33:32):
Oh, wow.
David Greer (34:30):
And for a man, five in a row for women, four in a row, and you do that once a month, you have an extremely high probability of having alcohol use disorder,
Wayne Veldsman (34:39):
Alcohol use disorder. So which …
David Greer (34:42):
Again, alcohol use disorder is on a spectrum. I’m like the extreme end. At the end, I was 12, 15, maybe 18 drinks a day. And because my brain had, it’s interesting, our brains actually want homeostasis. As we pour alcohol into ourselves and it rushes into our brain, our brain starts producing chemicals to counterbalance it, which is why over time the disease is progressive, you have to drink more and more to get the same effects. Your brain gets better and better at counterbalancing the effects because your brain wants homeostasis.
Wayne Veldsman (35:18):
Sure. Wow. Interesting Subject more and more and more.
David Greer (35:21):
Yeah. It actually does physically takes more to get the same effect
Wayne Veldsman (35:28):
Your brain is, evening it out. So here’s another question for you. High functioning alcoholics, right? You were one of them. What changed after you had this realization? And it sounds like you realized you needed a change. I don’t know how to ask this without saying, well, you were high functioning. What was the problem other than health suppose?
David Greer (35:51):
Yeah, not so much. And I hadn’t really experienced that much health effects, honestly. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. I just literally got sick and tired of being sick and tired and just beholden to this drug. You have to remember, alcohol is the most powerful drug in the planet. Seriously. It is the most powerful drug. It’s just, it’s a socially acceptable drug. But if anyone drinks enough alcohol over time, they’ll become an alcoholic. You have to be because your brain and your body will eventually react to the drug you’re putting in your body. If you have enough over a long enough period of time, it’s pretty much inevitable. It is a very, very powerful drug. But for me, It got to, and there’s a whole bunch of reasons why I got sick and tired of sick and tired, and it take quite a while to get through all of those, go to a few AA meetings and listen to people’s stories. And then I encourage, go to an AA meeting.
Wayne Veldsman (36:58):
Could I go and go sit in?
David Greer (37:02):
There’s two kinds of AA meetings. There’s closed meetings and open meetings, and you can go to any open meeting. And if it’s closed meeting, we only have one requirement. And that is, do you have a desire to stop drinking today? Even if it’s just for today, and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve had a drink or not. Do you have a desire to stop drinking today, then go to a closed meeting.
Wayne Veldsman (37:28):
Nice. I mean, it sounds like you’d be very interesting to go sit in and hear these testimonies of what you say of being so sick and tired, of being sick and tired, that you just need to make a change happen.
David Greer (37:38):
There’s also just, it’s one of the most respectful places I’ve ever had as a human experience to be with a group of people who then individuals start sharing about their experience and everyone else, you can hear pin drops at meetings. You have people sharing their deepest emotional secrets with another group of humans and feel safe enough to do that. And everyone else is respecting that. They’re not looking at their phone, they’re not talking. It’s very rare. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been to talks where everyone, it’s really, really quiet and everyone’s hanging on the speaker’s word, but it’s not that common that the speaker is sharing at that level of emotional depth.
Wayne Veldsman (38:30):
What’s the power of sharing that level of emotional depth and connecting with even connecting with ourselves?
David Greer (38:38):
Where all the magic happens? The magic happens is when we can be open to that emotional part of ourselves, and we liken it in recovery to peeling an onion. I’ve done a lot of work in recovery. I’ve done a lot of peels to the onion. But here’s the deal. There’s always another peel. There’s always more to learn about myself. And I’ve done the steps in recovery many, many, many times. And now the first two times are kind of really scary and you’re cleaning up things from the past, but the last half a dozen times, it’s really all it is, is an opportunity to learn more about myself. And as I learn more about myself, I can show up for myself and for others in the world in a better way.
Wayne Veldsman (39:30):
I learning more about yourself, and then you’re able to show up for yourself in the world in a better way. It sounds to me, even those that don’t think they have any alcohol problems, they could also benefit through going through these programs.
David Greer (39:46):
Absolutely. But the steps are simple. The work is hard. This level of deep kind of personal work is very hard. And most people, I do it to save my life because I think if I pick up a drink, I’m going to have an early death because alcohol is, and there’s a variety of reasons why I think that that’s true for me. And I don’t know if it’s true for someone else, but I think it’s true for me. I have this incredible motivation to work. It’s like you have to have seen such a dark side that you’re willing to do this work. And I think for a lot of people, they’re not ready yet.
Wayne Veldsman (40:27):
They haven’t seen it.
David Greer (40:28):
They’re not ready yet. And of course, I belong to a sister program, Adult Children of Alcoholics and/or Dysfunctional Families. I don’t actually think my family of origin parents were alcoholic, but they were dysfunctional. And that has also revealed a lot of the family system of dysfunction and how it shows up in my life. And now I’m breaking cycles that are multi-generational by increasing my awareness around all of that. And then my parents were wonderful, and they have many, many wonderful qualities. And they’re human. Every family is dysfunctional to some extent. We’re all human. No one is a perfect parent.
Wayne Veldsman (41:12):
No, definitely not.
David Greer (41:14):
I’ve worked, yeah. Anyways, I’ve worked the steps in a ACA and learned. It’s like I say, the spotlight got shone on a different part of me. And I got to go heal and work on those parts.
Wayne Veldsman (41:29):
The spotlight got shown on a different part of you. What was the spotlight being shown on? And then what was this different piece that it got shown on afterwards?
David Greer (41:36):
In my principal alcohol related program of recovery, it’s more about myself and looking at my actions. And then in a ACA, it’s more about my role with the family and what I learned as a young child and what my coping mechanisms were in my alcoholic version. It’s like, okay, you’ve got these characters. Just don’t do them and get better at not doing them in a ACA. It’s like I now know why I do them, which makes it easier for me to try and alter those behaviors over time.
Wayne Veldsman (42:16):
Nice. It’s getting really to the root or the …
David Greer (42:19):
Root of those behaviors and beliefs and where they come from and greater insights into me as a person, as a human.
Wayne Veldsman (42:32):
The deepest insights into you as a human, as a person that it sounds like there can be. And so how is this impacting your current work as a coach? Because in the beginning you said you really like to specialize in helping entrepreneurs with addiction or alcoholism problems. And it sounds like this whole piece of who you are today, this process you went through, you’ve continuously gone through, it’s affecting and impacting a lot of what you do today. Is it not?
David Greer (42:58):
It does. And as I do this growth, we as coaches, we can only show up for our clients as well as we have done our own personal growth. I find every time I’ve done a series of personal growth, it’s like, oh, I will just naturally show up with different questions for my clients
(43:19):
Because now I can explore that because I have just a deeper understanding. Or I can see patterns in their entrepreneurs still come from families, and a lot of why they became entrepreneurs may be some dysfunction from their family of origin. And I may not get into that, but why do you think you’re behaving that way, or why do you think this issue is so big for you? And then we might explore that a little bit. As a coach, one of the fundamental, there’s two things I try and help people paint a vision for where they’re going that is so powerful that they’ll just actually overcome all these internal barriers. But at some point, rather than keep powering through that discomfort and fear, it’s like I help them look at their belief systems, which is actually creating that fear. And that’s where we really can create some magic is when we help them dig deeper into where those beliefs are coming or what those beliefs are like. Oftentimes they’re completely unconscious, don’t even realize I had it.
Wayne Veldsman (44:30):
And then you’re new beliefs.
David Greer (44:32):
Yes. And helping create new beliefs. Wow. A belief might be self-limiting. Belief might be an entrepreneur has an unconscious belief they can never grow their business beyond a million dollars a year.
Wayne Veldsman (44:46):
Sure.
David Greer (44:47):
They’re not going to make it a $10 million business because subconsciously deep down, they don’t feel they’re worthy of it or they don’t feel they can do that. And again, it might not even be a conscious thing, but again, I’ve done enough of this personal work, I may have an opportunity with a client to go explore some aspect of that or ask them, what does success mean to you? What would happen if you actually were a $10 million a year business? Sometimes we fear our success more than we fear our failure.
Wayne Veldsman (45:19):
I’ve heard that more and more and more, David. This piece of by helping yourself, exploring yourself more than you’re able to help others more is so powerful. And I hope everybody hears that. Go rewind back the last five minutes. Important. And so you said one thing, two different things actually. One, you said you can help people to find what does success mean to them?
Wayne Veldsman (45:46):
I’m curious, define success for us. What does it mean to you?
David Greer (45:55):
Success for me. So for me, I help entrepreneurs figure out what the number one thing is and then to help ’em stay focused on the number one thing. I do not have that problem. The number one thing for me, every single, so the biggest achievement in life is getting sober. And the thing about alcoholism is every day I have to achieve the biggest achievement in my life for another day. So the number one thing every day is to stay sober. I have a lot of clarity. I know what the number one thing is every day, and I get up in the morning and I do things to support that. And I have behaviors that are consistent with doing that. And so that’s a definition of success for me, right? Staying sober one day at a time is a massive, massive success. Now I have goals and success in the relationship. I’m a family person. Family values or something, it’s on my website. Massive family values is something that’s super important to me. So there’s my relationship with my kids, relationship with my grandkids, and I’m in a moment where we’re in some disagreement with one of our children and spouses, and I’m just holding space and honoring that. It’s not like it’s a perfectly smooth journey.
(47:21):
Again, the sailing analogy is it’s a pretty windy day and the waves are pretty big, and we’re bouncing around right also. But I can still be respectful and I still can show up and work it through.
Wayne Veldsman (47:37):
You don’t have to agree with everything and work through it. Absolutely. And so David, I know we need to wrap up here. You and I both have upcoming engagements. So the last question I’ll ask you, you said that you help people to paint a powerful vision for their future. I would love if you could paint a little bit about your vision for the future and then tie it into our theme of legacy. What’s your vision for the future and what’s the meaningful legacy you’re working to leave on this world?
David Greer (48:04):
It’s the one I started our whole conversation with. It’s to share my experience, strength, and hope in business and in recovery, and remind people that you do not have to do it alone is I think one of the messages I really hope people will take away. And if you are suffering with alcoholism or addiction, know, there is a solution. There really is a solution and reach out. But I’ve never met anyone that could solve it on their own. The mind that got us into alcoholism or addiction is not the mind that can get us out. We need someone else because it’s a mental disease, it’s alcohol use disorder or substance use disorder.
(48:51):
So reach out. And I do want to let all of your listeners know that. Certainly on the business side, I offer anyone that wants a free one hour coaching call. No obligation. If you visit my website, my phone number and my email address is on the top left of every page of my website. And there’s a contact form too. So feel free to reach out. And I just want everyone to know that that offer is on the table, and I’ll help whatever you’re stuck with, whether that’s painting that vision for you or whatever it is that you’re really stuck on in business or in life.
Wayne Veldsman (49:30):
And that’s a wrap everybody. Thank you so much for being here. Let me know some of your top takeaways, please, in the comments. Hit the pause here for a second. You want to just think through, let it digest everything you just learned. Some of my top takeaways for you, if you don’t watch the video version of the episodes, I take a bunch of notes throughout, and I hope you all do as well. How interesting that he talks about the 12 step recovery program and how he actually has gone through it multiple times. I asked him if you didn’t hear if myself even, or if anybody else could benefit with going through these programs or going to an AA meeting, even if they’re not an alcoholic. And he said, absolutely. Because it all boils down to more self-discovery, more personal development, because the more we learn about ourselves, the more we’re able to help others.
(50:25):
He’s a seasoned coach, and he still says through going to these sessions, through getting other coaching, he is discovering questions that he never thought to ask his clients before. We can must have a stronger focus on personal development. Even him, right? He’s pushing 70 years old and still working to better himself for the vast majority, if not all of you, you are younger than that. And so what is your excuse? Come on, let’s work to better ourselves and thus we’re going to better others. Other takeaways? I’m going to go check out this book, Scaling Up that he says he uses that to facilitate a lot of his coaching clients. And the one page strategic plan, that’s where you basically outline your next three years, and then you work a little bit backwards for what you want to accomplish three years from now, one year from now, and then all the way into quarters.
(51:22):
Actually, if my notes are correct, that’s what he was talking about. Oh, what a big takeaway right here, guys. Listen to the market and your customers. They somehow did this almost on accident, right? But that was his, it sounds like his biggest takeaway, the biggest reason why they were so successful and so quickly, they iterated really fast. He listened to customers. He gave a little bit of a story of at a conference, he did almost all the demos speaking to people at the booth of the conference the entire day. And he said that he wasn’t just pitching people on the software and on all the different things that it could do. He was asking them questions about themselves, about their business, about their needs. Then he would show only like 5% of the capabilities of the software, and that’s how he made sales. Flip this upside down.
(52:17):
Take it into your life, into your business. Focus more on the customer’s needs than your own needs, and then tailor the experience to them. Ask people what they want and then give it to them and then present them with that solution. Make it really all about the market. What a great, great, great takeaway. Oh, man, I didn’t realize alcoholism was so prevalent. Talks about the importance of taking breaks, focusing on family when he stepped away, when he sold his company after 20 years, they went on a two year sailboat adventure. How exciting is that? And then last but not least, he helps his clients to paint a powerful vision for their future. If you all take a 10 minutes timeout today, think through a powerful vision for your future, it’ll be time really, really well spent. I speak with some of my clients about writing their own obituary, right?
(53:15):
Think about when you’re on your death bed and now work backwards. Like, okay, what did you want to be known for? Right? Like a classic obituary of, oh, this person died. They spent their lives doing X, Y, and Z, fighting for blank. Spending time with friends or family or traveling, whatever it was. Just get really emotional with it. So paint that really powerful vision for your future so that you can start working towards it today. Everybody, thank you so much for being here. I greatly, greatly appreciate it. If you’re not on the inside yet of the Journey to Legacy community, I invite you to come join us. It is a mastermind group full of amazing individuals, so we’re all working to help each other get better by actually helping ourselves to get better. We focus on mental, physical, financial, and spiritual health to improve a little bit every single day so that we can help others to improve.
(54:11):
And through this actual ripple effect of we help ourselves to help others, they help more others and others. That’s the legacy that I’m working to leave on this world. One of meaning and impact, and it’s surprisingly the exact same legacy that David is working to leave, huh? He’s working to share his experiences, his strength, and his hope in business to help people, oh, business and recovery to help others overcome challenges just like he’s overcome. Again, thanks everybody for being here. I greatly appreciate it. Until next time, my name is Wayne Veldsman. You’ve listened to Journey to Legacy.
