I was interviewed live on the Next Steps Show on WYSL (1040 AM) by Peter Vazquez. Below are links to a podcast of our interview and a transcript.
The main topics we discussed:
- The ups and downs of creating a business.
- How I joined a young software startup at age 22.
- What does scaling mean.
- To build a high performing business, start with a handful of clear goals for the next three years then get going for the next quarter.
- Use culture to create high performance.
- Grow as an entrepreneur so that your business can grow too.
- How to use my book Wind In Your Sails in your business.
- How I got sober.
- Reach out to get help, in business and if you struggle with alcoholism or addiction.
Audio
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ETG16LFbw3gbiN1HgwG0H
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/next-steps-show-mar-11-2025/id1639150976?i=1000698816749
Transcript
Peter Vazquez (00:09):
In a world that seems to change daily, what will you do next? Welcome to the Next Steps Show with Peter Vesquez. A starting point for discussion, ladies and gentlemen. See, welcome back to the Next Step Show to conservative New Rican. Just another beautiful day here in good old upstate New York. Yep, yep, yep. Hey, I was going through those national observance days, and guess what today is? It is, well, it’s Johnny Appleseed Day, which I found to be pretty interesting because check this out. Johnny Appleseed or the guy’s real name, which is Johnny Chapman, right? Pioneered, well, a lot of apple trees throughout this nation. Check this out. He was born in 19, or excuse me, 1774. He died in 1845, but he planted, what did he do? Chapman was actually, he established over 1200 acres of nurseries. Now, what I really found the fun fact, and this goes right along the show today, right?
(01:22):
Because today we’re going to take a little step back, see from the political talk that we’ve been doing from hocus pocus magic shows, or even what’s happening at the federal level, right? Because I try to bring you guests, I try to bring you information, not just to inform and educate, see, but to help you take those next steps, hence the show. See, that have balance in faith, politics, and then entrepreneurship, right? Johnny, he was an innovator. He was an environmentalist. He was a pioneer. I mean, listen, the guy was smart. Instead of going out and selling seeds, he started selling well, samplings, which was quite interesting.
(02:12):
Today, I have the privilege of talking to a guy who, in his own right, has created his own apple orchards, has created his own wealth and has helped so many other people. See my guest today, check this out. He’s a 40 plus year entrepreneur at the young age of 22. So for you, young people who say things like, well, I can’t, I’m so young. No, no, no, no, no. Mira at 22, this guy took a job with a startup software company, right? Stayed there 20 years and became part owner all while building this organization into a global powerhouse. Yep. Check that out. To the point, to the point where he was able take a step back seat with his beautiful bride and commission a sailboat, and then head out in the south of France, see what home schooling their kids and traveling over 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean. I mean, I don’t know about you, but to me that’s like, well, that’s an American dream for many that freedom. That’s true. Freedom to choose what you want to do. So our guest today, yep, he’s been planting his own seeds. He’s been helping people grow their own apple orchard. So it is my honor, yep. It is my honor to introduce to you, to my guest today. See, it’s David Greer. Thank you so much for joining me on the next Step show today.
David Greer (03:52):
Thank you so much, Peter, and thank you for that lovely introduction.
Peter Vazquez (03:57):
Oh, absolutely. I was going through your stuff and very well deserved introduction, sir. And like I said, we’ve been talking a lot about politics. I mean, how can we not, there’s so much going on in the world today that it’s going to be nice today to just take a step back from all that stuff and talk about the importance of the entrepreneurship part of what we talk about on this show.
David Greer (04:23):
I am totally happy to do that, especially as I’m Canadian, you’re American, so I think we will, as much as we can, leave politics to the side and talk about business building and entrepreneurship and being an entrepreneur.
Peter Vazquez (04:37):
Yeah. Can you imagine if more people spent more time talking about that though, or if, anyways, David, if you don’t mind, I like starting off the show by having my guests share a little bit about themselves, but this is the catch, David. I’m not looking for you to share some bio that me or my guests can go read on your website. What I want to know is what made David Greer, what next steps took you to where you are today that you’re qualified and able to speak in the topics we’re talking about?
David Greer (05:12):
Sure. Well, I mean, you covered some of it. I’ve spent 40 plus years being an entrepreneur. You covered the highlight reel in your introduction, and what I want to remind listeners is that the journey of life, but especially the journey of an entrepreneur is one of peaks and valleys. And so you heard a lot about my peaks and I hope today in the conversations we can talk a little bit about the valleys and what it took for me to get through them. I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, into an entrepreneurial family. My father had taken over my grandfather who started a business in 1923 in Edmonton, but that business was the wholesale sanitary supply business. And when I was in about grade nine, two events happened. One was I got taken of a tour of the Alberta government. Edmonton is the provincial capital of the province of Alberta. I got taken of a tour of the government buildings and saw a massive computer room, and this would be in the seventies where I saw spinning tape drives and computers, and I was mesmerized by that. And at the same time, I remember learning octal arithmetic. We count to 10 because we have 10 digits, we have five on each hand.
(06:45):
Our numeric system doesn’t have to be based on 10. In fact, inside computers, right? Everyone hears about zeros and ones, which is a base of two. So since grade nine, I knew I wanted to take business and computers and put them together. I don’t know exactly where that vision came from, but I do remember having it as a memory at the end of middle school, and I wasn’t going to get that in the sanitary supply business. And then when I was 18, I was in love with my high school sweetheart who had moved to Vancouver. And so in January of 1976, despite my parents’ complaints and disagreement, I just up and moved to Vancouver.
(07:34):
And of course, nine months later, she broke up with me, which I was completely heartbroken, but it got me in a moving in a different direction. And eventually I went back to university. I got my computer science degree, as you mentioned. In second year, a friend introduced me to a manager of an IT department for the cable company in Vancouver, which at that time was the largest cable company in North America, had more subscribers than even densely populated New York. And through that, I met a consultant who had just started a software company. And that consultant and I worked on rewriting the major application for the cable company, which wasn’t scaling. It worked for one of their small divisions with like 60,000 customers, but it wasn’t scaling to their major division that had 600,000 customers. And people have to remember, this is a time when the computing power the computers were working on were probably a 10th of what your phone is.
(08:44):
And so scaling was a significant challenge. And as you mentioned in my intro, that software company, which was Robelle named for the two founders, Robert and Annabelle, I ended up joining in fourth year. And that was one of the kind of peaks and valleys. And oftentimes in our journey as entrepreneurs, the peaks and valleys like go together. The valley was, I had to go to my boss who had been very good to me at the cable company and tell him, and he definitely thought that he’d been so good to me that I was going to continue and work there after I graduated. And I told him no, I was leaving to go join his major consultant’s company, which he was very disappointed in. He told me in no uncertain terms, but then I had the opportunity to go work for Robelle. And then the other thing was a condition of my employment with Bob and Annabelle was that I had to write an abstract for a technical paper to the 1980 Hewlett Packard International User Group convention, which I did in the fall of 1979, and it was accepted. Then I had to go write the paper, and then I had to take a week off of university to fly to San Jose to get my first technical talk. And I want your listeners to know that I am a pretty sharp guy. I’m doing very well in school.
(10:18):
I’m getting along well with Bob and Annabelle, but I remember standing on the side of the stage with Bob getting ready to go on to give my first talk. And I was petrified, sorry, I probably shouldn’t use the, yeah,
Peter Vazquez (10:31):
Yeah, no cussing. This is a live show.
David Greer (10:41):
But I overcame that fear and I went and I gave my talk later, Bob and I were 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 was a decade or more later that I found out that’s the essence of marketing and sales. Interesting, is being able to tell people, explore the problems they have, and then tell ’em how you have a solution that’ll solve the pain that they’re in.
Peter Vazquez (11:08):
So David, let me ask you real quick, if I may, I want to back up a little bit here too. You were 22 years old when you started with this company that you ended up helping grow and so forth, right?
David Greer (11:18):
Yes, that’s correct.
Peter Vazquez (11:19):
You used terms just now like scaling. Most people don’t know what that even means other than cleaning a fish or some other things, right? Did you know that terminology at 22 years old? And what motivated you at 22 years old to even want to know what that meant?
David Greer (11:37):
I would not have known, I don’t think even at that time, I don’t think scaling was a term. What we knew is that when they tried to turn on the computer system for 600,000 users, the computer just basically ground to a halt. What we knew was that the application could not perform fast enough to support enough online users and that many customers today we’d call that a scaling problem,
Peter Vazquez (12:13):
Ladies and gentlemen, C, an entrepreneur, not just an entrepreneur, the entrepreneur, because we got a lot more conversation to have here. We’re going to find out from him exactly what all that means and how we can apply it and make ourselves better leaders. Aki, see ra, we’ll be right back. No. Here in the voice of Liberty,
Announcer (14:29):
Peter Vasquez, The next step show
Announcer (14:31):
On the WYSL stations.
Peter Vazquez (14:37):
Hey, hey, check this out, ladies and gentlemen, right? Isaiah 32 verse eight says this, but the noble make noble plans, and by noble deeds they stand. How can you go wrong with words like that? See ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the next step show. See David Greer. Right? Today we are talking entrepreneurship. David, I want to ask you a quick question if I can, and that has to do with entrepreneurship in general. One of the beliefs that I have, David, is as individuals, we really need to start right off the bat working and building the corporation within our subs right before we can go out and really do anything else. Would you agree with that in any way?
David Greer (15:31):
Yes and no. I think you have to have a certain, I think actually I’m going to say more no than yes to that. A lot of entrepreneurs, either they’re tired of being in a job and being restricted by what they can do in their job, or they just see a need in the marketplace that’s really painful for people and they envision a solution to that. And I think most of us as entrepreneurs, we start before we’re really ready. I think the waiting till you’re ready is a recipe in business period for you to miss your market, for you to wait. Analysis paralysis, right? Is what we talk about in planning. Sometimes you just have to go get started and dig in and find out what works and what doesn’t work. Now, having said that, I think you still want to get some broad brush strokes, like what kind of business do you want to found? Where do you want it to go in the next three years? What’s your vision for it? And really what’s your understanding of the market? It’s the market piece, which is most important. What is the pain in the marketplace and what’s your approach to getting people’s attention in the marketplace place? But as long as you have some good note and oftentimes people from their own personal or professional experience have a network or have good insight into a problem to be solved.
Peter Vazquez (17:14):
Let’s dive into that a little bit if we can, because one of the things that I’ve learned, or at least I’ve seen in our areas is that a lot of businesses, they struggle with direction with that strategic plan. And I saw that a Harvard Business School study reported that culture does have a significant effect on an organization’s long-term economic performance. Right? Would you say that having clear strategy, clear purpose as an organization is essential for growth? I mean,
David Greer (17:47):
I think it’s much more likely you’ll be successful. I think it’s much more likely you’ll achieve what you want to achieve. There’s many businesses that have survived, entrepreneurs who are wildly off in all directions, but I don’t recommend it as the way to operate. And I’d split those two things. So you brought up two topics, which is one, having a plan, a strategic plan, a strategic direction, and then having purpose and culture. And I think both are important. The purpose often from owner founders who start their own business is again this vision of they see this need in a marketplace and their purpose is to go satisfy that need. Culture is usually driven, again, owner, founder businesses, the culture is usually the culture of the entrepreneur. Whatever that entrepreneur kind of believes in, and the family values that he or she was taught are most likely to become the culture. I think if you want to create high performing companies, you need to make the culture explicit, you need to identify it. And as the business grows, it will morph depending on who the initial key leaders are and often who the first hires are if they stick around for quite a while. I look at figuring out culture as a discovery process as opposed to an altruistic. Let’s find the best culture. It’s more what is the culture here and how do we enhance it and improve it and live it?
Peter Vazquez (19:31):
Does an organization, when it comes to culture, does an organization have a culture that’s or should have a culture that’s solidified, meaning when you come in there, you assimilate to the culture? Or should that culture shift based on what’s happening around them in the marketplace and so forth?
David Greer (19:51):
No, I think culture is a foundational piece that’s there for the long term, irrespective of what markets you go after and what products and services you come up with. I think it’s a much deeper, to me, culture really describes the values that people have, which really defines their behaviors, which is built on what they believe. And in the work that I do with clients around culture, I do a lot of coaching around hiring for cultural fit. It makes no sense to hire people who do not fit your culture because in my experience, changing people’s behaviors, changing people’s value systems is almost impossible and takes a very, very long time.
Peter Vazquez (20:38):
And it creates a level of liability that I don’t think any employer really wants. I run a relatively large organization in hiring. I’ll take my time. And I’ve seen so many leaders just go, just hire people. They need people. And I know that call centers, they’ll hire three or 4,000 people when they only need 200. And within the year they filtered out all those people to keep whatever was the best of all they hired. Tell me what differentiates a company that’s thriving from one that kind of sits stagnant?
David Greer (21:20):
Well, I think one that’s thriving is one that knows those things that let it thrive and has measurements. We talk about key productivity indicators. What are the numbers that drive your business and that lets you know that you are successful. And I think if you take that a long way, can every person at the end of the day say whether they had a successful day or an unsuccessful day, and not just based on anecdotal evidence, but on data, they know their job is to produce X widgets and they know they produced X widgets today. Gotcha. And it’s actually very challenging to build a business to get to that level of clarity through every level of the organization. But I think it’s a worthy goal to strive towards, again, as every person know that they had a good day empirically. At the end of the day, I think that’s a thriving organization.
(22:23):
I think an organization that encourages debate and discussion appropriately, which by appropriately I can say I think that’s a really bad idea. I can’t say Peter, oh, you’re a bad person. You had that idea. One is a disagreement about the idea, the other is about you. When I’m facilitating and we have these really vigorous discussions, I’m very careful to make sure that no one personalizes it. And we stick to the ideas and what our belief is about those ideas and that we flesh that out. And again, really healthy organizations are prepared to have those discussions in meaningful and respectful ways. Like you respectfully disagree, but you disagree. And organizations that don’t thrive as well, I think don’t entertain those organizations. And again, as an entrepreneur, owner, founder, if you’re that kind of entrepreneur, it’s oftentimes my way or the highway. And so the entrepreneur is not open to that kind of debate.
Peter Vazquez (23:44):
David, once upon a time I was paid to consult with small business to help them identify why they were stagnant and help them take their next steps. And almost nine times out of 10, I found that the obstacle was the manager or the leader or the owner. Dave, hang on there for a quick second. We’re going to take a little longer break, right? Ladies and gentlemen, go grab a drink. Don’t change that dial, be back right here in the Voice of Liberty. See,
Announcer (24:33):
Peter Vasquez, next step show
Announcer (24:40):
On the WYSL stations working.
Peter Vazquez (24:45):
Hey, I can’t let a show go by without the conservative Rican. See, what is that called? Wisdom. Check this out for today. I’m going to share this with you in times of uncertainty, right? Those who adapt and lead with resilience, not only weather the storm, but also chart new courses to success. See, welcome back to the next step Show. Ladies and gentlemen, key jogo on the ano. See, it’s David Greer. Sir, thank you again for staying with us.
David Greer (25:23):
You bet. Very happy to be here with you today.
Peter Vazquez (25:26):
Yeah, absolutely. And we had some great conversation during the break, David. And as we were going into break, I had talked about how once upon a time I was actually paid by these companies to come in and kind of figure out why they’re stagnant and kind. We were sharing and break a lot of the times, the barrier or the stoppage is right there at the person that’s leading it. And it’s for a lot of reasons from control to, well, really lack of, how about this term, David? Emotional intelligence,
David Greer (26:01):
Lack of emotional intelligence, which in turn leads to lack of trust with the senior people that you’ve hired. You hire these people because they’re as good or better. Hopefully you hire people that are better than you to do certain things, but then you’ve always done it a certain way, and so you don’t trust them to do it their way, which is often better. And so you get frustrated, they get frustrated, and that whole piece of letting goal is part of that growing your emotional intelligence.
Peter Vazquez (26:36):
Absolutely. David, can I get your opinion on this whole concept of the employee driven model or even the other part today, which is kind of founded in the servant leadership, the whole thing of leading from the back, letting your employees kind of take a row of leadership without the title kind of stuff. Do you have any opinion on any of that?
David Greer (27:00):
I have lots of opinions. As leaders, we have to lead, which to me, you’ve got to set the direction, you have to set the vision, you have to make it clear where you’re going. Now, as a leader, I don’t think you should do that in a vacuum. Some of my work is to facilitate with entrepreneurs and the senior leadership teams planning sessions where we figure out what the core maybe four or five goals will be for a quarter, or if it’s an annual planning session, what the core four or five things will be for a year. That I think you do need to have everyone’s input, although at the end of those sessions I coach people, even if you have really a lot of disagreement when you leave the room, you have to as a group agree to the five goals you agreed to and stick with them for at least the next quarter, quarter’s, 13 weeks. It’s enough time to get a lot of stuff done,
(28:06):
And it’s short enough that if you were completely off base and you completely ended up in the wrong direction, you can still course correct without killing the company. That’s the vision, the direction, the goal setting, I believe a leader’s job is to make the people you lead be successful. It’s not to tell them what to do to help them grow, to make sure they have the resources to succeed at the things that they need to do to be there for them to do some coaching, to not have the answers. That’s one of the things I work with a lot of my clients is if an employee comes to you with the question and you immediately give the answer, there’s no skin in the game for the employee to go learn how to answer it for themselves. If they’re stuck on something they know, go ask my boss and they’ll tell me. So a much better approach is to coach people over time that they have a question when they come to you with the question they come with at least one or two, what they think might be solutions.
Peter Vazquez (29:19):
I have one rule for my, well, I have many rules, but one of the rules I have for my employees is when you’re going to come to me, and I think this is kind of common, I’m sure others have heard it, if you’re going to come with a problem, you got to come with a solution and then we’ll work it. But just to throw a problem in my, that’s not what I’m paying you to do.
David Greer (29:36):
Agreed. But a lot of people are used or things are going so fast or they’re fighting so many fires, they just think it’s easier to give the answer, which in the moment that’s often true.
Peter Vazquez (29:48):
Yes.
David Greer (29:50):
You need to build a discipline like planning regular quarterly planning is a discipline, right? So you have to build that discipline, not answering employee’s questions right away, even when your hair’s on fire and things are going crazy. That’s a discipline. It can be a very hard discipline, but it’s a discipline. And I think it’s these disciplines that lead to much greater future success.
Peter Vazquez (30:14):
Let me ask you about accountability, sir. Do you believe that accountability should play a big factor, both of the leader from employees and vice versa?
David Greer (30:22):
Yeah, absolutely. Completely.
Peter Vazquez (30:26):
So you have a book, I think you wrote a couple books, if I remember correctly, correct. Or at
David Greer (30:31):
Least a very technical book in the eighties and a book for entrepreneurs that is just coming up to its 10th anniversary.
Peter Vazquez (30:38):
Well, congratulations in the name of that book, or at least the one for entrepreneurs, I believe it’s called Wind in Your Sails. It focuses on accelerating the entrepreneur growth.
David Greer (30:49):
That’s it.
Peter Vazquez (30:50):
Can you share any takeaways from that book, sir? Things that, and not to obviously give away your book here, but what would encourage others or people to want to read it?
David Greer (31:02):
Well, first of all, the book encapsulates a lot of my experience as an entrepreneur. And it’s kind of a quarter, a theory book, how to think about your business, and then three quarters practical things you can implement right away.
(31:16):
And then additionally, I interviewed 10 entrepreneur friends of mine and a third of the content of the book is their stories. Every chapter ends with a case study from an entrepreneur that I know that I think were particularly good in that part of the book. And part of my intention for the book is if you still believe in paper books is that you could just pull it down. You’re stuck in something in your business, you pull down the book, you look in the index and you go find four to maybe seven or eight pages that you read and you’ll have a couple ideas for what to do next. Or you can search the Kindle version. And I broke it into 10 chapters, which are ways of thinking about the business. Like corporate, how do you organize your corporate, not just so much your corporate structure, but corporate thinking, which goes back to my earlier moment ago talking about setting goal setting. There’s a chapter to the entrepreneur, how do you grow as an entrepreneur? How do you make sure that you’re not limiting the growth of the business? And how do you make sure that you build your resiliency so you can survive the hard times, which inevitably come. And I have some traditional marketing and sales, but I also talk about innovation product.
(32:44):
What if any, exit strategy you should have in a chapter on finance? My experience is people who started their own business but are still on their first business, they’re usually really good in about three or four of these areas. They’re pretty competent in three or four more. And it’s probably two they’ve never heard of, which makes perfect sense. So again, it’s not targeted to someone who’s started and sold two or three businesses. It’s not for that kind of experience. It’s someone who’s earlier in their journey as an entrepreneur, they built a successful business, but they’re getting stuck. They’ve hit some kind of ceiling or it’s not fun anymore. I find that sometimes I get clients the business is not fun anymore. And I asked them, why’d you start the business? What motivated you to start the business? And what was most fun when you first started the business? And often the reason they started the business and what was the most fun for them. Now that it’s a successful operating business, they don’t do any of those things anymore. That’s interesting. And I have remind them, let’s find a way for you to go back to the fun stuff.
Peter Vazquez (34:00):
Well, it’s almost like a marriage, right? You got to continue to reinvent it and reinvigorate it and remember it’s about the other person. And in your business, you got to remember, in my opinion, it’s always about that other person, whether it’s your customer or an investor, any of the stakeholders
David Greer (34:16):
Or your employees. Yeah,
Peter Vazquez (34:18):
Exactly. You mentioned, well, you didn’t mention one of your chapters, which is you call it I believe, people strategy.
David Greer (34:26):
Yes, yes. Right.
Peter Vazquez (34:27):
I have not seen that in any other, or at least not labeled that. And I noticed some of the titles and I perused it a little bit, the book, but that was a pretty unique section, sir.
David Greer (34:40):
Thank you. Well, I mean, I know it’s cliche, but people are what run a business, and I remind people in sales, a business does not sell to another business. A person sells to another person,
Peter Vazquez (34:57):
And that’s key to remember even when doing B2B type of stuff. Correct. In your book, you mentioned thinking and talking big, right? Why is that important for leaders and even for employees? I mean, we hear that sometimes and some other think big, go big, pray big, all that other stuff. But is there really realities to that? I mean, can you think your way into
David Greer (35:22):
Bigness? I don’t know if you can think. I think it helps. Where some of that comes from is I think we consciously unconsciously end up living in our fears and forcing ourselves to think big is one way to try and think past your fears. The fears are what holding you back. I sometimes find that people are more afraid of having success than they are a failure.
Peter Vazquez (35:58):
100%. And actually there’s even statistics to show that where people would take it to that point of big success and then not be able to go. David, we got one more break to pay these bills. Beat up will be right back, ladies and gentlemen. Yep. And the voice of Liberty. W-Y-S-L-W-L-E-A-W-C-K-R. We’re streaming, we’re in all the social medias including TikTok. Listen, right, share, share, share.
Announcer (38:09):
Next steps with Peter Vasquez
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On the WYSL stations.
Peter Vazquez (38:30):
Check this out. In case you didn’t know, research indicates that engaged companies, see, that means you, the leader in that company outperforms disengaged leaders by 202%. You take that for what it’s worth, Firo, if you’re leading something, especially an organization or people you may want to be listening today and share the podcast with some friends, see, because we’ve got see the master of entrepreneurs, see it’s David Greer. David, is it okay that I refer to you as a master of entrepreneur?
David Greer (39:07):
Yeah, I’d like to think that that’s one of the things I’m a master of.
Peter Vazquez (39:11):
Wonderful, wonderful. And everything that I read, I confirmed that as. I wanted to ask you, sir, your book also refers to something called the X Factor. Can you define what that is and how entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs to be can use that in their starting phases?
David Greer (39:33):
Yes. My belief is that entrepreneurs should be looking at ways that they are 10 times better than their competitors. So like 10 X. That’s where the X factor comes from. And people sometimes focus just on the product or product features. It has to be 10 times as fast or 10 times as cheap. And I really encourage entrepreneurs to think through and to look at everything from when a prospect first, if you’re a retail, walked in the store or you’re a B2B, like when they reach out to you on your website to the final closing and then use of the product. Some big companies end up in B2B by these big software platforms, but then they poorly implement it and they never get the value that they should have. If you can show how you are much better than competitors at helping the company actually realize the value in their systems and business processes, you may easily have a 10 times factor improvement over your competitors, even if your product doesn’t have all the features of the competitor. Because the five features that you know the best, you know how to actually improve your client’s actual business.
(40:58):
I find entrepreneurs sometimes get too focused on the price or the feature set, whereas I think if you look at the whole thing, and honestly for a lot of things in our life, it’s not worth switching. Whatever we’re doing, if you get your music from Spotify, you’re probably not going to switch to Apple if it’s just twice as good, it’s got to be. I mean, the cost of switching is probably low enough that it’s not as big a deal. But a lot of things in our life, like we’re so used to doing it that we need it to be at least 4, 5, 6 times better before we’re willing to put the effort into actually switching
Peter Vazquez (41:43):
And interesting, I’m sorry, I a nonprofit housing program. And it’s the same concept in the nonprofit world as well, David.
David Greer (41:54):
Interesting.
Peter Vazquez (41:54):
And people don’t realize that it is interesting because even though the goal, the outcome isn’t to double our money per se for our pockets, however, nonprofits following the same concept that you’re talking about, actually everything that we’ve talked about allows them to get to a point where they can check this out, David generate enough income to where they’re no longer reliant in taxpayer dollars or grants. And there’s many organizations with smart people running them that have been able to do that by providing a combination of services and something tangible at the end of whether it was work, whether it was something that the clients built, they tied it all together
David Greer (42:38):
And think of the legacy of that once and can then help people indefinitely. Very powerful
Peter Vazquez (42:49):
Someday. If we ever have a talk on politics though, I’ll tell you at least how here in the United States, or at least here in New York, that’s actually frowned upon. Yeah. Another conversation,
David Greer (42:59):
A different topic.
Peter Vazquez (43:01):
The common sense show that we’ll have one day, but I want to shift a little bit because you don’t just focus on teaching people how to make money or teaching entrepreneurs how to start a business, how to deal. You’re also work, if I understand correctly, with leaders that have been leaders but ran into some personal challenges themselves, like addiction to alcohol or drugs and so forth. What drew you to that particular focus that seems almost somebody with a big heart not focused on making money.
David Greer (43:37):
It’s true. Part of my goal to come on shows like yours is to share my experience, strength, and hope in recovery. Because Peter, the truth is that I’m an alcoholic and I spent well over 20 years in complete and utter denial of my alcoholism until the universe put an amazing coach in my life who I hired because I was very unfulfilled in my career. But after we worked together for 18 months and we cleared off pretty well, all the clutter on the table till the only thing left was the elephant in the room, which was my drinking. And he was the first person I ever admitted I had a drinking problem too. And in his personal life, he had made friends with people in 12 step recovery and had learned a lot about that program. And so he coached me to go give that a try, which I did. And yeah, I’ve managed to stay sober for 16 years.
Peter Vazquez (44:41):
Very nice. Congratulations to you, sir, because that is a humongous feat and something that many people struggle today, people that, so congratulations to that. Absolutely. And if I may speak to the listeners here for a minute, I want to remind everybody, this is the honorable David Greer that I have on the phone who got into business at 22. And as he just shared, worked hard to not only overcome his addiction, but to share that with others so that well, we can all work together and grow. David, on your book, see Wind In Your Sails, can you tell our listeners where they can find that book? Where can buy it, download it, how could they get it?
David Greer (45:30):
All the major platforms, Amazon, whatever your favorite online bookseller is fine. It would make it easy to buy my book, but I’ll just, my website is coachdjgreer.com. That’s Coach D as in David, J as in James greer.com. And there’s a link there that says Book in the top menu and it has more details and it also then has links to every major Western English speaking country to where you can buy eBook or paper copies of wind in your sails. It’s also available as an audible book.
Peter Vazquez (46:14):
Very nice. That would probably be the one. I get so busy these days that, and I drive so often that I started getting a lot of these days, David, we’ve got a lot of people listening to this show. We go across upstate New York, down into Pennsylvania. We’re in six stations, we go into Southern Canada. I like to end a show by asking our guests to share with all these people what I like to call next steps advice, be it for the entrepreneur, for the individual struggling with an addiction. Do you mind,
David Greer (46:50):
I have a clear next step for either of those groups or both of those, which is ask someone else for help. I think that we’re very reluctant to do it and who can you ask that can help you with your current challenges? And I know there’s someone out there who wants to help you.
Peter Vazquez (47:14):
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the honorable David Greer. See, check out his book Wind In Your Sails. David, I appreciate your time. And like he said, ladies and gentlemen, ask for help. Be a leader, be a leader, be a leader. And don’t forget, God bless these United States of America.
