Summary
Using Culture to Drive Business Growth
What is wealth? By understanding your purpose and culture, you can decide what wealth means to you as you grow your business. This is one of the topics I explore with Todd Dexheimer on his Pillars Of Wealth Creation Podcast. Listen to learn more on these topics:
- How I started as the first employee at Robelle, and then helped build it into a global powerhouse over 20 years.
- The major strategic difference between my former partner and I that led to him buying me out of Robelle.
- My personal struggles with alcoholism and my recovery.
- Growing your business using the one-page strategic plan and Scaling Up framework.
- Driving high performance using company culture.
- The need to remove toxic high performers who violate cultural values.
- My transformative experience of taking my family sailing in the Mediterranean for two years, homeschooling our children while sailing over 5,000 miles.
Audio
Transcript
David Greer (00:00):
The hardest thing for an entrepreneur is making is really figuring out what the number one thing needs to be and then staying focused on the number one thing.
Todd Dexheimer (00:10):
Hello and welcome to Pillars Wealth Creation, where we talk about creating financial success with a special focus on business and real estate. I am your host, Todd Dexheimer. Now let’s get to work. Hey, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Todd Dexheimer, and excited to have
David Greer on. David, how are you doing today?
David Greer (00:31):
I’m doing fantastic, Todd. Thanks for having me here.
Todd Dexheimer (00:34):
Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you joining us. David’s an author, entrepreneur, coach that specializes in creating high performing and high growth mid-market businesses. He also helps entrepreneurs that are challenged with alcoholism or addiction as well. David, man, you’ve had quite the experience. Why don’t you give our listeners a bit more about your background? We’ll dive in.
David Greer (00:59):
Okay. Well, we don’t have enough time to shoot the whole thing because I’m an old guy, but the basis of my entrepreneur journey is when I was a university getting my computer science degree, I joined a young software startup as the first employee, and the company was named for the two founders, Robert and Annabelle, which was called Robelle, which is a concatenated made up name. It still Googles well today actually. And a condition of my employment was I had to write an abstract for the 1980 Hewlett Packard International Users Group, which was accepted. Then I had to write the paper, and while I was in fourth year, I went to my profs and told ’em I was going to take a week off. I flew to San Jose and I gave my first ever technical paper, which I can still remember standing on the edge of the stage and how scared I was to go give my first public talk. And I’m 22 years old and I’m standing up on the San Jose convention floor telling people about this, a whole bunch of other computer geeks about this cool software and what it could do for them. And it was years before I realized that was the essence of marketing and sales.
(02:22):
We were just computer geeks doing our thing and creating stuff that really helped people. And we grew this business by the seat of our pants. I mean, we did some influential books that we incorporated into the business. I liked it. I stayed 20 years, after 10 years, I bought out Annabelle. She wanted to retire and became partners with Bob Green and we had some other corporate structures. And then after 20 years, we built it into a global powerhouse, this giving talks. Bob Green and I every year wrote a new paper, either technical or managerial. Then we traveled the planet and gave presentations. You’d trust your whole company to this obscure Vancouver based software company you’d never heard of. That’s how we engendered trust in us. And these were pretty substantial. They were often a hundred million plus divisions of Fortune 500 companies or auto parts companies doing that kind of range, who were going to trust their business to a new mini computer from Hewlett Packard. And then they were further going to actually trust their IT systems to the software that we had created that they needed in order to be successful.
(03:42):
In the 20 years, Bob Green and I, I like to say Bob Green and I only had one disagreement, but it ended. But the one disagreement was the doozy and ended in divorce. We got to 20 years and we could tell we’d specialized in this computing platform. HP made for, well I forget how many years, 26, 27 years. It’s one of the longest lasting platforms in the history of computing. But we knew it was coming to an end at some point and we built some pretty special people and I wanted to take a little more risk, a little more money and move it and start targeting in new directions. And Bob Green wanted to just milk the market until the last customer left and turn out the lights and downsize.
Todd Dexheimer (04:28):
Two totally different approaches.
David Greer (04:32):
I still think today both were viable strategies. They just were not complimentary.
(04:37):
They just were very opposing ideas of the future as a company. And we ended up settling that difference by him buying me out. I mean, it was quite a bit messier than that. And that emotional toll of everything that happened at the end was really tough. That’s the part of business that people see the highlight reel, but that highlight reel is on the back of a lot of challenges and a lot of things that happen that is not visible. I just want to fast forward to a couple more things in my career and then we can move on to whichever piece you want to focus on.
(05:26):
Someone smarter than me sat me down. I was busy chasing new deals. I hadn’t noticed this thing called the dot com meltdown. And I found a woman who helped executives find new roles when they’re being downsized through networking. And she sat me in her office and she said, “David, your kids will never be 11, nine and five again.” And she said, “do you need to work right away?” And I’m like, “I’m not done for life, but I got a pretty good check in my jeans” and for your listeners, if they can picture me sitting in a chair with the most cartoonish light bulb going off over my head. That’s what happened. And I realized we could do something completely different. And my wife and I hatched a plan where we commissioned a sailboat in the south of France and we took our three children and we homeschooled them for two years and sailed more than 5,000 miles in the Mediterranean. I’ll keep going. I want to try and
(06:30):
Just a couple more important parts of my career and then we can dig into it. I came back, was uncertain what to do. I spent three years as an angel investor looking at a hundred deals a year, investing in one, being a director, working for options. I eventually went to an event put on by this guy Verne Harnish. He has his claim to fame thing called a one page strategic plan. Tons of my entrepreneur friends believed in this. I didn’t know much about it, I took one of the CEOs I was invested in, and we went to the Verne Harnish event, which was a mind blowing experience in of itself. But at the back of the room were two coaches and one of those coaches, I talked to Kevin Lawrence and he made me more uncomfortable than I had been in half a dozen years, well since I sold out of Robelle. And he really shone a light on just how unfulfilled I was professionally.
(07:31):
And I took his card, I had it next to my phone probably the next three weeks. Once a week I thought about calling Kevin and the phone weighed, I don’t know, somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds. I wasn’t ready to take that risk. And then three weeks after the event, Kevin called me and he said, “Hey, this is coach Kevin. Do you remember me from the Verne Harnish event?” I said, yes. I hadn’t thought about much else for the last three weeks. But anyways, I ended up hiring him. Kevin’s my kind of guy, he’s all in or all out. Our first coaching session was on my 50th birthday, August 9th, 2007. And at that time to become a new client of his, your opening coaching was two eight hour days.
(08:21):
When I say all in all in, and I worked with Kevin for nine years, but after 18 months we had kind of looked after the career piece and cleaned up some personal pieces and we kind of cleared all the stuff off the desk and all that was left was the elephant in the room. And January 27th, 2009, I admitted to Kevin for the first time admitting to anyone, including myself that I had a drinking problem. Kevin, in his personal life at a summer place, had sat around fires with some people who had a lot of time in 12 step recovery, and he coached me to go give that a try. That was a Tuesday, and I committed to go to a meeting by that Friday. And then later that afternoon I knew I had an event downtown, a networking event that was on until eight. I looked online again, kind of all in or all out, and lo and behold, there was going to be a meeting, a quarter of a block off the road. I would be driving down to go home at 8:30. And I knew this event ended downtown at eight. I went to that meeting and I, I’ve been going back to it ever since. In fact, I was there last night. I made that meeting my home group last night when I was there. There were two individuals who were there the night that I walked in 16 years …
Todd Dexheimer (09:46):
16 Years ago,
David Greer (09:48):
16 years ago.
(09:51):
That’s one of the gifts of 12 step recovery is to have these people in your life who share this road of recovery together. I started down this path of recovery, and then I did another with Kevin’s help, I found another executive gig and with another friend of mine actually from recovery. And I worked for three years as VP of marketing for this telematics company here in Vancouver. And I came out of that gig and I’m like, I worked harder I think in that three years than I’d worked in my entire career. And I finally decided I don’t need to prove to anyone that I can work hard. I’ve proven this over and over and over. And I also decided I wanted to give to other entrepreneurs the gifts that coach Kevin had given to me. I launched my coaching practice, coaching and facilitation.
(10:42):
And that was 10 years ago. And then kind of five or six years in, I’d switched from Kevin to his coach because he stopped doing one-on-one coaching. He just wanted to focus on strategic planning and working with teams. And I’ve been working with Nan O’Connor from Atlanta, and she just kept reflecting back to me the pureness of my emotions and how I shared about my recovery. And she kept nudging me to be more public about it. I broke my anonymity with a YouTube video I posted about four years ago, I guess, and intentionally started focusing on working with entrepreneurs who are challenged by alcoholism or addiction.
Todd Dexheimer (11:29):
Why do you think it took you so long to put it out there publicly?
David Greer (11:34):
Well, part of why I came on podcasts like yours is to try and break down the stigmatism of alcoholism. When Kevin first suggested I go to 12 step recovery, I had a huge negative reaction. I knew nothing about it, but yet I had this huge negative reaction. I think some of it was just that admission that I was an alcoholic. But anyways, I think just not wanting to go public is just part of that stigma just associated with you are bad or wrong or awful for being an alcoholic rather than this is a mental health disease. This is alcohol use disorder. It’s an officially diagnosed mental health disease. And alcohol in my opinion, is the most powerful drug on the planet and it’s also socially acceptable. But if anyone drinks enough alcohol, they will become an alcoholic. Now, I think some of us are predisposed to be more susceptible than others, but hey, if you’re drinking [enough] alcohol, you will become an alcoholic. Again, and I was also stuck with that kind of vision of the wrong side of the tracks, guy with a trench coat and a brown paper bag lives on a bench,
(12:58):
And that’s maybe 1% of alcoholics.
Todd Dexheimer (13:02):
You’re successful, businessman,
David Greer (13:05):
High performing, or very successful mom keeps the whole family together. That’s the normal. That is really the normal and just you don’t see it. I was very good at hiding and for me, I didn’t drink to the point of blackout or to slurring or stumbling. I got drunk to a certain level of inebriation and then kind of kept that until I went to bed,
(13:38):
Which is there’s a lot of us who that’s kind of our modus operandi of being an alcoholic. I think you reliant on that just held me back and then again all in or all out. Once I really went public with it, then especially the last couple of years, I’ve really made an effort to go on these podcasts to really three, I’ve three living this purpose, which is reduce the stigmatism of alcoholism, understanding that there is help, there’s hope. If you’re listening to this and you’re suffering with alcoholism or addiction, I want you to know there’s hope. And the third thing I’d really like you to take away is we can’t solve this particular problem by ourselves is what I believe. We have to reach out our hand for help. There is help if we want it. And I just encourage people to reach out.
Todd Dexheimer (14:42):
I mean, look, people go and look for help to become a better business owner. People go to counseling for their marriage, people do all kinds of things. It’s having help. It’s just really tough. And probably it’s possible, especially with an addiction like that, that is a totally different thing. You are, as you said, it’s an illness that is a totally different thing. Relying on help for something like getting your business in the position you want is one thing, but you need it if you’re an alcoholic or drug addiction or anything like that.
David Greer (15:26):
Yeah, that’s why we talk about hitting a bottom, which could look very different for every individual, but something needs to happen in your life that is, in my case, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Some people, they lose everything. They lose the house, the spouse, the kids, maybe their business. I come and share on podcasts like yours. Hopefully you don’t have to get to that point to where you say, Hey, I can hear what David had to say and maybe I can get off the elevator on the first floor instead of letting it crash into the basement. And for every individual, there’s that one point where it is just not working anymore. And sometimes that window is very, very short, very narrow. And that’s the one window where hopefully the person reaches out or gets some help or talks to someone one
Todd Dexheimer (16:27):
Rightly. Absolutely. David, I want to talk about a couple of things as you talk through your background. I appreciate that. What do you see that makes the biggest maybe difference or bigger differences in high performing people, high performing companies? You obviously took that company from a startup to a company that was doing a lot of business all over the world. What do you see that difference is?
David Greer (17:08):
I don’t know how well Bob Green and I did this. We did it well enough, but it’s working. Are you working in the business or are you working on the business? What do I mean by that? Well, it is super easy to get completely ensnared by the day to day and the next email and the next fire. And to me, it takes an incredible amount of intentional effort to step back from your business and look at the bigger picture of what’s going on. The framework that I use, this one page strategic plan, it’s a book called Scaling Up. You can find this. These are all free resources.
(17:56):
If you’re going to hire me as a facilitator, you need to agree to meet for one day offsite with you and your team per quarter and two days to do an annual plan. That’s five days total offsite for a year. Now I charge enough, and that’s enough of a commitment. Those tend to be bigger businesses, 10 million and up a year revenue. But that’s what it takes to really hit the pause button. Look how you did and why we like quarters in the scaling up framework is a quarter is 13 weeks. And in 13 weeks you can get a lot of shit done. And if you picked really, really badly, which occasionally happens or as is happening right now, facts around you are changing, like facts around your business, out of your control are changing dramatically and quickly. If you meet after 13 weeks, you still have enough time to course correct. You’re still going to achieve what you want in the year. And the other thing that was really blew my mind when I went to the first Verne Harnish event is start with where do you want to end up in three to five years? Bob Green and I built Robelle the traditional way. I think most of us entrepreneurs do. How did we do last year? Let’s do 10% better.
(19:22):
Kind of thing. Right now, if you’re in a market that’s growing at 30% compound annual per year and you only grow 10%, well you are losing market share. If you don’t step back and look at this bigger picture, I think you are going to miss some of those. And I wonder what Bob Green and I would’ve achieved if we’d done this more. Where do we want the business to be in three to five years and four or five key areas where we want to operate or what we want to improve or capabilities we want to build, then work back with. Form that, what are the four or five goals we need to achieve for the year? And then when I work with strategic planning, I don’t let people choose more than five goals for the quarter. The hardest thing for an entrepreneur is making is really figuring out what the number one thing needs to be and then staying focused on the number one thing.
Todd Dexheimer (20:15):
Yeah, that’s the hardest part of my opinion is staying
David Greer (20:17):
Focused on it and shiny red balls go by. It’s like in my coaching clients, sometimes I hear a shiny red ball and I just bring them back and I say, well, when you started the year, you said this was the number one thing you wanted to achieve this quarter with the business. Is that still what you wanted to achieve? And they just need, and it’s like, oh yeah, it is. Is like chasing red ball going to help you?
Todd Dexheimer (20:43):
Well, yeah, there’s a lot of ’em around. How do you navigate times today where things are changing quickly? There’s tariffs, there’s not tariffs, there’s this, there’s that. How do you stay focused on it?
David Greer (20:57):
Yeah, a lot of coaching I do is what are the brutal facts?
(21:03):
Okay. Part of the deal with all of this change in the tariffs is you have to be really clear on what the actual brutal facts are for your business.
Todd Dexheimer (21:13):
What does it really mean?
David Greer (21:15):
Yeah, exactly. Are you really impacted? I’m in Canada, you’re in the US. We do have the Canada US special trade agreement stuff is still supposed to be moving across the border under that. Do you qualify for that? Now, one of the things that’s changed is you now have to do a lot more paperwork to actually prove that you’re within the agreement. That’s a brutal fact to you have to deal with. But that one I think is, it’s a pain in the ass and probably a lot of administrative work it has to get done. But in the big scheme of things is probably better than having to pay massive tariffs.
(21:57):
But here’s what I tell people. When COVID came along for all of my strategic planning clients, none of their three to five year plans changed. Where they wanted to end up because some people want to do three years out, some people want to do five years out. Whatever it was for each of those businesses that did not change the goals for the year did change and absolutely the goals for the quarter change, but you’re this massive pandemic, massively impacting everyone how people work. What was interesting is that the long-term strategy where you’re putting steps and steps to where you want to go, that didn’t change. It was just more your short term.
Todd Dexheimer (22:47):
That’s an interesting point that you make right there. That happened. That was the same in our business too. We look, the long term was still the same, that three to five years still the same. It just how we’re going to get there might be a little different here because of the circumstances that are in front of us right now.
David Greer (23:06):
And then you can only control what you can control. In the uncertainty, you just have to get more comfortable living with uncertainty. And then when the facts change, you got to regroup as a team, look at the new facts, see how it changes your plan and go forward. And again, I didn’t know it’s being on again off again, but for my planning clients, no one has asked me to call a special half day planning session to adjust to what’s going on. It’s like we got a plan in place, it’s solid, we’ve got the right goals. Yeah, we’re going to have to cope with this. But no one is blowing up their quarterly plan or their yearly plan to massively change direction and all have contingency plans that have plans to handle it. But there was also a lot of telegraphing that this kind of thing was going to come. Everyone has done some thinking about it and how it might impact them. And again, my experience is getting, the brutal fact on the table is 50% of the work because it’s like me and my drinking until I said there’s an elephant on the table. And I went to my coach and said, this is the elephant my drinking, nothing could happen. And I was in denial for over 20 years. And sometimes with teams, what happens, I ask them, I do a survey before a meeting and sometimes it becomes obvious the entrepreneur herself or himself are the biggest elephant in the room. They need to get out of the way. And then I try and find ways to judiciously help them or to shine some light on where they might be getting in their own way.
Todd Dexheimer (25:11):
Yeah. Yeah, it’s hard. That is a great reason to have somebody in your corner behind you that’s looking over seeing what’s in your business. You can’t see what you’re doing wrong. You just can’t. I can’t. Yeah, you might have an idea, but you might be totally off base too. And I think a lot of people want to put the blame on others when it might be them. Some small adjustments or sometimes large adjustments need to be made in order really to solve those problems.
David Greer (25:45):
Well, and also when you have an owner founder who, which is what I tend to work with who’ve started business and then built it and say they built it three or 4 million and now they’re trying to grow it more and they’re hiring some really talented people, but how were they successful? They basically controlled every aspect of the business from the get-go. And then maybe with one or two key hires early on,
Todd Dexheimer (26:07):
They started off doing everything.
David Greer (26:09):
They’re used to white knuckling, holding onto the steering wheel. And they hire these better people and they say, okay, you’re going to take over this marketing and sales role, but that person may have completely different ideas to how you did it there. It’s quite likely, actually better, but I know what worked. I know what got me here. And they delegate, but then they snatch the steering wheel from this leader that they’ve hired to be a leader, and then they wonder why is the person not performing well? Because you stuck your hands back in and you didn’t, or you didn’t set clear goals for them. That’s another thing I do a lot of work. Did you really set clear goals for what you expected of them?
Todd Dexheimer (26:59):
Yeah. Do they really know what you want them to do and how?
David Greer (27:04):
Correct.
Todd Dexheimer (27:05):
Yeah,
David Greer (27:06):
Set the what not should happen. That’s what they’re there for. That’s why you hired them. They should have new expertise that you don’t have, they should be able to figure out even better. But you need to be really clear on the what.
(27:22):
And maybe why is this important to the business. That’s one of the things I love about the one page strategic plan is it ties culture purpose three years, one year and one quarter altogether on one sheet of paper. It’s much easier for people down the line, lower in the organizational structure. I think one of the things you need to do as a leader is no matter how low down, I don’t like low down in the organizational chart, but no matter what your role in the business, what you do should be relatable to one of the goals for the quarter. And your job as especially mid layer managers is to relate how what you do is still important to this overreaching where we’re trying to go.
Todd Dexheimer (28:12):
I like that. I really like that
David Greer (28:15):
Employees often can’t connect those dots. They’re not strategic thinkers. That’s not what you hired them for. You hired them to be doers in a particular area of expertise, but I think your bigger purpose that you’re trying to bring to the world, I think it’s really important they understand that and that they have some relationship to it.
Todd Dexheimer (28:33):
Yeah. Well, I know there’s a lot of people that say, why am I even doing this? Why am I even here?
David Greer (28:38):
Right, exactly. I see my job is to help entrepreneurs I work with and their senior leadership teams to communicate that deeper and deeper into the organization. And in fact, if you do the Rockefeller habits perfectly, which no one does, every employee could empirically at the end of every day tell you whether they had a good day or a bad day. Not anecdotally, but empirically. I knew that I had to make 10 widgets today, and today I’m at 10 great widgets. It is really, really hard to get to that level of specifics, but it can be very, very powerful.
Todd Dexheimer (29:25):
Yeah, I could see that. Let’s talk about culture and using culture.
David Greer (29:31):
I love talking about culture.
Todd Dexheimer (29:33):
Let’s talk about creating culture, using culture to drive performance. Let’s dive
David Greer (29:41):
A few things. For most businesses, again, if we go kind of owner founder businesses, the culture is the culture of the entrepreneur founder, and maybe one or two if they hired their best friend or something, then it’s kind of a blend early on, which is what often happens. And that culture is really driven mostly from our family of origin, early teachers, early coaches. And it’s mostly unconscious, but it’s driven by our belief system. And when I go in and help people with the Rockefeller habits, the first thing I do is more Good to Great Jim Collins. It’s like a discovery process rather than a, this is what the culture is going to be. It’s more what is the culture. And we ask these questions like, okay, who’s your best employee that you would rehire in an instant? Who are two or three people like that? And what are the characteristics that they demonstrate that make them such great employees? And if you go through that exercise, you will usually start eliciting these cultural pieces, especially the part that are really working well. And sometimes the culture is like it’s the entrepreneur’s way or the highway.
Todd Dexheimer (31:18):
What is that a healthy culture to have
David Greer (31:21):
If you want to grow a business? No, I mean you need to get past that, but I think it’s ridiculous to not bring that out into the open again. What’s the elephant in the room? Well, the elephant in the room is it’s the entrepreneur way or the highway. Then at the end of the day, if I’m coaching the entrepreneur, it’s like you can keep operating that way, but you’ll probably keep getting the results you’re getting. Is that what you want?
Todd Dexheimer (31:45):
How do you change a culture or make sure that everybody in that company that works for you knows the culture and helps foster that culture, I guess that you’re really looking for? Because obviously that’s tough to get everybody on board.
David Greer (32:06):
I believe that you demonstrate culture through storytelling and you demonstrate business performance through data, through KPIs. You split those. I really encourage, if you have a town hall meeting and you’re committed to building culture, then I think you should have at least two or three really great success stories of employees of some great thing that they did in the last week or month or however often you do town halls and the culture and the culture that they demonstrated. Now, that also implies you’ve written it down. I like to, when I work with teams, we usually come up with only four or five things that are the culture. And it’s usually each one is a phrase and then a paragraph that just because the phrase can be interpreted different ways by different people.
Todd Dexheimer (33:02):
Absolutely.
David Greer (33:03):
The paragraph is to provide more color of what you really mean by that.
Todd Dexheimer (33:10):
That makes sense.
David Greer (33:10):
And this storytelling, I want to tell you the story about when Sue helped customer Bob where we screwed up here, but then she listened really carefully and then she approached five other people and then we came up with a plan. And that would be something around customer excellence or around teamwork or both.
(33:36):
And again, you may get into a concrete story. And then the other thing that I work on with teams is what are the actions you take to live your purpose and culture? Sharing cultural stories at weekly meetings or at town halls, that’s one of the actions that you take. Another action I really encourage people is you hire for culture first and skills second.
Todd Dexheimer (34:00):
Yeah, I agree.
David Greer (34:03):
And it’s easier to evaluate skills than culture, but when you start the interview process, start with look for cultural fit.
Todd Dexheimer (34:15):
And get rid of the people that don’t fit your culture or refuse your culture, get rid of them quickly. At least that’s my opinion. Maybe you differ.
David Greer (34:22):
Yes, I’m a hundred percent. I think the flip action of that is you need to get rid of people who don’t fit the culture. And if we talk about A players and AA players and B players, but then we talk about toxic as, that’s really super high performing people, but they keep violating the culture and they’re super hard to let go of because you know how much they get done, but they stomp on everyone’s head to get it all done.
Todd Dexheimer (34:51):
They’re really productive, but everybody around them that’s dealing with them is not productive because they’re dealing with their toxicity
David Greer (34:59):
And resentful and you have to step up and get rid of them. And effing hard. I don’t want to sugarcoat it, but that’s what you need to do. Because at the end of the day, what I really believe is cultural defines behaviors, like people that share these cultural values, behave in certain consistent ways. And it actually, that’s what gives you the performance and the higher growth is everything goes better because we believe the same and our underlying belief system is aligned. And again, it’s not about good or bad or about good culture, bad culture. I mean, some cultures are like we’re all assholes and they literally are. And that’s the culture. Just don’t ever go work there. If you’re not an asshole, I’m not here to judge it. I think we get this Disney, Hollywood, the culture has to be this way. And I think again, we start with this, what is the real culture? And if you want to change it, you have to be very intentional about it, and you’re probably going to have to either wait for some people to leave or help some people to leave who just are not going to be able to live those new cultural values.
Todd Dexheimer (36:35):
Yeah, it’s really not saying it’s impossible, but as far as I’ve experienced, it’s really hard to completely change people that are fighting the culture that you’re trying to have in the company. Just continue to keep them on that A plus player that has a toxic
David Greer (37:00):
Yeah, it’s like in sales, I like to say there’s yes, no, and maybes and maybes usually take a long time and turn into nos. And it’s the same if you got an employee who’s maybe on the cultural values like changing people’s behaviors. You got to actually dig in and change their belief system. And that’s deep excavation work.
Todd Dexheimer (37:25):
Yeah, we’ve had quite a few and there might
David Greer (37:27):
Be some people who are worth it, but most people are not capable of actually doing that.
Todd Dexheimer (37:33):
And
David Greer (37:33):
It would be better to help them move along and find a new place that aligns with what they believe,
Todd Dexheimer (37:40):
Because probably that place out there,
David Greer (37:42):
There almost always is. And they’ll thrive and your company will be happier and you’ll thrive. My friend Chris Edmonds who wrote a book called The Culture Engine and is an expert on corporate culture, I forget how he phrased it, but it’s basically helping them along to something that is a much better fit.
Todd Dexheimer (38:04):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
David Greer (38:07):
And then making sure you hire someone who is your cultural fit.
Todd Dexheimer (38:13):
I really like that advice though. Hire culture first. We can always train. You can …
Todd Dexheimer (38:19):
Yep. And culture is really difficult to truly train. David, I got a couple last questions before we wrap up. I want to ask you, was sailing for a couple of years and just taking a break from the business, was that worth it?
David Greer (38:41):
Oh, one of the top two or three experiences of my whole life.
David Greer (38:47):
Yeah.
David Greer (38:47):
I mean, my biggest achievement is getting sober and it’s an achievement I have to achieve every day. I only get this one day at a time, but after that I would then it’s meeting Karalee, getting married, having kids. I don’t want to gloss over it. Those were really, really big events and formed this whole thing. But in that, it’s our Mediterranean trip and people point out to us, we spent more time in two years with our family than most parents spend with their children in their lifetime.
Todd Dexheimer (39:22):
Their entire, yeah, exactly.
David Greer (39:25):
Plus plus, plus plus. A friend of mine who lived on a barge the year before we did our trip in northern Europe, she likes to say, living on a 70 foot barge or living on a 43 foot sailboat with your family is being in a pressure cooker. And one of two things happen. You kind of either blow off the lid or the sum becomes greater than the parts. And in our case, I think it’s the sum became greater than the parts. And your children see you up close, they see the good, the bad, they see you in a storm in the middle of the Adriatic Sea in the middle of the night, which is a story I share is the opening story of my book Wind In Your Sails. And I have a reason I share that story from a business context, but truly my son at the time who was 10, we parked the boat in the middle of Adriatic Sea for an hour we could figure out which way a thunderstorm was going. We were sailing right into the middle of it, and we were 10 hours sailing time from any safe harbor.
Todd Dexheimer (40:29):
That had been an experience.
David Greer (40:32):
Some people say like, what’d your kids get most out of the trip? I’m like, I don’t really ask them because how do you describe that? How do you describe going 18 months without being in an English speaking country and the impact that has as they watch their dad wander around a little tiny Italian town for a whole morning trying to get a butane bottle you can cook food. Butane is the fuel that you use for the stove, right?
(40:58):
And you have this little blue bottle and your kid’s in tow and you go to tourist info and they speak some English, but they don’t have any idea where you, you’d get a butane bottle, but they point you down the street and you go half a mile and then you find someone else and they point you somewhere else and two hours later you go down a little alley and you go through a beaded curtain and you hold it up and they go “si, si, si.” And they go up back and there you go. But how do you describe that to people? They’re seeing you troubleshoot. They’re seeing you, they’re just being in that experience with you, and you do it for two years like that over and over. That’s amazing. And there were times where Karalee and I didn’t agree about where to go next or whether we should keep doing it, and we had some big blowups that probably should have found a way to have done off the boat or send the kids away. But when you live in 43 feet, that’s not always possible. Again, they see you at your best, at your worst and everything in between.
Todd Dexheimer (42:05):
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool that David, what’s a favorite book? You’ve mentioned a couple already. What’s a favorite book that you can recommend our listeners other than your own and what’s the name of yours? You said
David Greer (42:18):
Wind In Your Sails. Wind In Your Sails: Vital Strategies that Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Growth. Love it. That’s mine. My previous coach, Kevin Lawrence, I think has a really, really fantastic book called Your Oxygen Mask First and distills his 30 years of experience as an entrepreneurial coach and I think one of the top entrepreneurial coaches in the world. And I was a Guinea pig for a certain amount of the material in that book along with many of his other clients. And he has a really great planning framework in there that I recommend to some of my clients, which he also makes available free. But you probably want the books you can read more of why he’s got the framework the way it’s
Todd Dexheimer (43:08):
Sure.
David Greer (43:10):
Right.
Todd Dexheimer (43:10):
Love it.
David Greer (43:11):
Your Oxygen Mask First by Kevin Lawrence.
Todd Dexheimer (43:16):
Great. And then last question, what are your three pillars of wealth creation?
David Greer (43:22):
First of all, what is it you want to be wealthy in?
Our two years on the boat with kids is a legacy we have as a family for the rest of our life, something we draw from. I am incredibly, incredibly wealthy in having that experience. And do you want more wealth in experiences in time in business? When I work with entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs get super excited about the top line revenue, and I just keep bringing them back to how much money are you making? How much money are you making? Rather you had half the top line revenue that you have if you had triple the profit. And I think if you’re a successful entrepreneur and you’re throwing off great profits, you could spend it all in lifestyle. But if you really want to be wealthy, take a lot of that and go save it to the point where you can fund your lifestyle off of long-term investments from that.
(44:37):
It takes away the financial imperative, which means you can be more relaxed about your business, and you can focus on having more fun, which is to me, that’s the ultimate wealth. Why be in a business that is just keeping you awake at night and are you dreading getting out of bed in the morning or are you bouncing out of bed, looking forward to another day at work? And whether you’re an entrepreneur or whether you’re just a high performing career person, I think you’re wealthy if you bounce out of bed in the morning and you’re looking to forward and work is never perfect, right? But it should be like 80/20, 80% of the time it should be fulfilling, want to be there, challenging, helping you grow, and 20% of the time should be the stuff that I really would rather not do, but it’s easier to just do it.
Todd Dexheimer (45:34):
You always going to have challenges. Sometimes it’s never a euphoria,
David Greer (45:38):
But I mean, again, if most of the time you’re getting out of bed and having to drag yourself to whatever your career is, then you’re not wealthy.
David Greer (45:48):
You’re not wealthy. Again, wealth comes in many different forms. I think we tend to overemphasize the financial piece.
Todd Dexheimer (45:58):
Agreed.
David Greer (46:00):
I don’t know, I probably was more than three, but that’s important to me. And what I work with my clients on reminding them. Sometimes I have clients, I want to grow my business twice as big and I want to sell it and exit and I’m great. And then what are you going to do? They haven’t thought through it, right? And I’m like, why don’t you just make a whole bunch of money and then take that and invest it you now can live off of that forever and just figure out other ways to grow the business it’s still engaging for you. Because really, I’ll often ask them, why did you start the business? Oh, I started it. I saw market opportunity and I like this. And now the business is growing and they’re operating the business and the operating part, they don’t care about it. It doesn’t jazz them. It’s like they need to go. It’s like great. I mean, maybe you should go do some angel investing. Maybe you need to just take your business and go find another product line or division or service that you could go delegate all the operation of the business and you go figure out a new market to go.
Todd Dexheimer (47:13):
You continue to be the dreamer.
David Greer (47:15):
Yeah, you’d be the dreamer and the visionary. And oftentimes it’s just like the business has got ’em pinned down because of this. They got a 5 million a year business and it’s successful, but that’s not actually what they started out for.
Todd Dexheimer (47:31):
That’s not why you did it. That’s not what you like
David Greer (47:33):
And that’s not what you like. Good. Let’s help you get back to what you love. I don’t even say like, what is it you love? Let’s get you back doing that.
Todd Dexheimer (47:44):
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s cool. Well, David, look, I really appreciate you, appreciate your time. The stories they’ve told really powerful. How can our listeners get in touch with you, learn more about what you got going on?
David Greer (47:58):
Sure. Just before I get there, and they’re related, earlier in our conversation we talked about reaching out for help. I want your listeners to know that I offer a free one hour of coaching to anyone that wants it.
(48:11):
That’s cool. The easiest way to access that is just visit my website, coachdjgreer.com, that’s Coach D as in David, J as in James greer.com. The top left corner of every webpage on my website has my phone number and my email address. And if you prefer a contact form because it seems less intimidating, I have one of those too. Please, I really mean it. Sincerely, if you’re stuck on something and you want some help, reach out to me and I’ll be glad to have a one hour conversation. And my commitment to entrepreneurs and high performing people is three ideas to accelerate within the next 90 days.
Todd Dexheimer (48:55):
Love it. David, again, really appreciate you. Thanks for the time and you have a fantastic rest of day.
David Greer (49:03):
Thanks much, Todd. You too.
Todd Dexheimer (49:05):
Hey, thanks much for listening. I appreciate you being a loyal listener. I would love to have you go on to our Facebook page and subscribe. Give us a thumbs up, go on to iTunes or wherever you listen and give us a rating and review. Don’t forget to subscribe. Your radio review just helps us push this out to more and more people and continue to grow our audience and hopefully positively affect a ton of people out there that really need this and want this. The other thing I’ve got for you is a free ebook on my website. Go on to venturedproperties.com, and download our free ebook on real estate and on syndication. And I’ve got some data points in there, some really good stuff for you. I’d love to have you take a look at that. It’s free. I’m not expecting anything from it. And also, look, if you want some help in multifamily, want some help learning, growing, getting your business off the ground, I would love to talk to you about what it would look like to work with me potentially and see if that’s a good fit. You can go to coachwithdex.com and check that out and we can definitely have a call. Thanks a lot for listening. You make it a fantastic rest of the day. I’ll catch you on the next episode.
