Blog

Summary

I had such a deep conversation with Greg Voisen on his Inside Personal Growth podcast. On business, life, and on building on our resiliency. This is what we covered:

• My journey joining Robelle Solutions Technology as one of the first employees to becoming co-owner and president.
• The importance of my two-year sailing adventure with my family across the Mediterranean.
• My struggle with alcoholism and my path to recovery via an amazing coach and through a 12-step program.
• Why I transitioned into entrepreneurial coaching, specializing in helping business owners who struggle with addiction or recovery issues.
• The importance to entrepreneurs of facing “brutal facts.”
• How letting go and trusting others as businesses grow is a critical skill.
• Driving your business growth through values-driven leadership.
• The importance of accountability in maintaining company culture.
• Start business planning with a 3-5 year vision and work backwards from there.
• The three-bucket framework for managing energy: career/business, life/relationships, and self-care.
• It is a myth that “you’ll be happy when you get there.”
• Find joy in the present moment.

Transcript

Greg Voisen (00:00):

Welcome to Inside Personal Growth Podcast. Deep dive with us as we unlock the secrets to personal development, empowering you to thrive here. Growth isn’t just a goal, it’s a journey. Tune in, transform and take your life to the next level by listening to this one of our podcasts. Hi, this is Greg Voisen. Welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. Joining us from Vancouver is David Greer, and I met David a while back, but it’s called Wind In Your Sails is the book. We’re going to put a link and the subtitle is Vital Strategies That Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Growth. David Greer, you, thanks for being on Inside Personal Growth.

David Greer (00:46):

Thanks Greg. I’m really excited to be here with you today.

Greg Voisen (00:49):

Well, I’m excited to have you and for all our listeners, they can see from behind there that he’s a sailor, obviously there should have been. Put him in again and here as well. And there’s a lot that you learn from sailing. I’m going to tell the little listeners a little bit about you, but there’s actually a deeper story too that I’d like for you to get to with the listeners. But while he was still attending University of British Columbia, David joined Robelle Solutions Technology. He was the first employee after the founders. After joining Robelle, he got permission from his fourth year professors to take a week off so he could fly to an international conference to give his first ever technical presentation. During David’s tenure as a co-owner and president of Robelle, he traveled the world giving a new presentation every year, creating multimillion dollar product lines while building Robelle into one of the world’s leading providers of HP 3000 solutions.

(01:59):

David, I’m going to let him tell the rest of the story because he’s got more to his story and when he’s not writing books and he’s not coaching and he’s not speaking, you’ll find him hiking. He says the Himalayas Mountains in Nepal and or sailing across the oceans, which you can see via go to his website, which is coachdjgreer.com. That’s where you can learn more about him, his videos, his book, and on. I want you to tell the listeners, because there is more to your story than what I just said, kind of fill in the gaps for us if you would. Because you’re now teaching or you’re now coaching entrepreneurs, you’re coaching people who run into roadblocks that get stuck. And in your own personal life, you got stuck and ran into roadblocks. What were some of the similarities that you think you ran into that you think people or entrepreneurs run into that you might be able to help people navigate through?

David Greer (03:10):

Well, let’s just continue the story. I spent 20 years with Robelle. I have an opportunity to do something completely different. My wife and I commissioned a sailboat south of France and we homeschool our three children for two years while sailing 5,000 miles to the Mediterranean. And I come back and then now is the challenge, what’s next? And I spent three years angel investing and being a board of director and working for options, and I didn’t realize how completely unfulfilling that was.

(03:42):

And eventually I was at an event where I met a coach who made me more uncomfortable than I had been in four or five years who just, and I think I had tears in the corner of my eyes. I think he just said, there’s a hundred entrepreneurs in this room and they all need your help. And I’ve been trying to find people who wanted my help and was not succeeding. And Kevin helped me to get back into the game, but also to start torquing with people that are my level. That’s one of the things I’ve come to realize is I have to, not necessarily at the learning level, I have some really young clients in their twenties, but their energy, their enthusiasm, their ability to be challenged by me and not be overwhelmed that we torque together and played together as coaching client. And then Kevin, amazing, amazing coach, and I believe the universe put Kevin in my path that I worked with Kevin for nine years, but after 18 months we’d kind of cleared all the clutter off the table.

(04:54):

We got me back. I hired him professionally to get me back in my career. I was unfulfilled. But on January 26th, 2009, I sent an email to Kevin on a Monday night, which was, we always did this. I sent an email with the successes and what the topic was and my topic was my drinking. And the next afternoon, Tuesday, January 27th, 2009, I had a coaching call with Kevin and I talked to him about my drinking, which is I’m an alcoholic, I drink a alcoholically. I had for 20 years being a daily drinker, and he coached me to 12 step recovery and typical fashion as an overachiever. I committed to go to a meeting by that Friday and later in the afternoon I looked online and lo and behold, I had a networking event downtown that finished at eight and there was going to be a meeting a quarter of a block off the road I was going to drive home on. And I went to that meeting and eventually a month later I made up my home group and 16 years on, it’s still my home group. In fact, I’m going to be there tonight. That’s the single biggest achievement of my life and what it is

Greg Voisen (06:13):

That an AA group?

David Greer (06:15):

Yes, it is.

Greg Voisen (06:16):

Yeah. Well, congratulations for that. I mean, I just think when somebody who has an addiction and whether you want to label yourself that way or not, I mean, look, a lot of people are addicted to different things. Some people are addicted to work, they’re addicted to drinking, they’re addicted to exercise, they’re addicted. Anything that you look at from an addiction is the overindulgence in whatever. And I even think that some people think they’re social drinkers, but they’re more than social drinkers. And what I love about your book is you frame sailing as a metaphor for entrepreneurship and you obviously coach entrepreneurs and there’s a lot of things that pop up for entrepreneurs like how do I finance this and how do I market this and how do I get it to market? And on top of all the other things they have to do, I got to hire employees, I got to manage employees. I’ve got all this. What are some of the biggest storms that you’ve seen founders face and what makes some sink while others can sail through? I mean, this is a big question.

David Greer (07:32):

It’s a big question and it’s, it’s one of my work in coaching. I think 50% of the challenge is to face the brutal facts. We want to put our head in the sand or our team around us is telling us about the elephant in the room, my elephant or happened to be my alcoholism, but whatever the elephant in the room, whether when we’re recording this, there’s a lot of things happening in politics and trade that are creating grief for a lot of entrepreneurs,

Greg Voisen (08:01):

Big

David Greer (08:02):

Elephant, big elephants. And my experience is that if you, I’ve almost never met an entrepreneur who if they squarely face the brutal facts and then especially if they face them, not alone, but with help from others that they haven’t overcome it. But I would say my facilitation work with clients, half the battle is getting the brutal fact on the table. If you don’t admit that storm clouds are on the horizon and you get whacked with the storm, you tend to have a lot bigger problem.

Greg Voisen (08:40):

Yeah, well you emphasize self-awareness. Okay, self-awareness is the really understanding about how I’m feeling about these things. What is my awareness of them? There are people sometimes aren’t aware about how they communicate and then when they communicate to an employee or a spouse or a child, they hurt the feelings of those people because they’re just rough at it. I mean, look at Elon Musk, a perfect example. Oh my God, he’s probably one of the worst communicators there is they even

David Greer (09:15):

And the worst at having any feeling or empathy for anyone else as far looking from the outside looking in

Greg Voisen (09:24):

Now regardless of the fact that he is, people say autistic and I believe that he probably is a little bit, what do you see as the biggest blind spot most entrepreneurs have about, and I’m going to underline themselves.

David Greer (09:43):

I think it’s the notion that they have to do it all. I work a lot with owner founders who built the business themselves and they’ve grown it themselves. The truth is, in order to succeed, they had to do it all. But the business grows to a certain point where the business is now bigger than them. And in fact, in my experience, the most limiting factor from almost all business growth is the entrepreneur herself or himself. Their limits

Greg Voisen (10:14):

Get out of the way

David Greer (10:15):

They need to get out of the way and letting go. When you’re an owner founder and you’ve run a business successfully for five or 10 years, this is really tough stuff.

Greg Voisen (10:26):

Well, I remember David, a long time ago, Michael Gerber, it’s been on the show several times, he’s now in his late eighties and we still converse. But if you can’t set up the systems in a business and then trust that the systems are going to run, and as a good coach, you’re somebody who’s helping people say, Hey, look, release this and trust in the people in the systems in the way that it operates. And I mean, you can’t do a franchise unless there’s system. And if you were going to put out a burger, McDonald’s, you want it to be the same every time. That’s kind of what it is.

David Greer (11:05):

And if you’re going to hire someone who’s better than you in a particular role, you need to let go that your way of doing it is the right way. You hired someone better than you, you’ve got to give them space and room to do it their way, which is probably way better than your way, but you don’t trust that. You snatched back the controls and insists on micromanaging it and doing it the way that work to grow your business. And it’s maybe true that worked in the past, but that’s not what’s going to get you to where you want to go in the future.

Greg Voisen (11:40):

And I remember just from the other day, Verne Harnish was on here, scalable, and we were talking about a visionary versus a manager. Well, as a CEO, if you are the CEO and you’re the visionary, get out the way and let the managers do what they’re supposed to do because you really aren’t equipped. Most visionary, a lot of them are not equipped to be coaches. Hopefully the owners you’re coaching are getting you to coach the middle line managers as well in the company because they’re really probably not good coaches.

David Greer (12:17):

Well, or I do a lot of coaching about helping them to become better coaches.

Greg Voisen (12:21):

Oh, that’s good. That’s awesome. Yeah, for all of you entrepreneur, did

David Greer (12:25):

You think about having the conversation this way or are you having these conversations?

Greg Voisen (12:30):

Are you even having,

David Greer (12:32):

Well, a lot of times they just think that the person, the other people could operate in a vacuum. Yeah, that forms part of my work.

Greg Voisen (12:45):

Well, I love the fact you talk about getting uncomfortable is for growth. And what was a recent uncomfortable decision that you David made and what did it teach you or maybe one of your coaching clients was uncomfortable?

David Greer (13:05):

Your opening question was like, what’s been a recent uncomfortable thing for me? I’m having to make it very personal, which is my wife and I have known for a while, we need to renovate our kitchen and we avoided the conversation for a long time. We have very different visions for what that looks like. Now next week we’re going to be married for 43 years now in 43 years of marriage, have we always figured it out in a way that worked for both of us? The answer is

Greg Voisen (13:38):

Yes,

David Greer (13:40):

But here we are back to oh well, afraid of what the other’s going to think and we’re not going to work it out and we’re going to be at loggerheads and now we’re put pasting tape on the floor in the kitchen and we’re, well, what if we did this and what if we did that? And I reminded her last night, I said, well, if we go with this approach, you really wanted this pantry that’s in another room to be in the kitchen. I’m letting you know I don’t think there’ll be enough storage to do that. Are you okay with that?

(14:11):

That’s one of her stated goals for the project. And it turns out that’s not the most important goal these other ones are. She’s okay with the design we’ve been working on. And a month ago I probably couldn’t have had that conversation. I hate change. This is challenging for me and some of it is you just have to live with the discomfort. Some of it is people work things out. If you have good team and good people and good help, you have people like me that are helping on the sidelines and coaching, you will figure it out. It goes back to my earlier statement that if you can identify the brutal fact, in my experience, everyone figures out a solution how to solve it. It may be very painful, you may have to lay off half your staff in COVID, people had to do really tough things. They just had to do what they had to do even though it was very, very uncomfortable. And some of it is learning to live with the discomfort. It’s just discomfort and this too shall pass. I think that’s the other thing.

Greg Voisen (15:20):

But the discomfort, even the discomfort, David, even in your case you said you hated change. Let’s face it, every uncomfortable situation that we come up against when we grow through it versus go through it when we grow through it versus go through it always when we get to the other side, we’re going, well, that really wasn’t that bad because there is the resistance I get there’s a resistance to it because I don’t think there is a person out there that probably doesn’t resist some kind of, if it’s a major change, they’re like, wow, I don’t know if I want to approach that. Some people thrive on it, but it’s not a very disadvantage.

David Greer (16:03):

And for me as a coach, usually what’s underlying that is a fear. If a client is open to it, I’ll often ask them and then I’ll now open there about what their response is. But what are you most afraid of right now? What are you most afraid of if this goes wrong? And by naming the fears, we tend to right size them a little bit. And sometimes I actually walk down the path of the worst case scenario like plan for the worst and hope for the best. Even if you went down this worst case scenario, is the business going to survive? And what would you need to do in order to survive? Oh, I’d have to lay off all these people. I have to do this. I’d have to do that. Okay, well that’s your worst case. You have a worst case plan. It’s not what you want to do. It’s not what you hope is you’re going to have to do, but you have something in your back pocket that will let you survive.

Greg Voisen (17:09):

Right

David Greer (17:09):

Now let’s talk about right, and then that reduces the fear. That makes it easier to think of other solutions that aren’t totally around that worst case scenario. And again, once you release some of that fear, you actually make better decisions.

Greg Voisen (17:28):

Well, I love the fact that you take your clients through scenario planning. Obviously your years originally with the company or with you did a lot of that kind of kind of thing. I’m sure with the HP 3000 and all the products and services you had to develop, and not all of those have a long life either, right? Some shorter lives, some longer lives. But many of the leaders have set metrics, they’re chasing metrics and external validation, right? It’s like, okay, we set this metrics or we have this KPI, this key performance indicator. How can they reconnect with internal purpose without losing momentum in their business? Because they think, okay, it’s good to have a goal, but it’s also better to be curious and have a purpose and a vision. Goals don’t always come together, meaning our end goal the way sometimes we think they’re going to happen. You know that you have to be flexible. But how do you help a leader, a founder, find this internal purpose again versus just chasing the goal?

David Greer (18:52):

In my work with entrepreneurs, they’ve often lost sight of like they’re overwhelmed with the next email, the next fire, the next thing. And the question I ask them oftentimes first is why did you start the business? What was the reason? Reconnecting them with that opening, why they started the business is often a path to that bigger purpose. Even externally, you started the business, there was a pain in a marketplace, and you solved it and you created a lot of customers. I mean, I still think that external validation can be very important. That’s you living your purpose, which is to help people get out of their pain with a product or service that they’re willing to pay you for.

Greg Voisen (19:45):

That’s normally why they start the business. That’s right,

David Greer (19:48):

Yes. Yeah. And you also talked about the visionary versus the operator. As the business grows, then it requires more and more operation. You get snowed under and buried under that operational piece and you lose the vision piece. But the vision piece is the biggest value you bring to the table. Where are the markets going to next?

Greg Voisen (20:10):

Isn’t that David caused by the fact that they’re not trusting the people they hired? You just said it a minute ago. It’s like, Hey, I got to do everything. The reality is if you can’t let go, it’s hard for you to hold onto the vision.

David Greer (20:26):

What I remind them though is to get back in vision mode, you’re going to have to let go. What do you want to do? At the end of the day, it’s the client’s life, it’s the client’s business, it’s the client’s choice. I just try and lay out options for them that are much clearer. They’re like, you can continue down this path of operating the business and feeling burnt out all the time and not having any fun. Or you could pursue a path which is back to why you started the business and what brings you joy and let’s go find more things that bring you joy in your business or maybe joy in your life. Maybe the business is okay, but you need to do other things outside of the business to build your resiliency or reintroduce things that were very joyous that have been cut out because the business has overwhelmed you.

Greg Voisen (21:16):

In this book you have a really powerful chapter, David, on particularly powerful around values and how do you coach a leader or an entrepreneur to know when they’re compromising the values for either a short-term gain or even a long-term gain because they think what happens is they start to bend or shift or how do you want to go not recognize the values which they were originally founded on.

(21:57):

And look, we’ve seen this happen time and time again in certain companies. Now an example of a company that fortunately hasn’t bent those values was Yvonne Chenard with Patagonia, right? When you look at a company like that, you’re like saying, Hey, I’m setting an example. Here’s a company that lives what they talk about and breathe and all the way down to the employees. How do you help somebody see that kind of same Patagonia values driven organization?

David Greer (22:33):

Well, first of all, working with entrepreneurs, have they written their values down?

(22:38):

Some of it it’s just in their head and some of the coaching I do or I might do facilitation with the senior leadership team and the entrepreneur on a voyage of discovery. Again, Good to Great [by Jim Collins] talks about, it’s about discovering your values, not like setting your values. And the values are typically driven in an owner founder business by the things that the entrepreneur valued or maybe them and their one or two most key first hires. First of all, can you articulate your values? What do you do to live your values? And then what are the consequences if you or one of your team members are not living up to those values and having conversations around that. Verne Harnish would say in his one-page strategic plan, it’s like the values, it’s the actions you take to live your core values in your purpose.

(23:38):

Totally. What are those actions and are you holding each other accountable to it? There’s employees know right away if an entrepreneur says or leader CEO says these are our values, and then they watch as that person violates those values, they know those values don’t mean anything like they’re meaningless. It’s knowing what your values are and then are you willing to be accountable to it? And then are you willing to hold other people accountable to it? They’re really willing to hire to fire toxic A players when they’ve continually violate your values. It’s really hard to do. They’re usually super high performers and they’re a virus in the organization

Greg Voisen (24:26):

Or eliminated C players too. Yeah, look, this whole sailing analogy is really quite interesting because I’m sure you can lead workshops just around the whole thing. What are the signs that a company culture and the culture usually is a reflection of the CEO of the company is dragging down performance rather than lifting it up? And what can that leader, your coaching do to course correct without mutiny? I know the first one is to be self-aware of what the hell it is that I’m doing. I think I’ve seen entrepreneurs in small, medium sized businesses get very angry and actually at this particular time with the economy and supply chains and them not knowing what’s going to run, I think you’re going to exacerbate these feelings from an individual. It’s just natural. What could you do?

David Greer (25:29):

Your stress?

Greg Voisen (25:31):

Yeah, what can you do to help coach somebody off that ledge? Sure, there’s some people out there right now, they would rather just jump off the precipice.

David Greer (25:41):

Number one is you got to step back from the ledge. You’re not going to make good choices when you’re in super high stress. And again, you’re triggered in your fear,

Greg Voisen (25:52):

Right?

David Greer (25:53):

Right. You got to step back from the ledge. You’re not going to make good choices when you’re in super high stress. And again, you’re triggered in your fear, you go back to first principles, why did I start the business? What’s my purpose for being here? What are the values we have in the business? Because I think this is what drives high performance. And if you stick to those values, you can make many different decisions about what your path is and what you’re going to do going forward. But the guidelines, like the bumper car, the edges of the bumper car is those values and that purpose. You’re over that. It’s like everybody’s just crashing out.

Greg Voisen (26:53):

Can you give us an example of a story of a company or an entrepreneur that you guided through particularly rough times, was able to help through the other side and then what the outcome was? I think our listeners always like to hear success stories too.

David Greer (27:10):

You’re putting me on the spot. Of course. I’m drawing a blank in this.

Greg Voisen (27:20):

If you don’t have one, that’s okay, but if you do, that’d be great.

David Greer (27:24):

I think the end of my tenure at Robelle, one of the things like you talked about things changing in marketplaces. We were a technology company based on a very successful technology platform from Hewlett Packard, which was one of the longest running minicomputers in the history of computing. And towards the end, we knew the 3000 was going to stop at some point. We just didn’t know when. And we were really slow to take the right decisions to operate on that knowledge. And the reason I ended up out of the company is that the original founder wanted to take the market and milk it until it was all gone and drastically downsize the business. And I’m like, we have a demonstrated team that can do a lot of things that most software tech companies cannot do. And I wanted to take a little more money and risk and move it in new directions. That was a lot of very uncomfortable conversations.

Greg Voisen (28:25):

How bet,

David Greer (28:27):

Right. Well it’s

Greg Voisen (28:29):

Compromising your values too.

David Greer (28:32):

Well, and it turns out what was important to me, I didn’t know what at the time was to continue growing as an entrepreneur and growing into new areas and learning more. And my partner was 10 years older and he never had kids and this was his baby. And just having it keep ticking along was perfectly fine for him and he was finding fulfillment and doing things outside of the business.

(28:59):

We had this very fundamental disagreement, which we knew from early on. We had to go out once a month and have lunch and then he moved to Anguilla, this little Caribbean island, and we weren’t even having conversations, just the two of us once a month and we fell out of relationship with each other and out of sync. If we’d continued once a month, lunches might have turned out different. Yeah, I think it would’ve. And I mean we settled it by him buying me out and he did drastically down really drastically, drastically downsize the company, which was very personal. We had a lot of people with 10 years with the company, some with 20, but I mean to pursue his plan, that’s what needed to be done.

Greg Voisen (29:44):

Well, but see, that’s a good story. I mean it’s like you guys finally came to a solution and sometimes it is succession and in this case he bought you out and then you went on and did your own thing. I think it’s there now. One of the things we’ve talked about during this interview has been A players B players, and I even said to make sure to get rid of the C players. Let’s talk about surrounding yourself with smarter people. Okay. What are one of the best lessons you’ve learned from somebody that you hired that was smarter than David?

David Greer (30:27):

Well, before our call, you sent me the questions that I knew that this is one of the ones that was coming. But I would say the most impactful in the last 15 plus years have been my two coaches.

(30:41):

I’ve hired coaches. And let me tell you that having a coach for me is maybe the most selfish thing that I do. This is something that is strictly for me. It’s not for my spouse, it’s not for my kids, it’s not for my business really. It’s just for me. And I look at what I’ve learned from those coaches and the perspective that they have been able to bring to me. I was on a call last week with my coach and my son and future daughter-in-law are going to get married this summer and we’ve had some real friction around this. And I’d shared some of the conversations with my coach and she said, do you want to talk about this issue? And I was like, no. I think we resolved it mostly and she didn’t let me off the hook. It’s like I was trying to avoid it.

(31:31):

And then she had some really important observations about where my wife and I were and where she thinks our son and future wife are. That made me very uncomfortable. She wasn’t judging it, she just said, I think you guys are in your head. They’re in their hearts and their hearts need this support right now. And there’s no possible way I could have got there. I don’t think on my own too close to it, too emotional. And to have this third party that is just such a fantastic listener and here’s between the words, here’s between the lines and is be able to ask me gently but gently, but still some very challenging questions and observations. I’m really fortunate. And again, I was very uncomfortable after that call and it took me, I was uncomfortable for a day or two.

Greg Voisen (32:26):

Well, when it comes to personal family, frequently, that whole opportunity to let go is there, but she put it in a way that they’re coming from your hearts and you’re coming from your head. And I understand that because you’re trying to do what’s good for them, what you think is good for them. And this happens in business as well. It’s like I think this is the way to do it because I think this is good for you. But when you step back, it’s not like you’re giving up or anything like that. What you’re doing is you’re allowing, and this, it’s not a rudderless boat. It’s like literally it’s a guide. It’s a small little change that changes the course correction. Now it may take you to a different island and you may be really surprised by what you see over at the other island, but the point there is is that wow, this was beautiful. Letting them be in their heart is the best thing that I ever did. And this marriage is going to turn out wonderfully. What is the biggest myth around success that you think holds entrepreneurs back?

David Greer (33:46):

It is the societal myth that you’ll be happy when you get there.

Greg Voisen (33:54):

Seriously. No, no, I’m agreeing with you. I like that because there is no there there, right?

David Greer (34:02):

And for us overachievers, when you get there, then I for a long time had a really hard time celebrating or I really had a hard time for people really complimenting me. This is like, oh, oh, I have to go be even better when there’s there. Then there’s there squared. When we get to there squared, there’s their cubed.

Greg Voisen (34:28):

You’re reminding me of an interview that I had with Marshall Goldsmith. Now Marshall says, I’ve got these people that have 16 degrees, they have three mansions, they own five companies and they got a billion dollars in the bank. And they’ll still say, that’s not enough. And you’ll say to them, when is enough? Enough? Totally.

David Greer (34:54):

And when are you going to take joy in today? What are you going to do today that brings you joy? Because why not live every day with joy?

Greg Voisen (35:09):

Well, this interview is bringing me joy, bringing up in me what I know is a cog in my own wheel because I was brought up with a little Jewish mother that always said there was, what did you do for me today? It was never enough. What did you do today? And I know that tape has been really hard to unprogram. And I think for a lot of entrepreneurs, the reason they’re entrepreneurs is because they are driven

David Greer (35:40):

And

Greg Voisen (35:40):

They’re driven because something happened in their childhood around not enough. Maybe the parents weren’t wealthy but they strived, they worked hard. I see this happen all the time. They go into burnout easily. And that brings me to this next question. Let’s talk about burnout. How have you personally managed energy and especially when you’re running on a full tilt. Now I know Dr. Laura is going to be on this show again and he wrote the power of full engagement. And when we look at this, it’s like, okay, how do I manage my energy? And it’s really all about managing our energy. Everything’s about managing our energy.

David Greer (36:33):

It is. And because a coach and I love frameworks, my former coach, Kevin Lawrence, the framework he taught me. How I think about it, I think about life in three buckets. I think about career, business like finance, and then think about life and relationships. And most high driven entrepreneurs that I know are very passionate about both of those and often are way over a hundred percent when you take the two together and they miss out the middle piece, which is self. I bring much more conscious intention to self and what I need to do to replenish myself when I’m overextending myself. And in our society, again, there’s this metaphor, there’s this myth that being selfish is bad

Greg Voisen (37:24):

Of course.

David Greer (37:26):

And when we do things that are just to look after ourselves, it’s very possible that people around us are our own story will be on being selfish. But the truth is, if you are the other end of the spectrum selfless, I’m giving everything to my business. I’m giving you everything to my spouse, my kids, my friends, there’s nothing left. There’s nothing left. You have to go to burnout if you were completely selfless. And the pendulum never sits perfectly in the middle because it just never sits perfectly in the middle. It swings. And some of what I do for my own life and with my clients is bring conscious intention for the next quarter. What’s your passion ratio going to look like in business, in life and for yourself? And it can’t be 0% for yourself. You need at least even if it’s going to be like it’s going to be crazy business quarter, it’s like, well then you really absolutely need to schedule some events and some things that are going to be just for you. Whether that’s jumping under an airplane, racing the car, going skiing, hanging out with entrepreneurial friends. You don’t have to do it solo. It’s knowing for me, you’re probably going to ask me this in a minute, is going sailing

Greg Voisen (38:47):

Well, it’s self nurturing and care.

David Greer (38:51):

What does that look like for you?

Greg Voisen (38:53):

 (38:56):

In other words, we can give love out to other people and however it’s perceived, but do we love ourselves? And a lot of times we beat up on ourselves. We don’t love ourselves enough. And I just had a guy on here talking about out the legend leaders and it was Brian Breo and Brian was personal friends with Coach Wooden and certain coaches styles and he learned from the best. He talks about this same thing is that when you look at how wooden coached John Wooden coached, he never beat up on anybody. He always had ’em look inside. And when you have a good coach, and I remember my kids during football, a lot of those coaches were pretty tough on those little guys and they get angry and it’s not the best way to coach. This goes down to this question you said I was going to ask, which is if you would go back and give your younger entrepreneur self one page from Wind In Your Sails, which page would it be and why?

David Greer (40:17):

It would be the page that talks about planning your business by looking three to five years out first.

Greg Voisen (40:25):

I love, love that.

David Greer (40:27):

And where do you want to end up? Where’s your market going to end up? Where do you want to end up? Not next quarter this year, but in three to five years and then figure that direction and four or five key initiatives or capabilities or whatever is going to be needed to get you there. Then work out what you need to do this year, then work out what you need to do this quarter. I think when I went to the first Verne Harnish event, which is where I met coach Kevin. Verne is the creator of scaling up in the one-page strategic plan. I literally had a light bulb moment sitting in that downtown hotel here in Vancouver and Verne sharing that aspect of the one-page plan, like poof, like wow, what would it have looked like if we had planned that way? And I have no regrets. We ran a hugely successful business, we made an absolute ton of money. And I wonder what would it look like if we had just taken more of that approach to our planning?

Greg Voisen (41:39):

Well, I love the fact that you’re starting with that one-page plan. For those listeners that don’t know they can get the book Scaling Up, then go to Verne Harnish’s website and they go to your website, that one page business plan is probably the most clever document ever created. And it really gets you focused on what it is that you need to do to get to your aspiration, your goal in life. And it’s not this big long document and it doesn’t have all these pages and pages. It doesn’t sit

David Greer (42:13):

On a shelf if use it well.

Greg Voisen (42:16):

And I like, yeah, I love it. Look, people go through ups and downs in businesses and personal life and look, you had your bout with alcoholism and you’re still with aa. That’s the first thing we started with going to your meeting tonight. Finally, when your sales start to feel deflated, like they probably did during the times when you are heavily doing more and more alcohol because you’re drowning yourself, your sales have to fail to deflated. What’s your go-to ritual or practice to help you get back on course and what would you tell people out there who are feeling like stuck deflated right now is probably a really good time. You probably got a lot of people out there that are going Holy, FUCK, what am I going to do?

David Greer (43:11):

Make sure you are carving out time to build your resiliency to get the wind back in your sales. And if that’s only four hours on a weekend, then just make sure you honor and take those four hours.

Greg Voisen (43:25):

And what would you tell ’em to do? Are you going to say, Hey, go take a walk on the beach, go ride your bike, go do meditation. Do you have some things you tell ’em to do?

David Greer (43:35):

Well, what brings you joy? What builds your resiliency? Is it like going and playing with your grandkids or is it just being present? Or if you’re a younger entrepreneur and you have young kids, is it just going to the playground with them and being present to them and not your busy brain sitting there in the playground the whole time thinking about your business if you’re open to meditation? Yeah, for sure. I believe walks on the beach. I think if you want to solve a business problem, go for a hike.

Greg Voisen (44:04):

I agree.

David Greer (44:05):

Don’t sit in your office and stare at your screen, get out of the office or maybe take a couple of your senior team members and go for a walk.

Greg Voisen (44:16):

Great advice. If you have a sailboat, damn it, get on it. Because every time I’ve gotten on a sailboat with a friend, I don’t own one, never have, but I’ve been on many. And you get out and the breeze is blowing and the sails are up and you’re just cruising along and all you hear is the of the water, right? Which you probably could create an audio tape of that maybe that would be a good audio tape. Next time you go out sailing, you should get that water sound, create a audio tape and start selling it for meditate because it is probably one of the best meditations out there. And the similarities to guiding and navigating a boat are similar to a business. Making sure you have enough fuel, making sure that you got the right maps and that you got your compasses and everything. And doing the checklist just like an airplane. Same thing with an airplane, right? You don’t want it to go down.

David Greer (45:25):

And for me, the other piece that’s really important is the waves, the wind. That’s way out of my control.

(45:33):

One of the things about sailing is it forces me to be reminded. I have very little I can control, which is also true in our business. We have way less control than we think we do, but we do know. Get very focused on what you can control. I can control where we’re going to go. I can choose a different destination I don’t have to beat against the wind. I can go with the wind, I get to adjust my sails, I get to reduce them. If there’s too much wind and if I have too much sail up, I’ll get overpowered and the boat will round up and the universe is saying, “Hey David, you’re not paying attention. I’m in charge here. You might want to adjust your sails.” And that is part of the experience for me is it helps really right size me and my place.

Greg Voisen (46:21):

Well, I’ve seen many stories about sailing and then it’s interesting, but to be able to have a radio and be in contact with somebody that can provide you with intel. The kind of way I look at it is your coach is that person on the other end of the radio that’s giving you the intel about the weather that you can’t actually always see and tells you to course correct. Because if you want to see around corners, you do need to have a coach to actually guide you because they can see the front coming on, you’re going to hit it head on and you’re going to sink the boat. But he or she is going to navigate you around. All you got to do is get on Zoom, get on your phone and talk to that coach. And David Greer would be one of ’em you would want to talk to because he’s been on both sides of the boat.

(47:27):

I want to just thank you for being on the podcast today, sharing your personal story about your alcoholism and AA and how it’s gotten you on, you’ve gotten on the right path about the people you’ve talked about, that you’ve coached a bit about the things, the values and purpose that a leader needs to have. And I’m going to encourage my listeners to go out and get a copy of this book, Wind In Your Sails, go to David’s website and we will be putting a link to that website up at the OR right underneath this podcast you can see it. But it’s coach, give it to me again. Give it to the listeners.

David Greer (48:12):

It’s coachdjgreer.com, coach D as in David, J as in James greer.com.

Greg Voisen (48:20):

And

David Greer (48:20):

I want your listeners to know, every top left corner of every webpage, my website has my phone number and my email address.

Greg Voisen (48:27):

Yep. 6 0 4 7 2 1 3 7 3 2 5 7 3 2 5 7 3 2, sorry. 6 0 4 7 2 1 5 7 3 2. And it’s david at coachdjgreer Dot com, correct?

David Greer (48:46):

Yes. And I offer a free one hour coaching call to anyone that wants it do is reach out to me,

Greg Voisen (48:53):

Reach out via the phone or reach out via email, go to his website. You can fill out a form there as well, a contact form if you prefer doing it that way. That’s how you can reach him. David, pleasure having you on the show. Pleasure speaking with you today. Looking forward to seeing how many of my listeners actually take you up on your free one-hour coaching session.

David Greer (49:18):

Thanks Greg. It’s being fabulous to be here with you today.

Greg Voisen (49:22):

I enjoyed the laughs we had together take care. Namaste.

David Greer (49:30):

You too.