Maker Manager Money - Entrepreneur & Business Owner Inspiration
Hello there. Welcome to the Maker Manager Money podcast with Kyle Ariel Knowles. This podcast is about entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, founders, business owners, and business partnerships, from startups to stayups, to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and future entrepreneurs to just start.
Maker Manager Money - Entrepreneur & Business Owner Inspiration
Navigating Entrepreneurial Waters: Insights from Coach David J. Greer
I'm thrilled to announce the latest episode featuring the incredible David J. Greer, an entrepreneurial coach with over 40 years of experience in the business world. David has a wealth of knowledge to share, especially for those navigating the entrepreneurial journey.
Here are three key takeaways from our enlightening conversation:
1. The Importance of Vision: David emphasizes that having a clear vision is crucial for entrepreneurs. He recalls how a simple field trip in his youth sparked his desire to merge computers and business. This vision propelled him for over 25 years! As entrepreneurs, we often get caught up in the day-to-day grind and lose sight of why we started our businesses in the first place. David encourages us to reconnect with our original motivations and, if necessary, create new visions for the future.
2. Conscious Choices Over Control: One of David's most profound insights is that there is no such thing as work-life balance—only work-life choices. Many entrepreneurs struggle with the urge to control every aspect of their business, which can lead to burnout. David advocates making conscious choices about where to focus our energy and time. By doing so, we can avoid the pitfalls of workaholism and ensure that we are present for our business and personal lives.
3. Embracing Vulnerability: In our discussion, David highlights the emotional component of entrepreneurship that often goes unaddressed. He believes sharing our fears and vulnerabilities can foster stronger team relationships. While maintaining professionalism is essential, being open about our challenges can create a more supportive and understanding work environment. This vulnerability can ultimately lead to greater collaboration and innovation.
David discusses the importance of setting goals, maintaining a vision, and the emotional aspects of entrepreneurship. He emphasizes the need for entrepreneurs to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses and how to manage their time and energy to avoid burnout effectively. With insights from his book, "Wind in Your Cells," David provides valuable cultural, strategic planning, and team alignment strategies.
Join us as we explore topics such as:
-The balance between ambition and self-care
-The emotional challenges of entrepreneurship
-The significance of vision and goal-setting
-Insights on addiction and recovery in the entrepreneurial journey
-Practical strategies for business growth and personal development
Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned business owner, this episode is packed with inspiration and actionable advice to help you navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share your thoughts in the comments!
LINKS
David J. Greer's book WIND IN YOUR SAILS: Vital Strategies That Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Growth
David J. Greer's Website
Follow David on LinkedIn
Follow Kyle on LinkedIn
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Hello there, welcome to the Maker-Manager Money podcast, a podcast to inspire entrepreneurs to keep going and for entrepreneurs to just start. My name is Kyle Knowles and today's guest is David J. Greer. David is an entrepreneurial coach with over 40 years of experience in the business world. He specializes in working with entrepreneurs to achieve high performance and growth including entrepreneurs facing challenges with addiction. David has a background in software engineering and has built a multimillion-dollar software company. He is also an author and public speaker, sharing his insights in his book, Wind in Your Cells, Vital Strategies that Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Growth. This book contains topics like culture, strategic planning, and team alignment. He draws on his personal experience, including sailing and recovery to help entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of business. Welcome to the show, David. Thanks, Kyle. I loved your introduction. Thank you for that. Thank you for joining me today and being so generous with your time. Where are you dialing in from? I am dialing in from Vancouver, Canada. I don't think I've had a guest from Canada yet. And I've got another one lined up after you, so I'm excited to have some Canadians on the show. Turns out there's a lot of entrepreneurs in Canada, too. A lot. There are definitely a lot. A lot of innovation going on up in Canada, for sure. So I wanted to start out, just since it's the new year, what's your biggest goal for this year?
David J. Greer: My biggest personal goal is I'm dealing with some chronic back issues from being a super active person all of my life. And I have some compression in one of my discs and it's impacting. I've already been working on it. I've had it for a couple of years, but my goal is to really find some new ways to improve this in 2025. So that's my big personal goals. While I coach and really encourage entrepreneurs to set goals for the business and themselves, As I'm getting a little older and one of my challenges is I work too hard, the last couple of years I've actually given myself permission not to set goals and to just be more present to the moment and what's happening. Now, having said that, I didn't write it down to have a goal of being on one podcast a week last year, but I found that over time, that was my goal. And typical entrepreneur, I got halfway to goal. So I got 26, but some of, yeah, so some of my work with my coach is actually getting better at just actually not being so driven. So that's like a long-term goal, but it turns out I'm so driven that They tend to emerge even if I haven't written them down.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, the goals just come out of your pores because that's the way you're wired.
David J. Greer: Yeah, exactly. I'm just super hardwired that way.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And you, so you've had a tremendous success in the business world, failures, of course, and I've finished your book, went in your sales. And I love the analogies with sailing. I don't, I don't know anything about it. I'm from Utah, right? I live in Utah. There's no, except for the, the, uh, the great salt Lake.
David J. Greer: I grew up in the Alberta prairies, but I still learned, but I, my parents had a summer cabin on, on a well-known Lake in Alberta. So, uh, that's actually where I learned to sail.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay, just on a lake. That's really awesome. So what I'm trying to say here is that, so you're, you're so wired. And the reason you had success is because of all those, the ambition. I mean, the way I see you after finishing your book, it's about ambition, And you're also about adventure. You're a captain, which is very ambitious and adventurous, right? But you're also a coach. How did you get to a point and what would you say to entrepreneurs starting out? Because you're coaching now more than your day-to-day in the grind of growing a business. What do you say to entrepreneurs about all that anxiety and fervor and ambition And how do you carve out time for yourself so that you don't, I guess, get burned out? Sure.
David J. Greer: So I'd like to just go back in a couple of things you said, because I want to add one kind of idea to what you suggested, which is vision. So when I was in grade eight or nine, so I grew up in Edmonton, which is the provincial capital of the province of Alberta. And I remember getting taken like a field trip to the government buildings because, right, the provincial capital is there. And I think we like just passed by some windows from the outside. I could see into this massive computer room and spinning tape drives. Like, I still can visualize it in my head. And there was that. And then. My math teacher in grade eight or nine taught me octal arithmetic. So we count to 10 because we have these 10 digits on our hands, but you can count to two or you can count to eight. And that's the beauty of this system we use to keep track of numbers, is this idea of zero to represent nothing. Those two things, like by grade nine, I had a vision I wanted to take computers and business and put them together. I really honestly don't know where that vision came from, except those two examples that I just shared. And that propelled me for like over 25 years. And sometimes when I work with a new client as a coach, and they've had a business for a while, and they're overworked, or they're not taking breaks, or they've kind of lost sight, often the question I'll ask them is, why did you start the business? which gets back to like, usually entrepreneurs start a business because they, well, either they hate being in a job. So the alternative is to have your own business. And that's okay. That's like, it's okay to have a vision of I don't want to work for someone else. Cause I've tried that and it doesn't work. But a lot of entrepreneurs also like see a need in the marketplace and then invent something or create something or find a way to supply something that satisfies that need. But as their business grows and they become more successful and they hire employees, they often have lost sight of the essence of, oh, right, like I love going and solving problems for people. And sometimes so it's really just helping them either to get back in that vision or maybe they need a new vision. It's like they've satisfied that market and now they need to find what's next and create a new vision. Or maybe it's a new vision for what the business looks like three or five years from now. And that's a lot of my work is also like when I built Robel, which is the software company I stayed was with for 20 years, we did it like most entrepreneurs do it, which is, hey, let's like do 10% better than last year without really any like independent market knowledge or reason to think that we could do 10% better, except we just said we do 10% better and we're high achievers, so we do 10% better. But we never sat down and said like, where do we want to be in three years or five years? Like, what does that look like? This isn't new. It comes from a guy, Vern Harnish, and his books are The Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up. And I specialize kind of in working with his templates and his framework and ideas. And I remember the first time I went to a training course with Vern, and he like talked about, you know, where are you going to be in three years? And it blew my mind. Like, I'd never thought of it that way.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And did it blow your mind because you, just because you, that seemed like too far out or.
David J. Greer: I never thought of like looking at my business from that perspective.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay.
David J. Greer: Like where do I want to end up in five years? And also where's my market going to be in five years? Like, what is it going to look like? Is it still growing? Is it shrinking? Is it like, I didn't really look at it from a market position either. Like for some entrepreneurs. You know, if they're working in a high growth market, if the market is growing 15% compound annual growth, and your business is growing 5%, you're actually losing market share. Because your business isn't growing at the same rate the market's growing. Which again, if you're okay with that, like if you, my big thing with clients is to make conscious choice. You make whatever choice you want, but my request is make it a conscious choice. This whole idea of looking out three to five years and especially looking at it from a market perspective, where's the market going to be and where are you going to be in that market? in three to five years time versus where you are today and what's your vision of what that looks like. So that's the piece that I think helps sustain us because we're pulling to a bigger goal. You asked me about my goals. I have an overreaching purpose that I'm living, which is to share my experience, strength and hope in business and to share my experience, strength and hope in recovery. And that's why I do all these podcasts, is this is a way, one of the ways that I get to experience, to share that experience, strength and hope, because I think I have some important messages that could help people. And so that's what keeps me motivated. That's my vision for moving forward. I've been very successful as an entrepreneur. I don't need to work for money, although it's useful because I can travel more have nicer kinds of experiences. But honestly, I don't have to work for money, right? Because I have been very successful. But this bigger purpose keeps me going. And then I want to be fairly compensated for my time. So yeah, I do run this business, the coaching business. And I do charge people a reasonable amount of money that's representative of what I can deliver to them. It also keeps them honest. I've done a lot of mentoring. When people pay you money, even if they have a lot of money, like the fact every month I'm gonna send them an invoice and I'm gonna charge their credit card, they show up for calls. They do more of the work. Like, it's just funny how that works. The euphemism we use, you've got skin in the game. Which you do. It's not someone else's money, it's yours. And if you don't have enough at the end of the month, you'll know. go somewhere and get bailed out. You have to figure it out.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: I guess going back to kind of this conversation about where you are now, and this is later in your career, and your coaching, and you're trying to dial in your, you know, that ambitious self, the goals. If you were to go back to David when he was right in the midst of his rebel, right? You helped grow. Are there things that you would tell that younger David, knowing what you know now? that might help you back then, maybe not be so addicted to the drug of, you know, constantly on the go.
David J. Greer: Yeah, I tell my younger self, hey, it's all going to work out. You know, I, I think we're so driven to a certain outcome and we try and control so much that is really not controllable. Like I think it is important to have written down goals and especially for your business and from both from a personal and from a team perspective. Like, uh, so everyone's pulling in the same direction. It really increases the odds that you're going to have it. But at some point you have to realize that. Like you have these ambitious goals and really good management teams are really good at predicting the goals you're going to achieve and achieving them. And there's a lot that's out of your control. And so a lot of my growth, especially since coming into recovery, is getting much clearer about what I can control and what I can't and what I want to influence and what I want to let go of.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: I want to talk a little bit about addiction and recovery. I know there's addiction with substances, but do you find that entrepreneurs, because I've talked to a lot of them. They're addicted to the work. And in fact, I had one entrepreneur on my podcast that basically wanted to apologize to his family because he was so addicted to the work that he was neglecting his family. So do you want to talk about the differences between maybe substance abuse kind of addictions and being addicted to being an entrepreneur?
David J. Greer: Yeah, I'm not expert on that because mine, my addiction is alcoholism, which is what we would call an ingestion. Addiction, right? So that's like a drug, you know, you poke a needle in your body, or you take something up your nose, or alcohol, you ingest it, or food, again, you ingest it. And then we have process addictions, which is what you're, so that would be workaholism, would be gambling, would be sex addiction. And the addictions are all the same in that, or at least this is my belief, we're trying to avoid or alter how we feel. In workaholism, it could be that we don't feel worthy enough. And so like we work and work and work, cause that's how we feel worthy. Or it's literally like I'm on the edge of workaholism. I mean, I've done enough personal work. I have this amazing taskmaster spirit. which has been with me probably since I was three or four years old. And shit doesn't know how to get stuff done. But it's also, you know, it's a coping mechanism. It's like, that's how I, cause I was, I had a narcissist father and I was always trying to get his attention. And this is one of the ways that I cope was being able to get a lot done and achieve things. So I've had to look at that. And for me, it's very subtle because my task, sometimes it's like, I'm already out the door and going for a walk. And it's like, how did I get here? Oh, well, because my taskmaster spirit decided I need to be in action. So again, we get back to trying to be more in conscious choice. Like there is no work-life balance. There's work-life choices. And so we may choose at times to like be very hyper-focused on our business and be really all in on that. 15 hour days, but again, you want to do it with conscious choice where you're telling your spouse, you're telling your kids, this is this period. And then you want to do your best to honor that. So, you know, if it's a 15 day sprint, because you've got a massive trade show and it's going to hugely impact the business, then like if you booked a week off for when that finishes, which usually you don't, because you're so excited about all the leads that you've got at the trade show. Now you're feeling anxious if you don't process those leads and get them into the CRM and Start following up with them and dot, dot, dot. I've been there, done that, right? And then so you're back into work, work, work, work, work. No matter how hard you work, like you are worthy, whether you work or not. But that takes, you know, understanding those things and doing the personal work and the personal growth work to realize like why you're working so hard. Like I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I admitted to an amazing coach that I had a drinking problem and he coached me to go to 12 step recovery. But it took me 20 years to get to that point. Like, so we all have some trigger, you know, in alcoholism. We often talk about it as a bottom, like we bottomed out. But I think for pretty well all addictions, there has to be that trigger event where suddenly it's not working anymore or we've lost everything. Or, you know, my wife's divorced me because I work too much. And for some people, that's not enough. They'll just, it's okay. I'm going to keep working. I'm going to solve the pain of my divorce by working harder. Or it's like the threat of separation is enough to be a wake-up call. And again, it's different for every individual.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And I don't think that there's enough talk about these kinds of situations for entrepreneurs, because they are, I've found entrepreneurs to be very wired in a similar way to you. Accomplishment and very, you know, action oriented, you know, massive action and lots of hours and I think these things, these things that you talk about, whether the anxiety or relationships or addiction are kind of, kind of go along with maybe this personality type.
David J. Greer: Oh, don't get me wrong. I love adrenaline.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like there's enough talk about kind of maybe the negative side effects of entrepreneurship?
David J. Greer: Well, and even if we kind of go beyond just the negative, I think the emotional component of being an entrepreneur is not talked about. Partly because we live in a society where talking about emotions is not something that's particularly rewarded. It's more judged and put down, right? Like this is part of why I come on podcasts. I talk about my feelings. And I talk about some of the difficulty around this because I agree, it's like not, it's not socially acceptable to a large extent. People that are entrepreneurs and start their own business get very scared when they think about being vulnerable with their employees. And, and there is a, you know, there is a line there. You don't want to be so vulnerable. Your employees are like scared for the future of the company and their jobs. But also like. you're a human being and you have fears too, just like they do. And appropriately sharing it, I think is important. And yes, it's not, I think the other piece, I have one of my clients who's looking like a very, I'm gonna knock on wood here, because he's been wanting to sell his business for a couple of years and it looks like that's probably gonna happen this month. But some of my work with him is like, who are you going to be if you don't have that business? Like our ego inevitably gets wrapped up a lot in what we build and what we create. And also in the relationships that we create. And so once you step away from that, so how will you replace that? How will you let go of that piece? And there is a very big emotional component to it. And, you know, some entrepreneurs say, well, I'll just sell my business. I'll start another one. Well, it's a lot easier to keep an existing business going than to go find or start another one. I think people are really surprised at how difficult that is, even though you've been very successful and done it once. It oftentimes, like for me, I was a lot of it, was vision, but also and being open to opportunities, but also being in the right place at the right time. And an opportunity that good has not shown up yet in my life since. And of course, I didn't know it at the time, just how good it was going to be in no way that I could. But now looking back over a 40 year career, I have a deeper appreciation. And I'm still glad I sold in 2001 because it gave me opportunities to do things that I hadn't even realized how deeply I dreamed them. until the opportunity was there.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, I think we're lucky to have one great opportunity in our careers and very lucky to have more than one.
David J. Greer: Yeah, well, I don't want to, I want your listeners to still have optimism. Like, I still think, but I mean, the Robel opportunity was like, A 10X, 100X, you know, I've had great opportunities that I have taken advantage of them, but it's just not at the scale of what we achieved there, right?
Kyle Ariel Knowles: No, you can have success everywhere you go, for sure. I'm just saying, usually there's one big success compared to the others.
David J. Greer: Yeah.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: So I want to talk about your book a little bit, the strategies that are literally chapters within your book. And let me just list these chapters and strategies for the listeners. Entrepreneurial, corporate, innovation, marketing, sales, product, people, operational, financial, and exit strategies are what you talk about in the book. And I was very surprised and pleased because when I just read the title, not knowing anything about the book, I didn't know exactly what you were going to talk about. And then what I found in the book is basically everything you know about business that you've learned the past, I don't know when you wrote the book, but the past 35, 40 years, whatever it is that you put all of that in there, it's literally a blueprint. And then at the end of each chapter, there are specific tasks that you request people to do so they can move their business forward. I wanted to ask you out of those 10 strategic areas, What's your number one skill? Which one of those is your number one?
David J. Greer: So I'll answer it and not answer it. So I think for most entrepreneurs, owner founders of their own business, and this certainly was true for me, of those 10, usually you're really good at three or four. and then okay at three or four more, and two, you've never heard of.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Were you really bad at? I don't know.
David J. Greer: Yeah, or either or.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: So what are the three or four for you then?
David J. Greer: So the three or four for me was certainly innovation, marketing, product, and people. I, you know, later on got better, I think, at corporate planning and the stuff that we talked about at the start of our conversation, looking three years out, having a very small set of goals. Entrepreneurs either have no goals or too many goals, in my experience. And then the entrepreneurial growth journey, which is really my first chapter, I didn't really appreciate or understand. I mean, I think Bob and I did a good job of growing ourselves, but we did it unconsciously. Like, okay. As opposed to more consciously. And you know, my belief is the single biggest limiting factor for any business is the entrepreneur herself or himself.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And what does, what does that mean?
David J. Greer: They're, they limit the business because yes, they limit the business because either they, they have internal belief systems that don't believe it could be as big as it potentially could. I mean, there's any number of reasons classic is entrepreneurs who You know, Bob and I were pretty disciplined guys. I got to give us that. I worked with a lot of entrepreneurs where, you know, they start the year and we're going off to the left and then, you know, six weeks in, oh, we're going to deke to the right. Oh, look, there's a shiny red ball over there on the horizon. We're going to go chase that down. And like it drives staff crazy and it really kills momentum. And so some of the becoming a really good entrepreneur, I believe, is to having the discipline. to say, we're gonna set a set of goals for the year and the quarter, we're gonna stick to them. And unless some new brutal fact or something like really new shows up, like at least for the quarter, we're gonna really stick with what we said. And oftentimes even, you know, with some of my clients, we're halfway through the quarter and they're like veering off. Like just a sec, you've said, this is what's important to you. You said, this is the goals to achieve in order to get to where what's important to you. Oh yeah. But you know, well, like, what do you want? Like, do you want that shiny thing that looks exciting right now? Just because it's new and different, or are you going to get back to the discipline and the grind? And some of it is sometimes in business, you just got to grind stuff out. Like it's. Like, I still think it's fun, but it's like, you know, there's fun in all caps. And there's kind of fun in lowercase nine point font. And sometimes we're in the lowercase nine point font. We think, you know, oh, this isn't worth it. Well, it will be because you're going to get to someplace you want to go. And so sometimes it's just having that. Not sometimes, I think almost all the time. the leader, the entrepreneur needs to stay disciplined on that. Or you need to step back and become like chairman of the board of your business and hire a really good manager who will stick with it. And then you can help set strategy and help set the direction of the company and understand the market. Cause I think those are the most valuable things. And then maybe you become chairman of five other businesses. You don't run any of them, but you take that strategic vision, you know, and I help people to understand what it is that they love to do the most and what they're best at, and then help them to go find more of that or to eliminate, like hire people so they don't do the parts of the job that doesn't motivate them and doesn't keep them excited.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And what are some of the tools that you use to help them understand what they're good at?
David J. Greer: I use Strength Finders 2.0. OK, so you you can buy the book. You probably just go online and sign up. I give every new client a copy of the book, which comes with a coupon. So for the readers or the listeners that don't know, StrengthsFinders is just a, the basic idea of it is we have in the world, there's kind of 42, I forget the exact numbers, but 42, 43 strengths. And almost all of us exhibit kind of five of those 42 are our personal strengths. and you go, you know, you buy the book, there's a coupon in it, use the coupon to go take their self-assessment. And out of that self-assessment pops out your five strengths. And my belief system and my coaching practice is that we should focus on our strengths. Like we can take something we're weak at and we can move it from, you know, at a say four out of 10 to a five out of 10, that probably takes a year, probably takes a lot of intense work. And in the big scheme of things, if you're a business, we haven't moved the needle. We can take one of your strengths that it's 95% and we can move it to 95 and a half, it'll probably have a massive impact on your business. So I always start to get them to do strength finders. Oftentimes for my clients, at least one of the strengths is a big surprise. Some of my clients are open to looking at those strengths in detail, some aren't. The ones that are, if I usually do at least an hour session, we go through them. And the other problem with our strengths is when we are too strongly in our strengths. So I would say a third of my clients, the number one strength is competitiveness. So it's a great strength to have, right? And you can get a lot of stuff done. You know, you compete against your competitors. But then I say, like, how's it working out to compete with your spouse? How is it working out to compete with your children? And usually they are completely unconsciously competing all the time with these people, like constantly. And they usually realize, oh, yeah, maybe that's not how I want to live my life. Or again, I just asked that they make conscious choice. So if you and your wife are super competitive and that works for you, go for it. But just know that you're both being super competitive. And don't do it unconsciously, which is probably how you've been operating for some time. So that's one of the things to help entrepreneurs. So get back into their strengths. As I mentioned earlier on our interview, why did you start the business? Are you doing those things in the business that you really love? Some entrepreneurs, they love the startup phase. They love the figuring out the market and that. early product or service design and figuring that out and then you know they become super successful and now they got 100 customers and now they have 50 employees and like managing all the employees and you know figuring out v5 of the product like it doesn't get them out of bed in the morning like because what they love is the startup phase and new and and so I help them like maybe they can do it within their own business maybe they need to go do it with another business like I don't know what the solution will look like, but first what we're trying to ID is the problem. The problem is you're bored because it's just like operating the business and making it better. And that's not what really gets you excited. Like for me, I'm that kind of entrepreneur. So if I have a really well running business, I'll probably break something. So I have something to fix. So you'd be much better getting me out of there. And here's the deal, like for everything you hate doing, there's someone that loves to do it. With my first coach, Kevin Lawrence, that I worked with for nine years, that was one of the things he'd keep reminding me. You don't like administration, there's some person who loves administration. It's their bread and butter. They love getting out of bed and doing that. So go find someone like that and stop doing the stuff you don't like.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: But do you find a lot of entrepreneurs just want that control over so many things? Absolutely. Even if they're not good at it.
David J. Greer: You have to also look at the path for most entrepreneurs. If you're an owner founder of a business, you started probably by yourself or maybe with a co-founder and you did everything. And then you grew up by the CD. At one point you were doing all of it. Yeah. And, and by the way, you figured it all out because that's why you're still in business.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah.
David J. Greer: So it's very hard for the, for a lot of those entrepreneurs to bring someone else in and let go. Again, it's kind of the letting go of control, which I alluded to earlier in terms of outcome, but it's also the letting go of control and managing people because they might have a completely different way of doing it than you do. Maybe it's 10 times better, but it's not your way. And you know that your way worked to get you where you are in the business. But here's a secret. That way probably won't get you to the next level of your business. Like sometimes people hire me because they have really struggles with their senior leadership team. Well, yeah, because they assign things to the senior leadership team and then the person goes off and tries doing it for a week. And then immediately the entrepreneur grasps the steering wheel back and tells them they're useless and they're not getting anything done and tells them exactly how to do it. Like, this does not make for happy people. This does not make for great leaders. And, you know, my personal belief that leadership is about making the people you lead be successful. And your job is to get impediments out of their way, get resources for them to be successful, and then help coach them and help them to grow to be the best they can be. Now, most entrepreneurs did not grow their business acting that way. They were control freaks. So it's a really, it's a big shift and I don't wanna lessen it. And usually with clients, we work at it for a year or two to just help to get the white knuckled grip of the steering wheel. First of all, you let them, they let it go enough that the knuckles aren't white. And then I get maybe one finger to come off the steering wheel. It's a process.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. And I guess that's part of founder syndrome, right? Where it's holding on so tightly to the business still.
David J. Greer: Either that or you like, you know, if, or you have to take that part of the business that you're no longer good at and you have to like grow yourself to like, become like a marketing wizard. You know, marketing, you figure stuff out, but you're not really a strategic marketer. You haven't trained in that. You haven't grown your career in that. And I've helped entrepreneurs to become strategic marketers, but they have to understand that that's a weakness and that that's something that they want to fill in, either by hiring someone or by growing their own skill set. to like be able to see it that way, especially because I, you know, I still, I have a variety of clients in all industries now, but because my background is tech, obviously I attract a certain amount of technology people because, you know, in tech people, it's like always the answer is more technology. Well, maybe it's not more technology. Maybe you need to think about it strategically from a marketing point of view. Because sometimes, and I talk about it in Winning Your Sales a little bit, like, sometimes a trivial change to a product can dramatically improve its acceptance in the marketplace. But as a computer scientist engineer, it's like, well, that wasn't hard. So, like, people only value things that are really hard technical problems that I solve. Well, turns out that's not true. That's just what you feel. Right? Because that's what you train for and that's what you are super good at. But it could be that something you spend five minutes on in the code is actually like tens of millions of dollars of value to the marketplace. Right? And so some of it is with technical people is helping them understand that tech over, you know, coming technical difficulty, while that has its place and probably gives you great competitive advantage, it's not all.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. And I'm, I'm just amazed because you have this software engineering background, right? And then when you look out, you know, obviously innovation and product are part of that. When you list out sort of your strengths in these 10 strategic areas, but you also list marketing and people, which, which isn't always attached to someone in software engineering.
David J. Greer: I'm a very weird software engineer who can walk and chew gum at the same time. It's there aren't a lot of us for sure.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: And so this podcast is called Maker Manager Money. And the reason it is, is because. I've just come to to to figure out over 35 years of working in business and reading self-development books and all this other stuff, you basically have to make something right. And then you can't just make something and then there's money on the other side of that. You have to manage what you made, either through manufacturing, marketing, sales, all those kinds of things. And the combination of the two, making something that's product, market fit, whatever, and then managing it on the other side of that is money. And when I look at you and your background and finish your book, I'm like, this guy is a maker. right? That's what your main interest was. And that's how you went into software engineering in the first place is to make things. And then some of your stories that you tell about, you know, just a weekend writing some kind of email program for business, right? And then ending up selling that as well to customers that you were just using internally. I'm just like maker, maker, maker. If you're dealing with all these entrepreneurs, do you find most of them are makers or most of them sort of the managers?
David J. Greer: Way more makers. Again, the marketing, like again, they're makers and they've achieved a certain market piece. But I also find that oftentimes some, some technology, like more engineering oriented entrepreneurs I work with really struggle with seeing their own worth of what they've created. Like they don't really, they, it's very hard for them to see the value in what they've created. And I talked to them for a while and then I remind them, look, you told me this and this and this. Your customers must be feeling this about you. like that you're uber reliable, that you show up, that your products actually work in the field. And you may not appreciate just how valuable that is in a sea of technical products that more often than not fail in the field. So you've created something very special. Right. And it's of much higher value. Now, some of this, like, you know, you would have read in my book, when in your cells and for your listeners, like I joined this young software startup at 22. I was the first employee after the founders basically started, it'd been in business for two years. And a condition of my employment was I had to present a paper at the Hewlett Packard international user group convention when I was 22. which I ended up doing. I still remember how scared I was going on stage for the first time, but I'm 22 standing up in the San Jose convention floor selling software. And I have no fricking clue that's what I'm doing, or I'm really marketing software. I'm telling a bunch of computer geeks about this cool stuff and what it could do for them, which later I learned was kind of the essence of marketing and sales. And within two years, three years, I probably was giving 80% of the demos at trade shows. Because, and this is part gets back to why I think I'm good at people skills. Someone come up to us in the booth, I would ask them about how they develop software, what their environment was like, how many people were on the team. And I would listen for five minutes. And then I would take like one of our product offerings and I would show them only 5% of the product. But I would show them the exact 5%. that applied to their environment, how they developed software, how they worked. And that is really the essence of marketing, where you can communicate to someone about their problems and then show them the pain that they're in with those problems, and then show them your pain pill, which was our product, and how it's going to really solve their pain. Which to me, that's the essence of really great marketing. Understanding the pain in the marketplace, the bigger the pain, the better your pain pill, the more value there is. And so I just tell people to see that because oftentimes they can't see it as much as I can being independent and being away from it. Like I've got distance. and experience.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: I love the section on marketing because that's kind of my background. And I really enjoyed the way how you talked about, you should be talking about the customer and the market, not about yourself. I used to have the saying that, you know, it's about them. It's not about us. It's about them. And what you see a lot of times is you go on LinkedIn and you see company pages or other things and you see these posts. And if you're looking at it from them, It's about us. It's like, look how great we are.
David J. Greer: It's even a LinkedIn profile. It's all about me, me, me. I did this. I did that. You know, I'm wonderful. I have all these skills. Whereas, you know, I think a much better profile is when, you know, working with this company, I took it from X to Y by bringing these skills to the organization.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's good advice. Yeah.
David J. Greer: It's showing people how if they hired you, what would they get? Like, what would they get for their business? And by showing that, I think you create a lot more belief. in you as the individual and the career person because you're much more clearly articulating the value you're going to bring rather than just talking about what you do. I'm not as interested in what you do, I'm more interested in what in your doing, how do you change my organization to achieve my goals.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: We're running out of time, David, so I wanted to get to just a couple of questions. But first, I just wanted you to tell just quickly, when you left the company and sold it, you took two years off to sell. And just talk about why you made that decision and what you did.
David J. Greer: Okay, so back it up slightly. So I mentioned on our talk today that I joined this young software startup at 22. I stayed 20 years, liked the place, grew it into a global powerhouse. And my first, you know, my boss, the co-founder, Robert, Bob, 10 years and I became his partner. And in our 20 year relationship, we only had one major disagreement, but it was a doozy and it ended in divorce. It wasn't, I would say expected, like it wasn't something I was trying to make happen. It was something that happened. So in early 2001, I'm out on the street. We'd had a major disagreement about the strategic direction of the company. We had two strategies, which I think both were sound strategies, but they were not complimentary. And we solved it by him buying me out. So I'm on the street. I got a pretty good size check on my jeans. And I'm busy, this is in 2001, something called the dot-com meltdown has happened. I haven't even really noticed it because I've been living in my own little kind of insulated space, business space, and chasing deals, which weren't going that well. Someone smarter than me sat me down and said, David, Your kids will never be 11, nine and five again. Do you need to work right away? And I'm like, no, I am doing okay. I'm not done for life, but I don't need to work right away. And then she said that when she had a career transition, she went to Australia and bought a VW van and she spent a year touring around Australia in her van. And If your listeners can imagine the most cheesy cartoonish light bulb going off over my head. That is literally what happened sitting in the chair across from her that day. Like it was poof. So I'd been sailing since I was 12. So obviously had a lot of sailing experience. I had been reading about long-term cruisers and families who went like offshore for by that point, probably close to 20 years. And I did not realize how big a dream that was till like the potential for the dream was suddenly there. And it was a gift that I came out of Robel because I don't think I ever would have done it if I'd stayed within the company. When Margaret Livingston made that statement to me, Carolee and I hatched this plan. We looked at three different plans, but the one we settled on was to commission a boat in the South of France. and to homeschool our kids. Of course, it's typical entrepreneur. The goal was to homeschool our kids for a year and see the whole Mediterranean. Well, it took two years. Took twice as long as we thought. So yes, we spent two years living on a sailboat and sailing more than 5,000 miles, 10,000 kilometers in the Mediterranean basin and had one of the most important experiences of our life and a legacy that we still have as a family today. And makes me look like a genius as an entrepreneur because it was the best two years to set out the technology industry out of the last probably 70. I wish I could say that I did that consciously. I didn't, but it worked out. Good timing. The timing was impeccable and was Yeah, and like I say, I didn't realize how big a dream it was until the dream suddenly became possible.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, it's a fantastic story. I love that story. Well, I just have a few personal questions for you, a lightning round of questions, and I've so enjoyed our conversation. We could talk about so many things in so many different areas, but I would encourage listeners to check out your book, Wind in Your Cells, and we'll put links to the book in the show notes and things like that. So here's the lightning round of questions. These are very softball, easy questions for you, David. Your favorite candy bar? Coffee Crisp.
David J. Greer: Favorite music artist? That one varies a lot. Long-term has been Oscar Peterson, the amazing Canadian jazz pianist. Favorite cereal? Raisin Bran. Mac or PC? Long-time Windows guy and for the last dozen years, completely committed Mac guy and loving it. Google or Microsoft? Google.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: Dogs or cats? Dogs. Phantom or Les Mis? Les Mis. All right. So the last two questions for you, David, what's the worst thing about being an entrepreneur? And then what's the best thing about being an entrepreneur?
David J. Greer: Worst thing, I think, is the loneliness. Trying to do it all yourself. I really encourage entrepreneurs to not do that. Although for most entrepreneurs, it's really hard to ask for help. The best thing is you control your destiny, right? You get to get up every morning and decide. I mean, it might not feel like it some days, but you really do get to get up every morning and decide what to work on, what to do, where to go. You know, you get to lead an organization and there's probably nothing more fulfilling for people that are wired like you and me.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: I love it. I love those answers. So the last question, only because we had an intro call and we talked briefly about this, how much did being adopted fuel your ambition and possibly your success?
David J. Greer: I think an unanswerable question. So, you know, listeners won't know, but I was adopted at birth. And then when I turned 60 and with nine years of sobriety, I decided to pursue my birth families and I ended up finding them. And, you know, I've done a lot of work around this. I, you know, some, and I think there's some truth that when you're adopted, there is that initial piece of abandonment. Like, for example, I was adopted in 1957, and my birth mother never wanted to talk to me, so I have no factual basis for this, but I've read enough books. It's inconceivable that my birth mother held me after I was born. I would have been taken away, because that's how it was done. So what impact does that have? I'm not sure. I mean, there's certainly a story from my parents, the parents that adopted me, their mom, their dad. And I'd always known about being adopted, but there was a story about being the chosen one. Like they went to the hospital and chose me out of a lineup kind of thing. I later learned that's not true. So I think that there's some of that drive comes from wanting to please my parents because I'm the chosen one.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: That makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for answering that question, David.
David J. Greer: And before we close, like just a minute or two ago, I said, don't do it all alone. And I do have an offer for your listeners, which is if I offer one hour of free coaching to anyone that wants it. And if you go to my website, which will be in the show notes, but it's CoachDJGreer.com. You just Google my name, you'll find it. And in the top left corner, every page is my phone number and my email address. Just reach out to me and we'll book a time and we'll spend an hour on something that you're really stuck on. And I promise you, you'll have three ideas to get unstuck before we're all done. So that is an offer to all of your listeners.
Kyle Ariel Knowles: That is awesome. That's an amazing offer. I hope some people take advantage of that. David, again, thank you so much for being on the show today. I hope you have a lovely rest of the week.
David J. Greer: Super. Thanks so much, Kyle. It was just a lovely treat to be on the show today
