The Blueprint for Business Growth and Team Unity with Dave Durand – EP 171

Interview with Dave Durand

The Blueprint for Business Growth and Team Unity with Dave Durand

Featured on This Episode: Dave Durand

✅ What he does: Dave Durand is the CEO and co-founder of Best Version Media. Best Version Media is among the top 20 fastest-growing media companies in North America and is the fastest growing private company in Wisconsin of any type. He is also a best-selling author, radio personality, professional speaker, and trainer to over 150,000 individuals. Dave also specializes in developing business leaders of all industries. Dave is vastly different than most business leaders, as his expertise is rooted in more than two decades of leadership and entrepreneurship. In addition to Best Version Media, Dave is the youngest Hall of Fame inductee in Vector Marketing’s company history, a co-founder of an international multi-million dollar non-profit company, and was named one of the top 100 Minds in America on the topic of Personal Development.

💬 Words of wisdom: “If you give people the proper authority and the resources to get something done, they’re going to do it. But if you hamstring either one of those, they can’t get it done.” – Dave Durand

🔎 Where to find Dave Durand: Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram

Key Takeaways with Dave Durand

• Hire great leaders and move out of their way
• No failures, only experiences
• Trading time for money is a horrible idea
• To lead, learn to follow
• Dave’s decision-making formula
• Culture is the heartbeat of any organization
• Manage your energy instead of your time
• Cool things are meaningless if you don’t share them with others
• Humans need problems to solve
• Mentorship is a never-ending journey

Dave Durand | Master Yourself to Master Your World

Dave Durand | Why Lottery Winners Always Go Broke

Tax Strategy Masterclass

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Strategy Session 

The Lifestyle Investor Insider

Dave Durand Tweetables

Resources

• Best Version Media
• Best Version Media on LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram
• Dave Durand on Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram
• Leading Giants
• Cutco
• Elon Musk
• Tony Robbins
• Richard Branson
• Warren Buffett
• David Rubenstein
• The Carlyle Group
• TIGER 21
• Daniel Burrus
• Technotrends: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition by Daniel Burrus and Roger Gittines

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Read the Full Transcript with Dave Durand

Justin Donald: Hey, Dave. Welcome to the show.

Dave Durand: Hey, it’s good to be here, Justin.

Justin Donald: Well, it’s been a long time since we’ve gotten a chance to really dive in, and I’m excited for our time together. In fact, we just spent some time recording on your podcast this last hour, and it was so fun just hearing all the cool things you’re up to. And I can’t wait to really kind of dissect these for our audience.

Dave Durand: Well, you gave the scrolls to our audience right now. I’ll tell you, I can see why you do as well as you do because you’re unafraid to provide good, free, solid advice. And then when you get an opportunity to take people to a deeper level, they’re basically saying, “Hey, this guy, he cares about what I’m doing here and he wants me to succeed.” And that came out on our show. So, thanks again.

Justin Donald: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And this will be fun for our audience because the feedback that I get is they love when I bring people in that I’ve had years of experience with or years of friendship with, and they can hear some of the back story, some of the things that I’ve learned, some of the people that have been influential. And so, this goes back to the early days for me as a Cutco manager. You were my region manager and we spent a number of years working together, working closely together where I got a chance to see your skills in action, your leadership style. In fact, a lot of your leadership style really impacted mine long-term because I feel like there are two different styles that exist. There’s the style where you really micromanage and the style that you’re a little bit more macro, let people do as they do. And I think over here you may hire a certain person that allows you to just kind of manage them every single day, whereas I’d much rather kind of follow your approach, which is let’s hire really good, competent people and then let’s not micromanage them and let’s let them do their thing and step in and correct as we need to. And so, I feel like that has served me really well and that’s one of the many things I picked up from you.

Dave Durand: Yeah. Thanks. And it was easy to work with you because you were naturally inclined to do that. And you made me look good all the time. I just mentioned that on my show. It was like you get a guy like that, that’s a super achiever and if you get in their way, you’re just going to reduce their performance. So, there are two things that people don’t really get about leadership, and that is that if you give people the proper authority and the resources to get something done, they’re going to do it. But if you hamstring either one of those, they can’t get it done and you were the kind of guy who was like, “Okay. Here are the keys to the kingdom, go make it big.” And you did.

Justin Donald: Well, I appreciate that. And when I think about people that leave the Cutco organization, I think most people really leave thinking that they have maybe bigger skills or more experience than maybe they really have, not recognizing what expertise do I have and what expertise don’t I have. And so, I think anyone from Cutco is going to do really well in sales at any level, corporate sales, you name it. I think often people that leave Cutco, they don’t thrive as much in the entrepreneurship space and starting a company. And you have had a lot of success with that. You have started a number of different companies and I’d love to kind of walk through what it was like when you left and really creating, I think, the first business outside of Cutco was Best Version Media. And so, I’d love to learn some of that story, maybe some of the concerns of pivoting from one business, starting another one, not knowing necessarily how to do it, and being an amateur all over again.

Dave Durand: Yeah. Well, I think some of the principles, of course, of leadership and success, they are the same but one of the things that I did is early in my career, and I’ll never forget this because I’m 54 years old, so when I first started my career, there was this thing that people were calling the Internet. It was a fascinating tool. And I remember still having things faxed back and forth. But believe it or not, email was brand new when I first came on the scene, and I remember in Cutco we didn’t have it, okay? We were like slow to technology in that business. So, my friends have graduated and we’re with big companies, we’d talk about email and I remember going, “I don’t know what that is. What is email?” And I hated the way that felt. And of course, we were all like independent contractors so we were running our own tiny little business in this microcosm and it was only going to be as advanced technologically as we were willing to make it. And I never wanted to feel that way. So, I decided every single year as a young man to invent a product or start a new company and to do it on the side for the experience. So, I did things like a fitness video, which I wanted to learn everything about it. I liked the industry itself, but I wanted to understand packaging, I want to understand delivery.

So, we put it on ESPN and advertised it, and we were selling more units than the ad roll or per unit and we did everything, all the distribution, everything. But I didn’t know at all about impact or scale, so I had no idea what I had in front of me. And had I known, I would have been able to scale that thing and make it go but instead, I just lost some money but I had a cool product and I learned a ton of things. And then I started studying just really intensely principles of leadership and companies that did well. So, by the time I had left the Cutco business, I had already run many profitable side businesses. And I just realized that I wanted to build equity. That was, to me, something that was going to be important. In order to do that, I needed to build something that wasn’t a cult of personality. It was something that Dave Durand wasn’t relevant to. And I even told people in Best Version Media, “Hey, when I’m retired, I want people within just a few years in the organization, somebody to say, ‘Hey, you know what, Dave would have done this,’ and for most people in the room to say, ‘Who’s that?’ and not care because the business is running on its own.” And that was an important principle.

Justin Donald: Well, and that principle also makes the business more valuable. So, there’s something to be said about, you know, does your ego really allow you to do that? Most people have a hard time with that. Secondly, when you’re able to do it, it creates more lifestyle. And then thirdly, when you can do it, it makes a more valuable company because people want to buy a business that functions without you. If it is a brand that is centered around you, then it requires you to keep it functioning.

Dave Durand: Yeah. So, this is such a huge, huge principle. So many people have this belief that you’ve got to do this like grind and work so many hours. So, I had people just by default say, “Hey, you’re the CEO of this company,” and we’re like the fastest growing company in the State of Wisconsin for years and the ninth fastest growing media company in the United States for a lot of years. So, they just had this assumption that I worked all the time and I was home for dinner every day. I mean, I took whatever vacations I needed to. I worked out in the middle of the day and I didn’t really advertise that so much. I didn’t talk about it or not talk about it, but I never counted hours and I always had a lifestyle. And this is what I think people fail to understand. When you take a look at people like Elon Musk, look at all of the things that he started. If a person is going to be better at what they do because they add more time, they’re failing from the start because that basically means that if somebody is working 40 hours a week, that Elon Musk, in order to be twice as good as them, has to work 80 hours a week. And he’s infinitely better than most people at what he does by way of scale and by way of revenue and everything else that takes place. So, it’s the leverage that really matters. And trading time for money is a ridiculously bad idea, and most people just don’t give people the power and the authority to make decisions without them there. And so, they’re fearful but when you do that, it’s much easier for it to run.

Justin Donald: So, what are some of the keys to get out of that mindset? Because most people are told, “Hey, go to college.” So, most people don’t go to college but the ones who go to college or you spend all this money to go to college, go get a high-paying job and work up the corporate ladder but every single year, every single promotion you’re becoming more and more tied to your time equaling money. So, what are ways that people can divorce that time equals money scenario?

Dave Durand: Yeah. I think the first thing that I look at on this is to say, what are you called to do? I mean, if you are a Ferrari and you spend your life trying to pick up kids from soccer practice and go get groceries, you’re going to be miserable. But if you’re a minivan and you try to make your money on a racetrack, you’re going to be miserable, too. We’re all a little bit different. And it’s not that you’re an entrepreneur because you’re a Ferrari or you’re a corporate employee is a minivan. You could be vice versa. Not everybody is called to lead and one of the misnomers now is that everybody can lead. It’s just not true. If you have a two-headed beast, it’s going to rip itself apart. There’s got to be somebody that leads. That’s why leaders are harder to find than followers but the problem is when people basically indict followership as worse than leadership. It’s not. The only problem with being a follower is if you’re following the wrong leader. And all of us ultimately follow somebody else. And good followership is a prerequisite to great leadership. So, the first thing that I tell people is this, “Listen if you are in a corporate mode and you’re never going to be an entrepreneur, awesome. Be a giant in that and you can find great happiness.” The problem is when a person is totally dissatisfied with that and they absolutely know they need to make a change and they stay there anyway. That’s the person who needs to break free.

And there’s a classic thing that I always tell people. If I had known then what I know now on this, it would have sped everything up for me. I went to every single Tony Robbins seminar. I was certified in neuro-linguistic programming and hypnotherapy. I read everything. Okay. And I remember people talking about ideas like pressing hot buttons and how do you motivate people. And it was kind of a calculated, manipulative sort of thing. And when I started learning about the cardinal virtues, which the word cardinal is the Latin word for hinge, meaning that all virtues that we experience are hinged upon these. It’s not a religious term. And in fact, it’s Aristotle who talked about the cardinal virtues first. And the cardinal virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The first one is prudence, which is the mastery of decision-making. And if I would have known this at the time, everything would have been much faster because we at the end of our career are going to be judged by the number of decisions that we made that were good versus bad but more than that, the weight of the good decisions we made versus the weight of the bad decisions, which is why a lot of people have many, many good decisions and one bad decision blows everything up for them.

So, if I would have learned the process of developing good decisions by way of understanding prudence itself, it would have sped things up way more, and that you can teach it. So, I always hated when people said things like, “Oh, you need to believe to achieve.” I was like, “Well, you’re telling me to do something I don’t know how to do,” and it’s like, “Yeah, I still don’t. How do you do that?” But when you say to somebody, “Learn to make better decisions,” there’s an actual formula for learning it that anyone can do. And if I would have known that formula when I was young, I would’ve made way better decisions.

Justin Donald: I love that. And I’d love for you to share any of the specifics on that formula that you feel comfortable sharing because I think this is the info that people need to take action. We always talk on this show about taking some form of action every single day and specifically some form of action from this episode from you, Dave. So, I’d love to hear more on that.

Dave Durand: I will give you this to them and I’m going to tell you, risks sounding so simple that somebody would be maybe saying, “Well, I don’t know if that really has value,” but I’m going to tell you. What I’m going to give you right now is like a piece of snow, okay, a snowball on top of a hill that you push down and becomes a massive avalanche of good. So, there are three different steps to great decisions. The first one is that you have to desire what is good. If you don’t desire what is good, you can’t get anything done. You think about every single thing in your life. If you don’t deserve what’s good for a relationship, it’s going to be trashed. If you don’t deserve what’s good in investing, I mean, if your Uber driver doesn’t desire what’s good, you’re not going to get there safe. So, everything we need to do, we need to have that purity of heart which says, “I desire what is good here.” The second step is we have to know what is real. And this trips people up all the time is they just have no idea what’s real. So, you’re a baker and you bake cookies. What would be good? If you desire what’s good? You’re going to bake good cookies that are attractive at a reasonable price. Okay. So, now you want to come up with some new recipes and you hand them to 20 volunteers in a room and you say, “What do you think of the cookies?” And they all come back and they say, “Your cookies are horrible, man.” And you look at them and you say, “You’re tasting them wrong.”

Well, clearly, you don’t know reality. So, you have to desire what is good but then you have to embrace what is real. And so, like in investing, it’s like, okay, I’m going to make an investment. This is not going right. I have to make a change, right? I desire what’s good in this investment, a good return. Anyway, so you go back to this person. He desires what is good. He knows what is real. People don’t like the cookies. So, what does he do? He has to act upon or do what is good based on reality. And so, he’s going to go back to the drawing board. He’s going to have some better cookies. He’s going to bring to the people and until they say, “I love your cookies. They’re beautiful and this is a reasonable price,” he’s going to keep going through that formula. The problem is that there are three primary intrinsic motivators that we have as human beings. The number one is love, which is self-sacrificial. This is why it’s so powerful. Number three is fear. A lot of like cousins to that, insecurity and being afraid to take risks in all sorts of ways. But love always trumps fear. So, if you’re afraid of alligators, you’re not going to swim with them but if your son or daughter falls into a pond with an alligator, you jump in and save them. Okay? But the sticky wicket is self-justification, and that’s the second one. So, when somebody says, “I don’t like your cookies,” you blame them. You don’t accept responsibility for it. And now you can’t actually pursue what is good, even if initially wanted to because you can’t see reality.

So, those three things, as simple as they are, I’ve gone in with CEOs of big companies and looked at them and said, “Let’s go through your decision-making process.” And you know what the first decision is? Walk into a meeting to feed my ego and that person would rather be right to their own demise than wrong to their own prosperity because they won’t see something that’s actually there. So, if you just break it down like that, all of a sudden great things happen.

Justin Donald: I love it. And what you do such a great job with is you take complex, you simplify it, but you also are one of the best with analogies of anyone that I know. So, you’ve got a nice analogy to tie the ribbon or bow on top to actually help it make sense. So, like you said, very simple but it’s not always for most people until you see that framework, it’s a very complex thing. And so, seeing the framework, hearing it, and then implementing it, that’s the game changer right there. So, let’s talk about how this manufactured itself in your business. So, Best Version Media, you had an exit. If memory serves me correctly, you even had a chance at a second bite of the apple. And then correct me if I’m wrong but you’re totally out today, right? You’ve fully exited?

Dave Durand: No. I’m actually still the executive chairman so I am still in. So, yeah, we had a really nice exit in 2018, but I stayed on. I remained the CEO of the organization until a little over two years ago and I promoted a fantastic guy to CEO. Big upgrade for the company, I can tell you that right now, and I promoted him and I remained the executive chairman. So, I still have a role there but have always started a lot of different businesses. And even within Best Version Media, we started a lot of companies too, which is fun to keep them in the portfolio and to have new services and products for people. And the way that this folds in is that culture classically you hear Warren Bennis said that it eats strategy for breakfast and it’s absolutely true. If you have a great strategy but a bad culture, you’re on life support. But if you have a great culture and a bad strategy, you’re going to eventually have a great strategy. So, we built a company around that, and a lot of people will build their company around a mission statement. But, you know, most people don’t care about a mission statement.

I used to be invited to companies from Fortune 10 down to whatever, and I would always do the same thing. I’d say, “Okay,” because in the 90s, everybody’s into mission statements. I mean, they would like literally take all of their executive board and put them in a room for three days to come up with some long, elaborate, crazy mission statement that nobody would know that… It was totally uninspiring to anybody except maybe the owners of the company. But I used to say, “Okay. What I want everybody to do here is I want you to stand up together,” almost like we’re going to say the Pledge of Allegiance, “and say the company mission.” And nobody could do it. And the whole purpose of a mission statement is to get a bunch of very different people on the same page going the right direction. And I found that most of them never really motivated people. I mean, if you’re smart, your mission statement is going to be super simple, one sentence, like if you’re an NFL team, mission statement: Win the Super Bowl. Super. Simple. That’s all it is. Inspiring. Great. Every year, that’s what it is. But a cultural statement is way more important because a cultural statement basically says, “What does it mean to work here?”

And if you can go to an experienced CEO or other executive and then a brand new employee that’s at maybe an entry-level position and you ask them a question, what does it mean to work here to the degree that their answers are cohesive, is to the degree that you have an actual cohesive culture, which is step one. But what if their answers are bad? Well, you have a cohesively bad culture then, too. So, you need to repair that and make it happen. And a culture can erode 1% a day. So, it’s super important to go back and constantly work on the culture on a daily basis so people know what it means to work there in principle. The culture is the music, man. It’s like the vibe of your organization. And when you walk in and the same beat is going and people hear it, they’re all like kind of moving the same direction in the same way and they feel the same. And that’s what a culture is.

Justin Donald: Yeah, that’s awesome. I love hearing that. I would love any of the specifics that you’re able to or willing to share and what it looks like.

Dave Durand: Sure.

Justin Donald: With private equity stepping in and you don’t have to give dollar amounts if you don’t want to. You don’t have to get percentages.

Dave Durand: I won’t only because there are private people involved that want to keep that stuff closed but the company operated in hundreds of millions. So, this is the range we were in. So, the organization from kind of the start to that particular exit was I was walking along in the airport every single day back when we knew each other. Okay. I would go home and I would put together a business plan and I knew exactly what the company was going to be like. I knew the culture, I knew the opportunity, I knew the structure. I just didn’t know the product. And one day I was walking along and a friend of mine called and said, “Hey, common friend of ours actually sells ads for Mom and Pop magazine in this particular state.” And I was like love at first sight. It was instantaneous. I knew this is something that I could do and it could scale like you wouldn’t believe. So, I would go to the team every single day and I said, “Every single thing we do today, we have to do it times a thousand,” okay, which ended up being way more than a thousand. But we have to do it times a thousand. We have to think that way.

And in order to be effective, we have to be able to do more in a shorter period of time with less resources than we did before because that’s the definition of business. Okay. And so, if we’re going to do that, if we’re producing this amount of volume with ten employees, then we have to produce twice that volume with only 15, meaning that we’re scaling and everything had to start that way with the idea of scale. And then beginning with the end of mind, and there’s two things, you have to begin with your end in mind but you can’t begin with the end of a business in mind. That is a really bad idea. You don’t leave the business in good stewardship to other people who are going to prosper from it. So, beginning with my end in mind, but not the business’s end in mind, I said to myself, “We have to have really good data. If we can’t measure everything, if we can’t say that our clients on a Tuesday, if the wind is from the southeast at five miles an hour and that particular client likes pepperoni pizza and they’re married to a blonde, that means they’re going to buy this ad from us, then we don’t know enough about our business.” I’m clearly exaggerating but the point is we wanted to know everything.

So, we built a really good back office so we could track all of the details of our business so we could use that for financial, for marketing information, for sales training, we could use it for everything. And that back office really served to be a tremendous tool when we were going to private equity organizations because we were kind of the cute girl on the barstool that people want to take home for a long time. And we were able to basically nod this person off and make the wink that we wanted to, which was nice. But then the second thing is you had to have all your books in order. So, if you didn’t have your finances in order and you didn’t understand your product and you didn’t articulate how you would work in an up or a down economy, you’d be out of the game. And then the last portion of that, too, is you really had to have a very well-established leadership team that they could trust. That doesn’t mean that they’re going to keep that team but it does mean that they have the option of keeping their team, which makes it a much more secure investment because there’s a deep bench.

Justin Donald: Yep. And we had talked about this before on your show, but one of the biggest keys here in the valuation jump in a business is that it is not a business that basically pivots around you or is branded around you, whoever the leader is, right? That the business exists on its own. There’s a team that can run it. It can run at a high level without the founder, without the owner. And so, that right there, just in one fell swoop, one, provides a lot of lifestyle but, two, provides a much greater valuation. And you’ve been able to do that.

Dave Durand: Yeah. It’s a huge thing and it has to happen from the start. So, I remember saying to my partners, I said, “Listen, if you were on a bus and it went off a cliff, who would take your job?” And we immediately need to be on pace to replace ourselves. And that was something that we all effectively did. But then I said something else, and this is, actually it was a good lesson with one of my partners but I remember saying, “Hey, listen, that thing that you’re doing, you got to stop doing. The bigger we grow this organization, the greater our responsibility, but the less our responsibilities. And that’s super important. You can’t hang on to the same number of responsibilities. You have to get rid of them. And anyone can do what it is you’re doing,” and he goes, “Nobody could. What I’m doing here is so crucial to the business, and it’s so important that I have to do it.” I say, “I’m going to prove that wrong. I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to hire a 19-year-old that’s never done this before, and I’m going to teach him how to do it just as good as you.” And a week later, that happened. And to that person’s credit, he mastered that example of delegation after that. He was a quick study because he’s a super high-virtue person. So, even though he was young and didn’t get that in that one moment, without having to go through that experience, he never would have been the leader that he was where he was able to ratchet things up super-fast after that.

Justin Donald: Yeah. And it’s great that it seems like you’ve got a partner in the PE company that bought you or invested into your company because a lot of them are kind of war stories and you don’t go well. And you know, in the 11th hour they try and change the terms and this, that, and the other thing. And so, it’s always a real blessing when you can find a company that wants to acquire you, they buy the majority. They’re people that you enjoy. They’re people you can grow with. They give you the freedom and to have creativity and do things on your terms. So, because it’s tough to go from being an entrepreneur to now being micromanaged, right? And so, I’m sure that that dynamic has changed but it seems like you have been able to create a real successful partnership with them and even your transition out of the day-to-day to more of a chairman.

Dave Durand: Yeah. We’re so blessed. So, a lot of people talk about private equity almost as though there’s a pariah thing. And private equity people are just like everybody else. I mean, there are good ones and there are bad ones. And we interviewed many and there were some that we got a bad vibe from because it is true, by the way, that they will try to get you to the point where you’ve picked out your yachts and your new homes and everything else. And then at the last second, they reduce it and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m kind of married to this idea,” and you’re in a desperate emotional mode. We didn’t have that experience and we found a really good team. We found this team because we knew that they had assets that they could bring that were outside of financial. We didn’t need the money. So, we said, “Okay. Can we grow and scale our business because there’s mindshare from them because they’re tapped into really good resources and they can accelerate growth that way?” And they wanted to buy us because they loved what we do. I mean, they looked right in my eyes and they said, “Are you going anywhere?” And that was one of those moments where I had to like say no and mean it. And I did.

But frankly speaking, when I was the CEO, I spent 15 minutes a week on the phone with them and that was it. And they didn’t make a single decision in the company. They just let us run it. And when you’re growing like that, that’s how it happens. And if it wasn’t growing like that, the current CEO would face probably a little bit more interest from them, rightfully so. And who can blame anybody that puts that kind of money into a business that would want to see it go in the right direction? So, I think a lot of people that get a little jaded on private equity are just not going in with their eyes wide open.

Justin Donald: That’s right. Yeah. Richard Branson and Warren Buffett are masters at buying a bunch of companies and either keeping the team in place because it’s a good team or bringing in a highly skilled, highly qualified team that can run it with little to no interference. Richard Branson said to me, “Get out of the building as fast as you can. Hire the best and brightest. Get them in. They’re going to be better at it than you ever are so just get out of the way as quickly as you can.”

Dave Durand: Yeah. And David Rubenstein was going to buy the company personally. He started the Carlyle Group if you’re familiar.

Justin Donald: Oh, yeah.

Dave Durand: And he sent one of his operators in, a guy that he would buy businesses and he’d put this operator in and he drive the business and build it and go from there. We had a really good meeting with him and I wasn’t really interested in stepping entirely aside. And interestingly enough, David was actually supposed to come to the business the following day, but the prince or the king of Saudi Arabia called him to a meeting, so I was bumped for that so it didn’t go any further. But it worked out better because we’ve got an organization that we really wanted to be with.

Justin Donald: I love it. I mean, I’ve learned a lot from him over the years. He comes and speaks to Tiger 21 often. So, we’ve had him at our annual event and have gotten some one-on-one time with him. The guy is brilliant. You know, I’m always posting in the Lifestyle Investor community tips from people that I think are some of the brightest out there. And I’ve got a number of things on our wall in our document library that came from really David and the Carlyle Group, just some of his keys to success.

Dave Durand: Yeah, that’s great.

Justin Donald: So, one of the other reasons that I really wanted to have you on the show is because you do such a great job of living life today. So, as the Lifestyle Investor podcast is we interview successful entrepreneurs, we interview successful corporate executives, we interview successful investors but it’s not just are you successful in the thing you’re doing. I want to know where have you created a hack in lifestyle and doing cool stuff. And really, since I’ve known you, you’ve been all about that. You know, in the early days, back when you lived in Wisconsin, I was on your boat out then. I know that you love boating. I know that you are a pilot. You like to fly. I know that you like sports cars. You travel a ton. You love flying private. I mean, there’s a lot of cool stuff that you’ve done. And I’d love to hear how just being intentional lifestyle and doing, you know, living dreams has been impactful for you.

Dave Durand: Well, I think for me there are three or four components that come into play on that. The first one is that I believe in good stewardship and as a Catholic, I want to die and hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” So, that kind of drives how I make decisions. I think that one of the mistakes that people make is they look at time as the essential asset. And it is. But really energy in that time is what matters. So, if you don’t have the energy for the day ahead of you, you can’t get things done. So, making sure that you’re taking care of your mind and your body and making sure that you’re spiritually in tune, that you have all of these things together, they just give you a distinct advantage, frankly speaking. And then what happens is I think that, you know, and we talked on my show about a mentor of ours who used to say that money’s only good for the good that it does. That really makes a big impact. I didn’t come from money and my parents are just wonderful people but they just were super happy living a simple life. And so, they taught me that. They taught me that if you identify yourself with things that you own, you’re making a huge mistake. You have to have a detachment from them. You can’t say, “I am my nice car.” Okay. You can enjoy it. But more than anything, it is to bring people together. And I do enjoy a lot of very fun things in life but I use them to bring family. I have six kids. I just found out my seventh grandchild on the way.

Justin Donald: Hey, congratulations.

Dave Durand: Thank you very much. And to be able to bring the family together, or sometimes people who maybe couldn’t take a vacation or do something that you have an opportunity to open up a door for them, that’s a really great way to enjoy these things and to share them. I mean, there’s nothing just worse than thinking about the person who dies alone amidst all sorts of goods that they’ve hoarded for themselves. And I think if we look at it from that perspective, it becomes way more exciting to have fun, way more exciting to have the lifestyle, to say, “Who can I share this with?” I mean, who can be a part of this sort of thing with me and to build what you always say, Justin, so well that, listen, it’s not just about building wealth, it’s about building experiences because we’re going to take those with us forever, the memory of those experiences. And it’s a good thing to do because very few people have an experience that’s not tied to being with someone else.

Justin Donald: Yeah, 100%. And by the way, the thing that you buy that is really exciting, whatever that thing is, it could be a car, could be a second home, could be your first home, could be a primary car, whatever it is, there’s excitement in that moment and for a period of time but at some point in time, it ends, right? And so, how do you create the experience that was so great that you can forever remember it? But moreover, more importantly, how do you incorporate that with people that you love so that they can experience it? And many times, they either, A, would have carved the time out or, B, didn’t have the means to do it. And so, to them, it’s that much more special.

Dave Durand: Yes. Okay. So, I love this question because this is an Aristotelian answer that I’m going to give you. Okay. And if you look at Aristotle or Aquinas or these great philosophers, they would want to come into the room and beat me with my microphone because they’re going to be way more articulate than me but I pull things into kind of usable form. So, we all desire happiness. Okay. And whether you’re talking about investing like you do, whether you’re talking about building corporations and businesses like I do, and you talk about both, but these are things that we ultimately do. Why? I want to be happy. Okay? That’s why we want to do things. So, there are four levels of happiness. The first one is physical. So, when people want to be happy, they do immediate things. They eat, they drink, they have sex. They do things that are immediate to them physically. And in order, these things can provide a certain amount of happiness. If they’re disordered, they become very, very horrible in your life. And you always need, when it’s a disorder, you need more to get there.

So, let’s use a Hershey bar as a metaphor. You have a Hershey bar. Fine. That’s an order. But now you want three Hershey bars. Well, you have the three, but you’re at a low now. And in order to get back up to normal, you need three more Hershey bars. And to feel better than normal, you need four. And now crashed down again. And you go through the cycle. And it’s the same thing with anything physical if it’s out of order. So, what happens is the person’s out of order, they’re out of whack, and they need to do something more. And you find them on Oprah and they say, “Oprah, I was an addict. I was trying to find my happiness in these things. And I went from being an addict to accomplishing things. And I accomplished great things. I became a billionaire and I won five gold medals. I wrote seven books, and I accomplished it.” And you know what? They’re happier for a longer period of time but they start to realize you can’t eat, drink, and have sex enough to be happy. It goes away. You can’t build enough, earn enough, or accomplish enough. At some point, that fades.

So, they go to the third level, which is philanthropic, and they say, “I’m going to give. Oprah, I was an addict. And then I built big things and I was still a little empty so I started giving back.” And they experience that joy for a longer period of time. It’s a great place to be, and it’s a place that I found great joys to be able to help people like that. I generally don’t talk this way, by the way. I have a little bit of an aversion to people who just go and feed the poor people in order to take a picture on Instagram. It has nothing to do with somebody being poor. It’s for self-recognition. There are many more charitable people out there, but this is a really tremendous way to find happiness and satisfaction. And then ultimately, we have an existential look at this, which is to say, I didn’t put myself here so I don’t even know how I got here, outside of my parents. I don’t know how I got here. Where am I going? And every single person has to wrestle with that question. So, the more that we get these things to cooperate and not work against each other by having ordered physical passions and ordered accomplishments, which we have a full prediction for how much joy they’re going to bring us. It’s only going to bring me this much and because my expectation was there and the joy was there, I’m fulfilled. The next level, same thing, all the way through. And if these things work together and we have them a part of all of our life, then all of a sudden, we have great satisfaction.

Justin Donald: Yeah. And we’ve got to be careful that none of those become our idol where they become the number one placeholder that we are working for or doing things on behalf of because then it messes up that order, right? You start to idolize something that doesn’t deserve it. And then that I have found and I’ve seen in others as well that you start basically your behavior is not in alignment with something that’s going to ultimately bring joy. Right?

Dave Durand: Yeah.

Justin Donald: It’s not going to bring happiness. And maybe in that moment, maybe I’m part of the journey, but in the long run, it’s destructive.

Dave Durand: Yeah. You see that when you see people that have great success and they’re not impressed by themselves. They’re happier. And a person who has great success is super impressed by themselves. That’s actually very often the CEO that won’t let go. It’s the founder that hangs on to the power and the title that they have because they know that if they let it go, they’re not going to find it someplace else and they just have to feed their ego with where they are. Now, that is not to say that some people shouldn’t start companies that they stay in for a long period of time for all sorts of good reasons. I’m not condemning the idea of longevity. I’m simply saying that for some people they’re staying for the wrong reasons.

Justin Donald: Yeah, no doubt on that. And I think we all have met people that that is the case and I think you do a good job of articulating, “Hey, for some people being in that role is a good thing, and being in that role with balance and with a desire to give and share.” And it’s not just about you, not just about the ego, that that can be a miraculous thing for a lot of people but I think most people don’t fit that mold and most people don’t live that role that way.

Dave Durand: Yeah, I agree. I think that one of the things you see in a lot of online influencers today is this kind of condemnation of a lifestyle that’s not their own. In other words, if you don’t want the Ferrari and if you don’t want to be the killer entrepreneur and be the influencer, then there’s something wrong with you. You’re living this dissatisfying life and in order to free yourself, you need to have what I have. There are some people that will be gravely dissatisfied unless they do that, but I’m really glad that my second-grade teacher decided to be a second-grade teacher her whole life because she was amazing at it. And I still remember her today and the influence that she had. And she ended up teaching my kids later on and she was happy and satisfied her entire life doing that. So, it’s a wonderful thing that people can kind of identify that this is where I am in life and this is where I need to be. But if I am dissatisfied there, I’ve got to call Justin Donald and figure out how I can invest a bunch of money and have all sorts of freedom. I mean, that’s that time you make that step.

Justin Donald: Well, yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more and the fact that wherever your lane is, that’s okay, but are you miserable in that lane? Are you dissatisfied? Are you desiring more? It probably is time for a pivot. And that pivot doesn’t have to be to become an investor, to become an entrepreneur. It may be that, but it might be finding growth in a new position that fits your specific skills and needs and the way that you can serve better.

Dave Durand: Yeah. I mean, the way I summarize that with people is it’s not so much what you do that matters. It’s who you become when you do it that ultimately is the thing that matters. And that’s kind of a summary of that.

Justin Donald: Yeah, and this is a nice segue. I mean, everything that we’ve talked about today, I feel like is a nice segue into your newest brand, your newest business called Leading Giants. And I’d love for you to talk about that a bit. I know you have a lot of frameworks around it and things that you teach. We were chatting off-air about all the different pieces of content and videos that you’ve recorded here recently for this business and for some of the projects that you’re going to be launching here in the near future.

Dave Durand: Yeah. Thanks. It’s very exciting because it’s an opportunity to just exhibit a lot of passion that I’ve had over the years to be able to share a lot of concepts that I think are going to help a lot of people. So, yeah, we did in a period of about six weeks, 114 micro courses between four and 12 minutes while writing a 65,000-word book and a 20,000-word book and launching a new radio program, plus the podcast and doing an online program for a local university I’m a board of trustee member of. So, we’ve been kicking out all sorts of content, and I want to give Nico, my producer, a big shout on everything he’s done to make that possible. You know this, Justin. You can’t do that stuff by yourself. I mean the team of people that I have working on all these things with me are just making it happen. And I come in every day and I’m like, “I can’t believe what you guys are getting done. It’s absolutely awesome.” But the whole mission is to help people accomplish the greatest things that they want to accomplish. I’ll speak kind of candidly on this. If you want to learn how to build a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars and sell it and lead thousands of people and have all sorts of influence and power, I’m happy to teach you. Not if you’re a jerk.

So, what I want to do is I want to help form the entire person so that they can recognize that if you master the cabinet business, you’re stuck in the cabinet business, maybe by choice and you like it. But if you master yourself, you can go anywhere and you can have and do anything that you want. So, we’re helping people become giants that way by teaching them how to be entrepreneurs or executive leaders. There’s a big sales portion of the course in there. And basically, our tagline to Leading Giants is, “It’s the Influence Mastery Company. We want to help you become a giant so we can all go slay some dragons.”

Justin Donald: I love it. And by the way, this is really fun for me to see because you’re already an author. You wrote books years ago but there’s been a long gap from the last time you released a book to what’s going to come out here next year, about a year from now, maybe 13 months from now. So, what I guess was the impetus to start writing again?

Dave Durand: Yeah. Thank you. I did. I wrote four books. I’m rebranding them now, giving a little facelift but I was so busy with the business really is what it was. I was just in it and building something that I knew was important. And I also, you know, here’s an interesting thing, and it was kind of a second coming to this, but when I was maybe 22 or 23, I was invited to a conference as a speaker, and I was the most novice speaker there. It was me and kind of a mid-level guy and then a guy named Daniel Burrus, who is I don’t know if you know who Daniel is, but now you can look him up on LinkedIn. He’s one of the most respected futurists out there. And back in the day, I mean, he was making $80,000 on a speech, and this is in like in early 80s or late mid-90s or whatever. And he was an author of a book at the time called Technotrends. So, I gave my talk, the other person gave their talk, and then he gave his talk, and he was maybe 18, 19 years older than me. And afterwards he said, “Hey.” Actually, we were in the men’s room. Great time to have good conversations standing next to each other like that. And he said, “I understand you want to write a book.” And I said, “Yeah.” And he just looks at me and he says, “I wanted to write a book when I was young. And I realized that when I did, I would be either publishing my ignorance or my brilliance for the world to see in perpetuity. So, I waited until I was 30.”

Justin Donald: Wow.

Dave Durand: And what a kind way to tell me I was stupid, to say, “You are not ready for this book. You’re too young and naive.” So, I did wait. I waited until I was 30, and I was able to get some good books out there with some pretty solid wisdom. But what I wanted to do then after that is I wanted to build the business and exit and get to the point where I had a lot more experience that I could draw upon so that my stories, in addition to being firsthand and theoretical, were really mostly firsthand in that book. And so, it was kind of a second coming of the principle that Daniel Burrus kindly taught me in the men’s room there.

Justin Donald: I love it. Well, what’s cool is I know you. I know some of the numbers and where you’re at in life today, the things you get to do. You don’t have to work. I know this. Our audience now knows this but you still, for me, it’s exciting because I can see you’re really passionate about it and you’re really focused on, you know, all these areas that you’re excited to explore, excited to learn. And you’re like me in many ways that you are curious, you love learning, you love building and creating frameworks, and you’re really good at it. But for those that don’t know you, why work if you don’t have to? And why work as much as you are to put out 114 mini-courses or modules? You don’t need to be doing that. So, why spend your time doing that?

Dave Durand: Yeah, that’s a great question because you’re in the same boat, so our answers are probably similar. I’ll answer it two different ways. One is it’s just fun when you’re working with people like Nico and the rest of the team. It’s an enjoyable thing, but a lot of people who are not yet at that point would say, “Well, yeah, but the beach would be even more fun.” But see, when you go on vacation, you say to yourself, “This is amazing. I’m here at this Tiki bar and I think I could stay here forever. In fact, I think I want that guy’s job just serving drinks, no problems.” And the second day, it looks just as fun. The third day it looks kind of fun but you look at them and you go, “I wonder if he’s really fulfilled.” And by the fourth day, you’re like, “I don’t think I could do that.” By the fifth day, you’re like, “I got to get home and be productive.” And there’s just something about that. We as human beings have to solve problems, and our problems are our friends. There is not a single job that has ever been invented that did not have a problem to solve unless some nefarious characters are out there inventing problems that shouldn’t be solved in the first place. But that’s why they’re there.

And if you look at the, you know the studies probably on people who won the lottery, that 5 to 7 years later they’re dead or dead broke and the vast majority of them are. Why? Because their wealth exceeded their virtue. And this is a problem. Most people wake up every day and they say, “I have to solve problems. I have to have food, I have to have shelter, I have to have clothing, and I have to behave well at work and go to work because I need those things. Even if I don’t want to behave, I’m forced to. Now, all of a sudden, boom, massive wealth. They don’t have the basic problems to solve. So, what do they do? They unconsciously create problems in their life that they need to solve. So, I just knew that I’m either going to create problems in my life that I need to solve or I’m going to intentionally go solve problems that need to be solved. And there’s the difference.

Justin Donald: Yeah, that’s a great description. And the other thing I just want to weigh in on is there are studies done on people who retire that don’t have anything, don’t have a cause, don’t have a business, just stop doing stuff. And the percentage of people that die within five years, once they retire that don’t have anything else that from a work standpoint, it doesn’t have to be their corporate job. It could be something else. But the ones who truly don’t do anything, the percentages are so high that die within five years. And I think that goes to your point of like, “Hey, we’re actually called to solve things, figure things out, to be in relationship, to help others, to mentor.” I think we should always be in this area. To me, where like in the middle, it’s like I’m mentoring these people underneath me. I’m trying to pull them up and teach them the things I’ve learned. But at the same time, I’m being mentored by someone that has more wisdom than me, and whatever the thing is, and I rotate on what the thing is. Sometimes it might be health, sometimes it’s financial, but it’s some category under the banner of wealth, right? It could be business. It could be specifically marketing and business, which is what my focus is this year, and the coach that I hired this year. But I think if we don’t have purpose, that’s when people lose direction in life. That’s when life is cut short.

Dave Durand: Yeah. You said two things in there that I think are pretty interesting. One of them that you said was the coach that you hired and the things that you’re learning, but that’s who you are, is you’re a coach who people hire and you teach. What most people don’t understand is that the best teachers, the leaders, and coaches are constantly seeking somebody else out to learn from. It doesn’t stop for them. And I remember long ago thinking, “I’m going to give my team everything I have and then when I do, why are they going to come to me? So, I have to go get more and grow every single day.” And if you stay on that path and you realize the distance between where I am right now and ultimate knowledge is so vast, I’m never going to reach there. So, my game isn’t actually to have ultimate knowledge or to become perfect. My goal is to see how pathetically far away from that, but still a little closer I can come. And life is like that. And if you look at potential, you know, this is potential right here. Okay? And we start our life right here. If we were perfect and we were perfect stewards to our potential, we would end up right here.

When people say you have potential and you’re young, it’s complimentary, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, it feels so good.” The definition of potential is unused ability. There comes a point when somebody says you have potential that it’s more of an insult than a compliment. And so, most of us don’t live our life on this perfect scale like that but we go like this. And so, we have to accelerate our learning to maximize our potential because we neglected it early on. And once we start to understand that, it becomes really exciting. And it’s that question of how great can you be at something and how great can you help others to be at something? And when you start to really just kind of like lose yourself in that, you have complete humility in it or at least you have a much higher level of humility because you’re accepting all the problems and mistakes because you really have no right to your successes if you don’t own your failures. And this kind of blend, as you talked about when you’re on my show, of all the mistakes you made. You’re like so eager to share all of the mistakes that you made, which I think emboldens people to say, “Hey, if I’m going to be like Justin Donald, I’m going to go out there and make way more mistakes in order to have those successes, too,” and that it takes a lot of pressure off of a person to know that that’s a part of the process.

Justin Donald: Oh, 100%. I mean, people look at me, you, anyone on the show who there’s this level of perceived success and it’s like, “Oh, man, it would be so great to be there.” But they only see the finished product and it’s not even the finished product of the whole story. It’s just where we are today but not seeing all of the issues. I mean, there are so many mistakes made or failures of like foresight or not trusting intuition or bad partnership, bad business decision, bad financial decision. And so, I think it’s so important that we do be vocal and open and honest and share from a vulnerable place because we don’t have it all figured out. We figured out enough stuff to have moved up but we don’t have it all figured out. And I want to hang out with people that have more of it figured out than I do. I want to keep learning.

Dave Durand: Yeah, absolutely. You know, they say that humility and I think it was C.S. Lewis who said this, right, that humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less often. And that is really a key thing. So, one of the things that I found is that the difference between people who have a certain level of success and people who are just kind of dissatisfied where they are is that the person who has a certain level of success, they don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the people that are better than them. They spend way more time aspiring to people who are better than them, and they don’t do it from a perspective of envy or jealousy. You know, it’s funny because when you think about the seven capital sins, they actually say that jealousy or envy is the only intellectually stupid capital sin. I mean, with pride, you at least look good, right? You can boast. I mean, you know what happens with lust. You know what happens with gluttony. You can at least eat all of these different types of things. But envy is the one where there’s no payoff. There’s no payoff from the beginning. You automatically feel horrendous.

So, people who really want to go to the next level, they look up and they go, “How did that person do that? That’s amazing. I wonder if I could do that. I’m going to try.” And the other person looks up and they go, “Well, woe is me. I’d never be able to do that. If I were them because I had all that luck, then I’d be able to do it.” And then they realized that, you know, it’s just a matter of like being excited about that role model, not envying them. So, instead what they do is they do this. Like, my daughter when she was… My kids are all adults now, but when my daughter was like 15, we were going to go to Easter brunch and she had cut-off shorts and I said, “Hey, you got to put a dress on. We’re going to go to a nice place for brunch.” And she goes, “Why can’t I wear these?” And I go, “Well, because I want you to look nice.” And she says, she goes, “Well, this does look nice.” And I said, “Well, first of all, I’m not negotiating with you. You’re going to put a dress on. We’re ready to go, you know.” And she said, “Somebody else is going to be dressed like this there.” And I said, “Okay. You’re probably right. In fact, there will be somebody with shorter shorts on, with more rips in their shorts. There might even be somebody with a tank top on.

And in fact, if we stood there for 20 years, eventually with the decline of society, you’re going to see somebody walk in completely naked but I don’t care. Because if your goal is to always be better than the lower standard, you’ve already won. It’s always going to be worse. You can always find somebody with a lower standard, but you’re a Durand and our standards are up. So, let’s raise the standard and do that.” And of course, she was highly inspired by the motivational speech and willfully went and did it. Over time she did.

Justin Donald: That’s good. I love it. That’s a great story. One thing before we wrap up, we were talking off-air and I want to capture this because this is so fun. You are talking about the Dave Cave. You’re building a really cool, inspiring place to work and play. And I’d love for you to just share some of this and then we’ll wrap things up for the day.

Dave Durand: Okay. Well, it started that I was collecting classic cars. I enjoy them but they’re kind of a pain to own frankly speaking. They all leak and everything else. And it just doesn’t matter what you’re getting. If they’re a certain age, that’s going to happen. And so, I was going to store them all there. And so, I went in and I bought this big kind of a warehouse type of thing. And once I got it and I just looked at it differently and I said, “Oh, I can do something more with this.” So, we’re putting a full-court pickleball in, a golf sim that’s the best one out there so you can golf any course. And then we’re going to have a mezzanine with a really cool bar. I just went alligator hunting. I got a couple of 12-footers, by the way, a beautiful alligator. So, they’re going to be mounted above the bar. And then it’s just going to be like neon lights and a really cool atmosphere. We call it the Dave Cave. And there’s going to be a filter there so you can smoke cigars and you won’t smell them the next day. And everyone that’s a good person has a good whiskey collection, right? Isn’t that… Maybe I’m overstating that. Anyway.

Justin Donald: Well, I think that’s really important. That’s good.

Dave Durand: I think it is. It is important. So, that’s going to be up there, too, and it’s going to be a lot of fun. But you know what? It’s going to be a place, like I said before, where I’m going to be able to get some work done there, too, but where I’m going to have a lot of friends and family come in and there’s going to be a lot of people who would never, ever have that experience unless you invite them. And now they have that experience. So, it’s going to be a lot of fun. And I know you got a lot of cool things like that in your life, too. They’re just meaningless without people in there in your life with it too.

Justin Donald: Well, I love it because it builds community but also it creates an inspiring place to work from too, you know? So, it’s a win-win.

Dave Durand: It does. Not to mention the fact that it’s doubled in value since I already bought it. The investment was good timing.

Justin Donald: By the way, this is why you buy assets. You know, buy assets because they will go up over time. I think that’s a wonderful example, even without you repurposing it yet. And it will only go up more from there, which is so cool. And you know, one thing I do want to say before we wrap up, every year we do our annual family planning, marriage planning, family planning day. My wife and I, we have this outline. It’s a long outline that we’ve added to. It takes a full day to do it. We celebrate with some meals, but in this outline and I’m happy to share it, we can attach it here in the show notes, but in this outline, one of the things is to be intentional with who the people are that you’re going to have these relationships, these moments, these experiences with both as couples for spouses to do that together and then individuals where it’s one-on-one or group time. But something that I think a lot of people don’t do and I think most people don’t do that, I think that has been huge for me in developing great relationships, but it’s also listing who is my mentor, who are my mentors for the year, and I may not even be on the radar. So, how do I get on their radar? And it’s just that intentionality that I think is really important. So, I just wanted to share that. I know you’re great at that, Dave, and congrats on all the success that you have had both inside and outside of your business and professional life. You live a life that is very admirable on all levels. And I love not only am I a huge fan and proponent of you, but I’d love to just endorse all that you’re doing with Leading Giants. And why don’t you share where people can learn more about that and more about you?

Dave Durand: Thank you. I appreciate that. And by the way, the respect, you know, is mutual Leading Giants, you can go to LeadingGiants.com. That’s Leading Giants. And February 1st, there’s our official launch. We’re putting some teasers up there now so people can see them but before the site is fully active, it’ll be February 1st. And also too, Justin, I’ve got a couple of free things here that I’m going to offer your guests if they would like to take a look at those so they can walk away and at least have a little bit of tool. If we never contact each other at some point, they can at least walk away with something. And you’re a gracious guy, too, for what you’ve done on my show. I think that one of the reasons that people are attracted to what you’re doing is that you classically understand the concept that givers get, and you do a lot of giving with no intention of getting anything in return and it’s something that I admire. So, thanks.

Justin Donald: Well, thank you. I appreciate that, Dave. And just so fun to connect. As always, I like finishing every show that we do. I hinted at this earlier, but I’m going to share it now. It’s a question that I like to ask all of our listeners at the end of each session with each guest. And that’s this. What is one step that you can take today to move towards financial freedom, to move towards the life that you desire that’s on your terms? It’s not a life by default, but rather a life by design. So, what’s one thing that you grabbed from Dave today that you can implement and put into action that can help create and lead to a more fulfilling life? Thanks. And we’ll catch you next week.