Carl J. Cox 9:09

That’s awesome. It’s interesting how you bring up that that concept of those three key areas. Often I would say, just from practical strategy or not, you have to have your people, you have to have your process, and you have to have your systems aligned. And if you don’t, something’s gonna break, right, especially when you’re scaling. If you don’t have those things driven down in the right area, something’s gonna completely go already. So I appreciate it. Now, one of the things you’re working on, and I think it’s so important, especially as here we are February 2021, a year into COVID world right where things have been locked down and then trade shows are more or less non existent. The ability to get out speak is very, very difficult. It’s been this virtual stuff that you and I are doing right now. And you have this hashtag #whynetworking, tell me about what that is, and in What are you trying to accomplish?

Dave Burlin 10:02

Yeah, hashtag why networking has been the underlying if, if I had to call it anything, it’s kind of like my own thesis, right? Where I love all these influencers. And I’m grateful to get to know them and work with so many of them, right? So I love having these people in my life, right? I’ve got to work with some of the top leaders and not just like, have them sign my book. But like, I’ve worked on projects, some of these people. And I’ve always caught myself talking about their stuff, I get really fascinated by their stuff, but always, under the surface, it’s been like, how do I apply that something that I care about. And as if you look at just the titles in my life that have changed from Marine, to drill instructor for at risk youth, to wedding DJ, right? To speaker, you know, and to entrepreneur, and consultant, like, all of those come with a whole set of relationships. And at any time, I can bring all of those relationships full circle, and I can sort of pull the Avengers from my life and work on anything, and we’re gonna we’re gonna have a blast.

Carl J. Cox 11:05

Through Oh, yeah,

Dave Burlin 11:06

I was gonna say, through that whole thing. It’s been this superpower to build relationships. But I always found where a lot of people were frustrated with it. And networking is a waste of time and all these things. So it’s really just been this research and discovery to find out what is it that makes networking such a challenge for people? What is it that people are frustrated with? And is there a better way? right for me, I get pissed. Every time I go to a networking event, people stabbed me with the business card and interrupt me and asked me what I do, don’t care, keep looking at their watch, and then wait for me to say, what do you do? And then they just try to sell me, right? It’s frustrating. But I can’t, I used to get really mad. And then I’m like, Well, I can’t get mad. They’re just doing what they know. Right? They’re falling back to a process. And I’ve always looked for what is that process for networking. And it breaks my heart every time I hear about people who are waiting on the sidelines for somebody to give them that permission. And they say, Yes, your stuff is good enough can be on our team, when they could just have a really strong connection, and somebody can unlock an opportunity for them. Right. And then the problem that I’m just trying to solve is, there is a better way. And the aha moment for me has been networking isn’t prospecting. Networking isn’t about getting another invoice, or another lead, it’s about unlocking opportunities in every person you meet. But because the only cycle or framework that we have is back to the sales cycle, we start trying to close people, whether we realize it or not. And if you close people, you might close a sale, but you also might close a relationship. So for me, I’m just trying to teach people how to unlock more opportunities with every person, maybe

Carl J. Cox 12:52

that’s so huge. It is, I don’t know about you, but even on LinkedIn, I get multiple Will you buy from me and I don’t even know this person, or company or organization is from around the world, you know, they could be sometimes they’re literally in the same hometown or where I’m from, or they’re in Romania, right, you know, and I’ll get these, can you buy my services from me, I’m like, excuse me, there’s this, there’s this lack of understanding one of the best posts I saw a year ago, especially in the kind of the middle, when COVID really started freezing everything across the country was just give value and, you know, give value be a friend, so to speak, you know, be give something, you know, one of my favorite quotes is from Zig Ziglar, you help enough other give people what they want, you’ll eventually get what you want. And I think when we apply that to our networking, it just amazing things happen in return, that you would never even dream of, if you were trying to sell that person initially. Right? It could be 10 x what you originally thought, you know, and but that’s the hard part is we think we have a solution, and they’re looking for something else. But the funny thing is, we could solve that too. But we’ll never get to it. Unless we have a connection, start developing trust, and go to items I love. I love what you’re doing there. I think it’s so important because even even if they said tomorrow, everything’s going to be back to normal. It’s going to take away, you know, it’s gonna take a while for for people to have confidence to come out in public. And even if they are in public, if they’re wearing a mask, there’s all that nonverbal communication we are getting, you know, and so I just think there’s going to be a challenge with that. And I think to be amazing. on your website, you have this comment, you say, Are you ready for change? What What does that mean?

Dave Burlin 14:45

Yeah, to me, there’s, you know, change management has been our change leadership. You want to be you know, creative about it. Change is inevitable. And a lot of times people aren’t ready for it. So I try to be a catalyst to help people embrace and drive change. You know, it’s funny, just as I said that, Mike, Where’d that come from? But I know, I know exactly where it’s one of the core values at Zappos. And that’s one of the companies that I highly respect, I’m very passionate about their core values. Yeah, I think I know the book you’re pulling, man, I got the same one. But, and by the way, you know, I’m still closely connected to that organization. I always say I’m zappone. And by marriage, even though we’re divorced now, it’s, it’s one of those things where I moved to the city because of that organization. And one of their core things was embrace and drive change. And to me, because change is going to happen, I want people to be ready for it. And the best way is to start now. And it could be with any level of discomfort or any level of discomfort that they have. Are you ready for change, and if you are, we can introduce some new ideas and some new ways that you can embrace and drive it. And it could transform your organization, it could transform your community, it can can transform our home, forever. And that’s where I just I love starting the conversation with you. Are you ready for change?

Carl J. Cox 16:18

Dave, the audience’s know your story. We don’t have time today to go into the details behind it. But I’m going to share your YouTube video on LinkedIn of your video to train to get into become an employee of Zappos. What an incredible I laughed out loud multiple times when I was going through it. So I’ll leave that for now. But it’s it’s a video that I’ll definitely post that

Dave Burlin 16:45

the rule of the rule of thumb for those two years that we were on that pursuit if you didn’t laugh five times, then we can’t be friends. I showed us everybody we made. Yeah, I showed it to everybody. We met for two and a half years. And if you don’t have five times, we can’t be friends. So awesome.

Carl J. Cox 17:01

And I left definitely part of the shot is laugh out loud laugh out loud, funny.

Okay, I’m gonna pop down to some of the personal stuff right now. You are a marine? And how, how did that prepare you for life? And that’s a great question. And

Dave Burlin 17:27

it’s something that I think about quite often. And, you know, I’ll be honest, I joined the Marine Corps because I was at risk youth. And I really just looked for I needed change, that I needed a change of environment. And one of the big lessons that I’ve learned through adversity through challenges through struggle is that if you want to change where, you know, change your resolve, or something that’s going on in your life, there’s two things that you can ultimately change. While there’s actually three, I learned this later. attitude is one of them, you can always change your attitude. But there’s two physical things you can change where you work, and you can change where you live. And going into the Marine Corps gave me the opportunity to do both. I was a high school dropout, they took very few GED people. And when I got recruited originally by the by the army, I called the Marines and I said, Hey, the army guys are trying to recruit me, I’d rather go that route. And of course, it’s like a recruiters like, best day, like a Marine Corps recruiter, like what we’re about to pull somebody from the army. And when they told me that, that they wouldn’t take any high school dropouts, even though I had a GED, the guy hung up on me. So the first thing that I learned was like, wow, this, this is nuts. So I just picked up the phone and call them right back and said, Look, dude, like, you come to the high schools trying to recruit us, like, I’m telling you that I’ll leave tomorrow. You know, I just don’t want to be another army guy. And he made some phone calls. And let’s just say eight days later, I was on my first plane ride ever to boot camp. Like why days, that’s all I had to I had, they were like, yeah, you’ll get all this extra time to prepare dude, it was eight days I was gone. So it prepared me to be flexible. And to just roll with the punches. it prepared me to be proud of something for the first time. But it also prepared me to get my ass handed to me. Sorry. And and just for the things that I didn’t expect. And it also prepared me for the inevitable change that that challenge so many of us in our generation. I was on my first deployment ever, like and when I say first deployment, it was the first time we left and second port of call. We had already stopped in Hawaii. I was in Darwin, Australia. And it was my 21st birthday. Because of the dateline I can’t It was like right around the time I just knew I was celebrating my 21st birthday because we were in Australia when 911 happened and that was the Biggest gut shot for the world at the time, and to be right there in the corner of all that it’s always prepared me for? What’s the worst that can happen? Like, worse than you think? Like everything is possible. How do we be prepared for that? How do we make sure that we’re always working towards the same common thing to where when the worst does happen, we can work together and overcome it. So that’s taking a, you know, gosh, that’s been 20 years ago, I can’t believe it’s been it’s a 20th anniversary of that. But 20 years of that’s the best that I can boil it down to you. So it’s always prepared me for, for that level of flexibility, inevitability, and how to really prepare, not just in life, but preparing business for, for change to happen outside of our control.

Carl J. Cox 20:54

So you work with startups in Bunker Labs, I think that’s an amazing thing that you volunteer and you give your time to help our veterans and their spouses see an opportunity to help grow their business, and what an awesome calling but an awesome opportunity. What is the most common thing, the most common problem you see with startups where it’s something’s not working, and they need it, they need to change something to kick it off, or to take it to the next level?

Dave Burlin 21:27

Yeah, just a little context. Yeah. So we work with we work with businesses, veterans and their spouses, we give them the tools and we provide some resources and help connect them to stuff that will help them start and grow their businesses. A lot of them come in with an idea. A lot of them are already rolling a little bit. And they’re trying to refine that idea. But normally, in the in the early stages of business development and business growth, I think the biggest challenge is clarity. And when I say clarity, it’s crazy, because so many times people overthink it. Right? They try to make it too complicated. Like let let the strategic planning people overthink it and take it way outside the box, and just figure out why you’re trying to do what you’re doing. I’ll tell you, the biggest challenge that I see in the veteran space, maybe not in this may happen a lot in the civilian side to you. But a lot of people feel like they have to start a nonprofit. And that’s a whole nother conversation. But I would just say, No, the world doesn’t need another nonprofit, the world needs another for profit. So you can go help the nonprofits that are already struggling and dying. And there’s no room for competition in the nonprofit space. There’s only room for collaboration. And, and I see a lot of people that at least in the veteran side, not all the time, but there is a big percentage of people that feel like, if I make any money doing this, um, it’s not going to mean anything. And I don’t know if that comes from, you know, being in the military, and we got paid so much money to do the unforeseeable things that we do. But no, I think that that comes from, you know, we just feel like we’re not suffering, it’s not gonna matter. And that’s just not the case. Like we can help more people if we were able to charge and, you know, I’ve got somebody now somebody who’s going through our cohort right now, he actually helps people start private family foundations inside of their for profit companies as an alternative to going and starting a nonprofit. So I think there’s, there’s obviously some misconception that people have, but also there’s this you know, I don’t want it to be like a Cinderella goal that people have, like a soulmate or a soulmate business, like, Oh, this is where I put the flagpole in the universe. And this will be my business and will be my legacy, it probably won’t be, it’ll probably be your first business and you’re probably gonna either shut it down or close it because of something that you can or can’t control. And hopefully, that gives you the confidence to create the next thing, and probably the next thing, and almost nothing is forever anymore. And I can only attest to that because, you know, I’ve done things for you know, I was in the military for four years. I was a drill instructor for seven, wedding DJ for 10 years. I’ve been a consultant for the last five like I couldn’t imagine doing any one of those things at all for 40 years. So yeah, you know, and I always challenge people to say like, do what you’re good at while you still love it and then if you need to change it, that’s okay. Most people feel like it’s this soulmate business and you know that’ll that can tear apart a family that can tear apart a business it can it can do some serious damage. So to me that’s I think that’s the biggest thing that people get wrong with startups is that it’s going to be forever.

Carl J. Cox 24:48

You had some huge nuggets in there through that element. I I love what you said there last. I also think this simplicity the importance of really crystallizing what your purpose is as an organization and having a, an arrow, right, that’s direct and clear in your in your meeting, what customers ultimately need to get things done. And then that other element, I think, what you were talking about whether an organization is for profit or not, you’re so right, if we can create more value, we can give more value to those who need it, you know, and it through money or time and other areas to extend us throughout it. So, but so much of the time, that’s mindset, right, we get stuck in our own mindset beliefs, that we can’t do something or it has to be your not for profit, or, or these different areas, or I’m not good enough to make and be quote unquote, rich, right? And these are often mindsets. They’re not real. these are these are things that hold us back for being more successful. So it was those are awesome insights. So I can ask by a couple my key question, I’ll just do ask the one question, I’m going to be very gentle with it. So how do you measure success?

Dave Burlin 26:04

Man, I’ve thought about that a lot. And this, this conversation came up in a room, I was talking to him the other day, and I don’t know, I’m gonna go to edges on that, like, one, I think I can measure success here. And now. And to me, it’s by the the number of people. Honestly, measure success for me is the the number of people who would take my call. When I say that, like, I’ve, I’ve been in that boat before where I used to exhaust my network. And I was always, I wasn’t really selling something, a lot of times I was offering free events or trying to get people to come to all these things. And you could always feel whenever people didn’t like, they’re not going to answer. But it’s literally like, if I could scroll through my phone right now and just hit a dial on anybody. How many of those people would just answer the call and be excited to talk to me, and I know, that’s good. You know, that’s, that’s one element. Because the the other hard part is, you know, there’s there’s one level of success that I won’t be able to measure. And it’s how many people have something positive to say, or show up when I’m not here anymore. Oh, and that’s, that’s, that’s a deep dive into mortality. I’m not trying to go there. It’s just, I got exposed at a really early age to the funeral business. And I never would have known how much of an impact that would have on my life at 10 years old. But most of my adult life, I’ve spent frustrated because people don’t seem to care. And I just care too much. Because I grew up around that I know how precious life is. And I think I think part of the legacy and speaking and, you know, sharing and helping and empower veterans and helping all these people, like I just want to make sure that that that’s in place. So the legacy behind is is what measures

Carl J. Cox 27:59

at that is awesome, Dave, I appreciate you sharing that things. It’s it. I appreciate how you talk about the now but also about the legacy bar. Right. And and so that’s I think that’s really appreciate your your upbringing, so we’re gonna get to are you and I both have a passion for books. And I know you’re kicking off a virtual book club for leaders. Why don’t you tell us about that? And what book are you kicking off with that with a with your first go with this? Yeah. First one, I know you’ve done this before. Yeah, virtual one. So

Dave Burlin 28:32

let me clarify that. Oh, that’s so it’s been really good. Um, so just a little framework on the on the whole background of why these clubs. One of the things that I’ve learned in these principles of why networking is that it’s all about unlocking opportunities. In every person that we meet, where do we go meet people, I came up with four areas where you can do this. And this is what led to the book clubs. One, you can go to events, virtual online, in person, whatever, you can be a member of things. You can be in a Facebook group, you can go to a workshop, you can show up at things like you can be an attendee. And the second part is you can host events. I love hosting events. I hosted an event just a couple weeks ago, with Lee Cockrell, the guy that used to run Disney, right. I love just putting together groups of people and bringing them together and saying, hey, look at this thing, right? I love it in virtual like live events. I love DJing and bringing people together, I just love event. And the third one is to go through a transformational or growth experience. This could be a retreat, it could be a summit. It could be a mastermind, however people define that. It could be a book club. It’s something where you take part in something, you learn something and you go through a transformational experience at some level, or you can create and host those things and I want it to be able to create those things as to give a place for people to go and that’s where the idea of the book clubs came together. I hosted several book clubs years ago. In 2017, I did my first paid book club. And it was really just to hold some people accountable. So they showed up and they were working on what they were, they were trying to grow through, but we talked about it amongst our peers. Right. So there was no like selling now lives were changed, because some of the people that sat at that table, introduced people to other opportunities, where they got back into their passion and career and ran restaurant. I mean, there’s all kinds of powerful things that happen at those tables. So I have a couple of different tables that are that are kind of happening and starting every month, and one is just more of a book club. And I’ll play around with a few different books based on what people want to read. And some of the books may be books that people have read before. But I want to be able to do some of those books, because they’re easy to digest, But people can still work on their own thing. So and then I have a higher level mastermind group that’s going to be for more executives and things of that nature. The books that I have picked out for that are either going to be like Creating Magic, the guy that used to run all the leadership at Disney, or it could be Principles by Ray Dalio. For some of the entry level book clubs, you got one right there Start starts always been one of my favorite books to begin with, to start with, if you will. Actually another one of Jon’s book is great, too. It’s called Finish. It’s all about, you know, reaching your goals. It’s not about starting things, it’s about finishing things. And for people that are looking for some type of accountability, that’s a good one. And then one of my favorite books to start with, with any group is called You’re a Badass at Making Money. And yes, a lot of people know You’re a Badass, and that’s great, but You’re a Badass at Making Money was a very important book for me, because money wasn’t something we talked about in my in my household. So that one’s always been really powerful for me, because I found it much later in life like 2016 2017. And it was one of the big breakthrough books for me. And it’s one that everybody can resonate with, because it’s a conversation that we all have at some point. So that’s probably one of the books that I will start with on some of the the basic level book clubs in the why networking network.

Carl J. Cox 32:15

I love it. I love it. So we have been talking with Dave Burlin, from Dave Means Business, Dave, where where is it good places that people can reach out net with you. Yeah,

Dave Burlin 32:27

so I’m the only Dave Burlin on most social media platforms. So it’s easy to find me in LinkedIn. Pretty easy to find me on the social medias. I’m at Dave Burlin. And as far as more information on book clubs and stuff like that, you can go to davemeansbusiness.com/mastermind, and learn more about what I’m working on there and the the network of people that I’m trying to bring together.

Carl J. Cox 32:56

As fantastic, Dave, I really thank you so much for being on our podcasts. And thank you to everyone else for listening to the Measure Success Podcast with that, have a wonderful day.

Outro 33:10

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