The title of this episode is Maximizing Influence, which we will help you do, but I like to hope that you will find like you find it most episodes here, that we will do much more than that. So buckle up, grab a pen and paper because there will be plenty of takeaways for you today. If you are open to them.
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger positive difference for their teams, organizations and the world. If you are listening to this podcast, you could be with us live in the future on your favorite social media platform. You can find out where those episodes will be, can be found and when they will take place.
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It's time to realize that styles can get in our way, and that following our strengths might not always be the best approach. In a world more complex and uncertain than ever, leaders need a new perspective and a new set of tools to create the great results that our organizations and teams want and need. And that's what flexible leadership can provide for you. Learn more and order your copy today at Remarkable podcast.com/flexible. And with that I'm going to bring in my guest.
He is ready to go and I'll introduce him and then we'll dive in. His name is Dave Doran. He is a six. Excuse me. He's a nine figure founder, a keynote speaker, a bestselling author, an award winning CEO of leading giants, and the executive chairman of Best the Virgin Media. He has over three decades of experience in leading and entrepreneurship. He has built and sold multiple businesses which have collectively done over $1 billion in sales.
He's also the trainer of over 150,000 individuals, ranging ranging from fortune 100 executives and CEOs to small business owners and sales reps. His leadership culture and focus on humility have earned recognition from major organizations including Glassdoor, fortune, A Great Place to Work, and Top Workplaces USA. He recently released recently released his new book, Leading Giants A Leader's Guide to Maximum Influence, which will be the basis of our conversation today, at least to start with.
Dave, welcome. So glad that you're here. Hey, Kevin, it's great to be with you. It is a pleasure indeed to have you. And as you can see, I have read this book. I've marked it up as I try to do for every episode. And so I've got some stuff I want us to get to. Maybe even Dave. I'll ask you about some stuff that no one else has asked you about. But before we get there, tell us a little bit more about your journey. And here's what I mean.
Like, I gave the high level overview already, but the question that I would ask is, is this where you are today? And what you do is probably not what you expected or thought when you were, I don't know, eight. Right. So like, tell us just a little bit about how you end up in this spot. Today. Well, I, I grew up with some kind of, like, heavy achieving older brother and younger brother. I'm one of five, but, you know, they were like, you know, 4.0 students and, all conference athletes.
And I was a good student, and I was an okay athlete. But I really didn't reach my prime in academics or in athleticism until I was in college. And one of the reasons for that that stands out is because when you're a young person, you start to form who you really think you are at that time. So I don't really see myself as a top performer at all. But then I started to accomplish certain things when I was in college. And I started to realize, hey, wait, maybe there's something actually in there.
And at that point, I also realized I'm a little bit different than the rest of my family who are more inclined to be like engineers. And I had this entrepreneurial thing about me. And so I just kind of applied the whole concept of, wow, you know, what? You can actually do more than you think you can do, or at least according to what you thought when you were younger. And if you have a place to actually direct it, you're going to get good things done.
But then, you know, the journey and path are so extensive. And I have nine kids. I have nine grandkids. And the things that you learn through life, just through all sorts of things like that. My relationship with God has been waived over time. But, when that, becomes solidified in your life, too, that gives you a particular lens into what it is that you're doing and gives you a further meaning as well, too.
So it's a kind of a long journey in that it's helped by it also means, I think, the ability that you have to provide, counsel of people. Oh, I think that's for sure. So one of the lenses that you use is actually the title of this book, which is Leading Giants, which isn't the title of the show. I took the subtitle to make the title of the show. We'll get to that in a second. But I want to take this idea of giants. You have a very specific meaning for what you mean by that.
And you want us to think about that both for ourselves and for those that we lead. So we should probably get that out of the way. What do you mean, Dave? By a giant? Well, you can use a lot of words. And of course, you have what I have there in the book. But I think that the way that we have to look at this is, is one of the ways you can know something that's, you know what? It's not and it is not like a nano.
It's not a person who thinks small and small ways to do small things, but it's a person who leads big in a big way to lead big people to their greatest. And so when you're going to do that sort of thing, you basically have to begin by saying, If I'm going to lead giants, I have to lead with the perspective that this person I'm leading has a certain amount of potential, and that's the potential that I'm here to maximize, not necessarily my own, because that'll take care of itself.
But if I'm leading this organization, I'm going to lead giants. They have they're going to have a big diet and they're going to need a lot of room to roam, and they're going to need to be like self agents. And so I have to provide that environment to them and to allow them to do great things. One of the things back to the to the stated end goal or topic of the show around influence.
One of the things you say, and I think it's even in the introduction, I'm just going to read it because I think I can find it instantly. To a large degree, the words leadership and influence are interchangeable. I completely agree, but I want you to tell us why you say that and what you mean by that. So if you're going to lead somebody, you're going to lead them for the purpose of influencing them. I mean, you know, a lot of people don't understand leadership.
And the most basic level, if you were to say to somebody what makes a great leader? Most people are going to say things like, well, somebody is not a hypocrite. Somebody that is a servant. Oh, they're going to say these things that they're good. There's no there's not that they're wrong. But that's not ultimately it. What makes a great leader, a great leader is that they take a person where they need and want to go. At the end of the day.
Give me a pilot who is maybe a little bit rude and crass, but safely takes me to the destination I desire every time. And that is better than a really nice guy behind the oak who's going to crash a plane or take me to the wrong place. Now, all things equal, I want a really nice person flying the airplane that takes me where I'm supposed to go. So that ultimately is the end of the story, is that leadership influences. It says, here's a destination. I think this destination is good for you.
It's good for the organization. We're all going to go there together, and you can either be a good influence or a bad influence. And the reason that I say that it's by and large the same thing is it's not exactly the same thing. There's a lot of influencers online who literally have they don't make consequential decisions. They're not literally influencers. In fact, it's a funny name that we say influencer online. It's more like a marketer online than it is an influencer.
And yeah, and so I think it's really important for a person to be able to say, if you're leading somebody, you actually have skin in the game. There's a there's a consequence to the decisions you're actually going to make. And that's true leadership. It's not somebody who's just going to like whimsically say, hey, I think we should all like, you know, rally after this cause and not be steeped into it or to be saying something just think is popular at the time.
That's going to get him ratings, but not constructing something actually real of goodness. And then selling to Kevin is like, I'm not willing to train people how to maximize their bad influence. There's good influence and there's bad influence. I'm willing to help people influence people the right way for the right cause. And somebody might say, well, it's a little arrogant, Dave, for you to be the one who tells me that, but it's not me.
We all understand that there is goodness and there is other. And if a person disagrees on what is good compared to something else, it is usually malformation that gets them there, or a lack of understanding. And with further explanation for their understanding. We're all pretty collectively going to be together. Like, you know, hey, leading people to murder is a bad idea, okay? But a just war might not be a bad way to save your country.
So, you know, these are generally universally understood things that nobody's going to debate. So one of the things I don't want you to take this wrong, and I don't think you will. But you talk about this book is largely based on the idea of being, virtue based leadership. Lots of books written about skill based leadership, behavior based leadership. And these three words are connected. But you specifically talk about virtues, and you talk about four of them as superpowers.
Yes. And, and I want to have you unpack them in a second. But here's here's the thing that I don't want you to take wrong, like these four things, everybody that you're about to hear about that they've called superpowers, are not the kinds of things you would normally hear on a podcast. They are not the kinds of words or virtues that are in vogue, at least not the words that you've chosen. And so I'm opening with that meant as a compliment, right?
Because I think one of the things that we're completely together on is that the world is changing, and we as leaders must understand those changes and adapt and adjust. And I would say flex. And yet most of leadership isn't and hasn't changed. And I think these four superpowers point to that fact. So, I'm just going to let you I've got for those watching, I'll put them on the bottom of the screen.
Dave, but just talk about these four things briefly to give people a sense of where you where you stand on these things and how they can be valuable to the rest of us. So they're very valuable, in two different ways. I'll name them in a moment. One way that they're valuables. Almost like if you know, Kevin, you've had, like, a dial on your car. Dash. And you didn't know what it was. And some of these, you're always looking for certain things. Okay? It's right there.
And just the discovery of it, the knowledge that it's there makes it very accessible and usable. Yeah, these are that way for some people. Just like, wait, I hadn't thought of that. I'm going to apply that. But then other times though, it's a little bit more complex, like, hey, there's an app for that cab. So you open up the app and you're like, you know what? I need training on how to use it. So these very things sometimes come a little bit more obvious
and then sometimes more training. Another is old is dirt. Aristotle talked about them, and they're the cardinal virtues. The word cardinal is actually a Latin term for hinge, meaning that the rest of the virtues hinge upon them, and they are. They're in vogue by way of practice, but not intentional. And that's what I help people to do, is to make these things intentional.
Right? Yeah. So nobody would ever say, what I love about working there is nobody can make a decision to save their life, right? Nobody would ever say, what I love about working there is everybody is a quitter. They wouldn't say. What I love about working there is that they were totally unfair and nobody has self-control. Well, the opposite of these things are the cardinal virtues. Prudence also calls it called wisdom is the mastery of decision making.
And. Okay, have you ever had somebody say to you, something that was like, frustrating, especially when you're young, you didn't know how to do it? I couldn't stand it when people say, Dave, you need to believe to achieve. When I was young, man, I was like, but I don't. And like, you know, like. Thank you for playing. I don't know what to do with that. Right? Yeah. Whatever. Like. You know, grunt harder and believe I still don't. So how do you do it?
So if somebody says to you you need to make better decisions, but they don't tell you how that's difficult. But the cardinal virtues and the understanding of prudence is actually a lesson for that. There are three simple steps. Desire what is good. Because if you don't desire what's good in any circumstance, you can't get it done. Do you know what's good at work or what's good in your marriage? If you don't say what's good when you get in the car to drive?
Or in fact, if your Uber driver doesn't desire what's good, you don't want them around. You have to know what's real. And this is where most people mess up. They have a difficult time judging circumstances. And that's the second step to prudence. But you have to make a judgment. Yes. And in order to do that, we have to get rid of the bias that we have in our mind, or the self-justification, which is super powerful motivator.
And the last thing we have to do if we're making good decisions is act on them. And that's how, you know, if you're around a person who's practice prudence is, they have a shrewdness about them where they can actually act pretty quickly once they've made the decision, and they measure the speed of the decision to the way to the issue, whereas an imprudent person is going to be like at the work day, you're like, hey, you know, want to have some lunch or the like, how or where should we go?
And they take 20 minutes to think about where to go. And then they get there and they think about 15 minutes about what they're going to eat. And as opposed to like, you know, what's a workday? Let's just eat this and go. That very person who, who makes the long term decision to eat lunch will whimsically buy a car on the weekend without giving it any thought. So it's like you have to measure the speed of the decision to the weight of the issue. And that's really what prudence is.
The second of the four is justice. Yeah. Talk about justice. Well, you'd say that we're talking today. Yeah. You can't be just if you don't have prudence and the cool thing about this is that these things build. So if you know a person who, doesn't really have a sense of justice, you can almost tie it back to the fact that they have no prudence.
Now, we have kind of these subjective virtues within things, which means that you might be a person who has self-control when it comes to not eating ice cream, but not self-control to something else. Right? So there's kind of this like, sub, you know, really a subjective application to some of them. But by and large, you can't have justice if you don't have prudence. So that is to give each their due portion.
If you imagine having a judge, you're sitting there and being tried and you know you're innocent and the judge is about you to, you know, they don't they don't care about what's good in the circumstance. They don't know what's real, and they're not going to act on good. Those are the things that make up prudence. How can they possibly provide you a just measure? And so that's why it's important that we build prudence so that the person understands justice.
Which leads to as we're building these up, these superpowers. The next one is fortitude. Yeah. And, you mentioned in passing earlier that we that none of us want the opposite of this. And yet I don't think this word like the others gets used enough. No, like, as I was reading this, I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why don't I use the word fortitude more? Because I think it's just so powerful. So talk to us about what you mean here.
Well, I think the reason we don't use it is because we have the words that actually kind of mean it, and they're pretty good that way, like courage or stick to liveness, these different things. The problem is though, when we use them these other terms is we don't use what would be considered like a regulator on them. So most people have to understand that virtues are on a bit of a spectrum. And you need to optimize them just like you need to optimize your personality.
In fact, it's one of the things I talk about a lot. And so what does that mean if you have two if you have like this, what would be perceived as an excessive fortitude or bravery? It's kind of nuttiness. It's crazy actually. So if you were like a, you know, 27 year old guy who's married with two kids and has a lot of responsibilities in life, you've been mildly uncoordinated your entire life. And you decide one weekend you saw base jumping video.
You want to start base jumping, okay, that's jumping off a cliff at a low level. And then, you know, having a shoot come out. Well, that's not a lot of people go, wow, what courage. What? That's not that's craziness. Why is it crazy? It's crazy because you're probably going to get killed. It's audacious. It would be completely unjust to leave your wife widowed and your kids to be orphaned because of that. And you don't desire clearly at all what's good in this circumstance?
You certainly don't know what's real, you uncoordinated idiot. And you're going to act upon something that's poorly justified. But that's not about base jumping. I mean, if you're, you know, 21 years old, you're very coordinated. You've taken a lot of risks, and you're kind of a daredevil. And Red bull is going to give you a $2 million sponsorship. You don't have kids. Go for it. Sure.
Or if you're 85 years old and all your affairs in order, I mean, the grandkids would probably think it's cool to watch grandpa go out that way. So it's not about base jumping, it's about where that fits into the prudence and the justice related to the circumstance. And that's what I would call look at our context. Right. When you talk about, knowing what's real, like what's the context really not like what you want it to be, but like, what's really happening here?
And often that we try to treat things as if it's clearer than it really is. There's more uncertainty and complexity than we might want to. Right. Yeah. The fourth of the four things is temperance. Yes. Temperance for just a second. Well, so if you have, prudence, you desire what's good, you know what's real. You act upon what's good, you have justice and fairness and you have fortitude, but you lack the last thing you can take yourself out of the game.
So we have seen people who build great careers, have lots of success, even build good relationships. But you know what? She looks pretty hot over there. Oh, no, no, no, you're a married man and that is a resistance you need to have. That is it. You have to temper that temptation, okay? By having the resistance of it. Or you know what, you're about to have a heart attack and you need a certain diet because of it, and you just can't resist the food that's going to kill you.
We need to have temperance. There's that one thing that you just want to say to this person, but you have to hold your tongue. So we've all had the experience of not telling somebody to go stick it right. And sometimes we have the experience maybe telling somebody that and it was unjustified or maybe justified at a certain time, but we misplayed it. Why? Because we had temperance. We paused for a moment, we thought about it and we use our self-control. So it's very important thing to have.
And it basically tops the things off. Now, the great thing about it, Kevin, is that if you are practicing prudence, justice and fortitude, you are so strongly inclined to naturally have temperance that it's going to be likely. But if you're not doing those things, you're going to have, like I said, the subjective virtue of temperance, which is to say, I'm very disciplined in what I do for my body because I want to have a beach body, but I'm not very disciplined in my relationship.
Okay, well, that's not really. Situational temperance, is it? Well, it's really it. It is. Yeah. So I found myself I am talking everyone with if you just came in late for some reason, Dave Duran, the author of, among other things, of the new book Leading Giants A Leader's Guide to Maximum Influence, and we're talking about some of the ideas in the book.
And, Dave, one of the things that you talk about a good bit, and I know it's one of the things that you like to talk about, is the idea of, as a leader in an organization, building a deep bench. And I'm sure you you hear this all the time when you're working with clients and coaching leaders that people are talking about succession planning and having a bench and worrying about losing a key person. And I love that in this book you spend some time talking about building a deep bench.
What are a couple of things that maybe people don't think about or don't connect with the idea of having, a lot of strength on the bench that we ought to talk about. Well, I think what happens is that they're building for the short term.
So, when I build things, I want them to be around, and, you know, I've started a lot of companies, but, you know, I the companies that I started for the most part, unless they were just a one off, you know, small consulting company where I was the only consultant in it. And I wrapped up the phase of that. If I started a business, it's, for the most part, still in existence. Most of them are, once I got past MVP.
Okay. And the only way that was possible was on day one to say, how do I replace myself? And my goal always when I build a business is to make myself as irrelevant as I can possibly be, as swiftly as I can possibly be irrelevant, so that it's not built on a cult of personality. So when you have a leader that says something like, well, if I left, everyone would leave. Well, that's a bad leader. In fact, that's not a really that's not a leader you should follow.
And a lot of times you'll have like a mid-level manager in your organization or a vice president if you're a president or CEO, and they'll kind of allude that to you. Well, you know, if I left, everybody leave. I literally if somebody on my team ever said that, I did. And leave now because you have built the worst team in your department that you could possibly build if you left, if everybody else would leave, that means that they are here in a cult of personality.
They're not here for their own reasons, their own motives or the overall mission. They're here because of you. That's just a bad idea. So immediately you have to start to say to yourself, how do I make myself irrelevant? But our pride gets in the way. Generally speaking, we're like, well, I want to believe that I'm so important that if I weren't here, this couldn't work out. I want to feel that importance.
And if we can just free ourselves from that idea and build something to last by empowering the other people in the organization, I. Kevin, I almost look at it as kind of like hogging. So I think you would have read this in the story, but I remember when I was like maybe 21 or 20, I don't remember how early 20s there was a guy who I worked with who was about, I don't know how many years my senior, and he he said, what'd you do this weekend?
I said, I mowed my lawn, and he said, I can't you don't seem like that kind of guy. And I said, what do you mean? He goes, well, you don't seem like the kind of guy who would steal from the neighbor kid or your family. So what are you talking about? And he goes, well, if you're not paying the neighbor kid 20 bucks to mow your lawn, you're stealing the 20 bucks from him that he should have gotten. And if you're not spending that time with your kids, then you're stealing the time from them.
So why don't you pay the neighbor kid 20 bucks, give him the job that he could have, and be irrelevant there. But go be relevant where you should be with your family. By the way, there's a lot of wisdom in that. It's certainly flawed in certain degrees. I mean, it's kind of cathartic to mow your lawn, and it's not. Like if you like to mow your lawn. Not only that, it's not bad for your kids to see you doing that type of work.
But but the essence of the story that he gave, while I continue to enjoy mowing my lawn, was something that I did not forget. Okay. And and it really applies to what happens in the workplace. So I look at a lot of CEOs hog their spot for way too long. And and they just, you know, they're, they're blocking opportunities for people to, to have, advancement opportunities, the organization.
Maybe it's because this is the only thing they've ever built in their life, and they don't know if they're going to build something else. And for that reason, maybe it's not a bad idea to stick around a little bit longer. I mean, we all have a choice to do that, especially for entrepreneurs. But, it should be carefully considered, because the the better off you're doing it something, the quicker you are to be replaced in fact, this is another way I'd say it.
The bigger you build an organization or the the higher you rise an organization, the greater your responsibility, but the less your responsibility is. And so as a result of that, if you have less responsibilities but a greater responsibility, it does give you a little bit more time to mentor somebody. And to shift some of that responsibility to them. Yeah. Agreed. I agree with that.
And so what I want to do is I'm looking at the time that we've got left and I know, I already know, like, well, maybe this is ego. Everybody, like, I always feel like if I'm really loving this, that probably all of the, all of the listeners are, which I suppose could be incorrect. But I'm confident that we could spend a long time and I've lots of stuff that we could talk about.
I really wanted to get to the four habits in the book, but I'm just going to tell people, listen, you got to get a copy of the book Leading Giants by Dave Duran, and then he can tell you all about you can read all about the four habits I want to talk about. One of the thing where we are completely in alignment. Okay. Which in your book you talk about is, why are we working overtime? Yeah, we are in complete alignment about this, in so many ways.
But let's talk about this because there are so many leaders, whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're a manager in the middle of the organization, doesn't matter where we feel like, the more time we put in, the more valuable we become. Let's talk about time a little bit. So most people that are stuck on this have a false virtue. They are justifying themselves by working a lot because they hear no pain, no gain. You've got a sacrifice. But let's just look at it logically.
And just because everybody always talks about Elon, by the way, not politically right now, but they talk about Elon because of how many businesses he's built that are massive. Right. And that he's the CEO of simultaneously. Well, if time were the way that he accomplished that, he could only be, you know, three times more effective than a person that works eight hours a day because there's 24 hours of working, which is physically impossible for human beings.
So he's got to be doing something else. And certainly he's intelligent, but he uses leverage. And that's what influence is. Influence is to say that the very thing that I'm trying to influence right now, I need to delegate to somebody else. Why? Because I don't want to lead a normal. I want to lead a giant. So if I'm going to be effective, I'm going to stop and think, what is it that I'm doing that somebody else could do right now?
And how could I give them the authority that I have to make that happen to now basically have a shockwave of influence and other people. But as long as we start thinking to ourselves, well, gosh, you know, it's a badge of honor for most people. It is a false virtue. It's like, oh, I work so much. And like, you know, that's how I justify. But people say to me all the time, hey, I know you're so busy. So, I mean.
I'm at home for dinner, like 430 while I'm building the company to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. And why? Well, because everything that I could have done when I stayed later, I just made sure somebody else could do. And by the way, just this important point, because I've been criticized. Oh, is the CEO you went home like that? Everybody else must listen in any of my companies. If you were there past 430, you were burning the midnight oil.
I mean, I did not build a culture for people that way. It was a work. When you want, where you want, whenever you want culture with no limited vacation time, it was you have a job to do, get that job done. That was it. That was how we did it. And so some people were really efficient with that. Some people took a little bit longer, but I was like, listen, something I'm never, ever going to ask you to do is to lay down or sacrifice your family or your faith or your health for this business.
Those things come first. Now, at the same time, hard work heals family relationships and physical health and finances. So it's a part of the solution, not the problem. So don't look at as an enemy of those things. But let's not miss prioritize it. I've been saying for years that busy is the most dangerous four letter word in the English language because it's focused on the wrong thing, which is another way of saying what you're saying. Let's focus on what we need to accomplish.
Yeah, what about the time that's taking us to accomplish it? I love your point about it. You know, if it if you only look at it on an hour basis, the most some anyone could be compared to someone else is three times better. And we know that that's really not that's a that's a really limiting thought. I want to shift gears for a second. Well before it before we do that, let me ask you one other question.
Is there something we didn't talk about day that you really hoped we would, or that's come up in your head as we've been talking that you'd like to share? Well, I have been working on something that's a culmination of 35 years worth of, of this sort of journey and have, you know this right? When you've consulted with people, they say to you that, well, you know what, things aren't working here because our marketing plan is off.
Our finances were off, we couldn't get product, our production was off. We couldn't get investors and the economy was off, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Very true. For most of the things there's there's a component of those, but almost every one of those things is tied back to the person. You can't get the financing because nobody trusts you. Your marketing plan isn't working because you won't look at statistics and data accurately. You self justify everything.
The reason people don't like you as a leader is because you're talking too much, or whatever it might be. So we would be able to say about everybody in their life, I like them, but I wish they were a little bit more. Well, I like them, but I wish they were a little less. And if we're honest, we have to be able to say the same thing about ourselves, because everybody in our life could say that same thing about us to for sure, whatever that more or less thing is, is a part of our personality.
So I'm building a program to optimize personality, to help people more, more. I know it sounds bold, okay, but we're building a tool that I really believe is the most powerful tool ever built to help people optimize their personality. Because it it takes a very, very complex look at it in order to diagnose the circumstance which provides the deficiency that they have. The suboptimal deficiency or the suboptimal excess, like we talked about with bravery or cowardice. Right.
You really need fortitude instead. And how to pinpoint it and what prevents them from being able to do it so they can build that, as a character trait or a personality trait. And so that's something people build by the time they actually comes out on a podcast. I think that tool will be ready. And where will they be able to find it? They will be able to find that online.
And I'm going to have to give that to you as a note so that when that is available, We'll make sure we get it in the show notes. I love. That. The bleeding edge and not seriously, Dave, you get it to us, that to us. We'll make sure we get it in the show notes for the show, whether it's available when the show first comes out or whatever it is. We'll make sure that we do that. I've got a couple other things for us before we wrap up. Dave, I want to know, it's very clear that you love your work.
It's very clear that you care about the work that you do. And I'm curious what you do for fun. Oh my goodness. Well, because I have nine kids, nine grandkids. Most of my kids are married. Just had two daughters, graduate last night. Family takes up an enormous amount of time, but we also just love to do lots of different things. Like, you know, I'm an old man now. I'm 56. And so when it comes to I was a martial artist, throughout most of my life, but now I'm just kind of an older one.
But I still do that. I still dabble around a little bit. I, I'm a I'm, I'm about dangerous enough that I could take on a toddler pretty safely. Outside of that, though, I'm probably going to get injured, but I still enjoy it. You know, as a family, we ski, we get out here, out on the beach as well too. So a lot of a lot of a lot of good times. And, I love to read, too.
And my, my faith is important to me too, which is not a hobby, but it is something that I spend my time with because it's important. And ultimately speaking, at the end of the day, retiring isn't just about pickleball, but it's about the eternal retirement that we have. And I want to spend some time investing in that too. I love that. So you mentioned reading. You knew I was going to ask you this question. What are you reading these days? I read a lot of books, usually simultaneously.
I go back to some good classics like, ethics. You know, I'll always dive back into, you know, some sort of, Aristotelian or a platonic, type of reading. At the same time. I'll read some more contemporary people, too, you know, some good classics, like Daniel Kahneman's work, if you know anything about that, you know, thinking fast and slow and, many different types of things, like that.
And I usually have about, I don't know, 5 to 7 books that I'm reading simultaneously that I'll churn through in about a 2 or 3 month period of time and, enjoy that. We'll have thinking fast and slow in the show notes, as well as, links to Dave's new book, Leading Giants Maximizing AI Leaders Guide to Maximum Influence. So, anything else that you any place else, you want to point us or tell us about what you're up to before we go.
Now, you know, I'm just doing the grind, and enjoying every single day of it. There's a lot that, we can all give to the world. And I want to try to do two things simultaneously, provide whatever I can to influence anybody I can for the better. But also, really, I want to help them do the same thing, too, because most people, Kev, as you know, don't know how much greatness they have in them. A lot of people think that pride is the biggest problem with the world today,
and there's an enormous amount of pride. That is very true. But there's a lot of people right now who have been basically given a false, understanding of themselves to believe that they don't have the self agency to become great. And every one of us is to, at least to our own vocational calling, meant to be great within that. That doesn't mean great the same way. We're not all going to be, you know, famous athletes and, you know, actors and actresses and politicians.
But in her own way, like my second grade teacher, who I believe is one of the all time great people out there in the world, but nobody's going to know her name very much outside of her, a little influence. She is a tremendously great person, as is my mother and father and, and, and, and we have that in this. But it takes discipline. It takes hard work and a commitment to do it.
So before I thank Dave and we finish up the show, I'm going to do what I do for all of you listening and watching every single episode. I ask you this two word very important question. Now what what are you going to do with what you just learned? Maybe, you learned something about are asking yourself if you're hogging your spot. Maybe you learned something about the industry and responsibility and responsibilities. Maybe I don't know what it was for you.
My question isn't, my point is not to tell you what to take. My question is for you to decide what you're going to take and what you're going to act on as a result of being here, because if you don't take action, it won't have made any difference. And so I hope that you will do that. And, so, Dave, thank you so much for being here. Is a pleasure to have you. Thanks for being for joining me. Kevin, thanks so much for having me out. And everybody, if you enjoyed this, tell somebody else.
And if you enjoyed this, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any episodes because we'll be back next week. Guess what? Next week, episode number 500. We'll see you then. Have a great day. And remember, as always, you are a remarkable leader.