Speaker 1: Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
Speaker 1: This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Speaker 2: Today's episode is going to be a longer one part
Speaker 2: of the series where I interview fascinating people about how
Speaker 2: they take their days from great to awesome and any
Speaker 2: advice they have for the rest of us. So today
Speaker 2: I am delighted to welcome David Burkis to the show.
Speaker 2: David is the author of several best selling business books,
Speaker 2: including Best Team Ever and Friend of a Friend. He
Speaker 2: speaks on leadership topics to all sorts of audiences. So, David,
Speaker 2: welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, excited to have you on. So why don't you
Speaker 1: tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean how far back do we want to go? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: Far? Do you want to go?
Speaker 3: Right? Yes? So I was born No, just kidding, I
Speaker 3: was an organization I'm or organizational scholars by training. I
Speaker 3: was a business school professor for about ten years. I've
Speaker 3: always been fascinated with teams and human connections and network
Speaker 3: dynamics and that sort of a thing, And around twenty
Speaker 3: thirteen twenty fourteen started to write more less for an
Speaker 3: academic audience and more for practitioners, and that led to
Speaker 3: invitations to speak and to consult and what have you.
Speaker 3: And then around COVID. You know, everyone's life got really
Speaker 3: really difficult in COVID, but I started to get a
Speaker 3: whole lot more. Hey can you do this webinar for
Speaker 3: our people? Can you design this whole training? Et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So when university said, hey, we're bringing classes
Speaker 3: back in person, I basically said, no, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to be there. I'm going to be doing this other stuff.
Speaker 3: So I made the leap into doing that full time,
Speaker 3: I guess about five years ago. Now, wow, wow, that
Speaker 3: seems weird. And it's just absolutely loving it. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's fun to teach the next generation of business folks
Speaker 3: how to create a better working environment, how to have
Speaker 3: better teams, but it's a whole lot more fun to
Speaker 3: teach the people who can go apply it later that day. Right,
Speaker 3: So absolutely loving it.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love the practical ideas one can can do today.
Speaker 1: And a lot of your recent work, as you said,
Speaker 1: has been on teams.
Speaker 2: Recent book a best team Ever? I guess what actually
Speaker 2: makes something the best team ever? The high promise.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, absolutely, So when you look at the research,
Speaker 3: you find that culture plays a much larger role than
Speaker 3: you would anticipate. I mean, I don't mean to diminish
Speaker 3: things like talent, getting the people with the best knowledge, skills,
Speaker 3: and abilities, et cetera. Talent's great, but we've all probably
Speaker 3: seen that example of putting a talented player on just
Speaker 3: a terrible team and watching the team sort of degrade
Speaker 3: them down. So if you can get high talented people, great,
Speaker 3: but more importantly, work on a culture that helps turn
Speaker 3: talent into performance. And in particular in the book, we
Speaker 3: outline kind of three areas where high performing teams shine
Speaker 3: in the habits and norms of behavior that they have. Well,
Speaker 3: one is how much common understanding or shared understanding they have.
Speaker 3: So I know my role, but I also know enough
Speaker 3: about everybody else in the team, not just their technical roles,
Speaker 3: but also their personality where we connect and overlap, I
Speaker 3: can kind of predict their behavior from it. The second
Speaker 3: element is a sense of psychological safety. So I understand
Speaker 3: how to help build candor on the team. I understand
Speaker 3: what somebody who's speaking up because they disagree looks like,
Speaker 3: and I give them the space to do that. I
Speaker 3: even psychological safety even responds to how we embrace failure, right,
Speaker 3: And so you tap into much a bigger growth mindset
Speaker 3: on a team when you can talk about fairs in
Speaker 3: a way that doesn't just sort of like punish everybody
Speaker 3: and have them diminish it. And then the third element,
Speaker 3: the third kind of norm, is that these teams constantly
Speaker 3: remind themselves of their purpose, but not purpose as like
Speaker 3: why we do what we do. We actually in the
Speaker 3: book call it pro social purpose. They're reminded of who
Speaker 3: is served by the work that you're doing, and that
Speaker 3: not only increases motivation, but there's a lot of recent
Speaker 3: research that suggests that that increases the amount of team
Speaker 3: work behaviors on a team, right, because when you know
Speaker 3: that you're doing this for someone else, you're much more
Speaker 3: likely to put your own ego aside and do what
Speaker 3: the team needs in order to get that person served
Speaker 3: to the highest level. And so that's it common understanding
Speaker 3: psychological safety and pro social purpose. That's the easy answer
Speaker 3: to what makes for those best teams?
Speaker 2: Ever, Yeah, that sounds great. Here's a sort of practical question.
Speaker 2: How big is the best team?
Speaker 3: Ever?
Speaker 2: I mean, I know that we don't always get to
Speaker 2: decide this, but is there is there a sweet spot
Speaker 2: where where it's easier to get those three things?
Speaker 3: Then?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So generally, I mean, obviously if we're talking about
Speaker 3: work teams, if we're talking about a sports team, it's
Speaker 3: as big as you know, there are positions right right
Speaker 3: Generally in the day to day work like what we do,
Speaker 3: large teams do suck. The sweet spot tends to be
Speaker 3: between about six and eight members of the team. After that,
Speaker 3: it becomes really hard to keep one conversation in meetings.
Speaker 3: It becomes really hard to keep one sense of clarity,
Speaker 3: and you may actually be better off thinking of it
Speaker 3: as like, let's break the team. If you've got a
Speaker 3: team of fourteen people, it might actually be better to
Speaker 3: have two teams of seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I know that's going to say. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like a dinner party.
Speaker 2: Yeah, six to eight is the right number past that
Speaker 2: you've got two conversations going at the table. But you know,
Speaker 2: let's say that somebody has a team that you know,
Speaker 2: they're listening to this and they're managing a team and
Speaker 2: they would like to make people feel, you know, more cohesive.
Speaker 2: Is there something they can to try, you know, today
Speaker 2: or tomorrow to make that happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I'll give you the in depth answer
Speaker 3: and then maybe I'll give you us a smaller answer.
Speaker 3: My favorite activity to run teams through is this activity
Speaker 3: we call the Manual of Me. And it's exactly what
Speaker 3: it sounds like, writing the user's manual to what it's
Speaker 3: like to work for you, with you or for you?
Speaker 3: You know, what are your strengths and weaknesses? Where are
Speaker 3: the opportunities you tend to contribute. I typically when I
Speaker 3: work with a team, I come to them with four
Speaker 3: questions that have to be answered, and then I let
Speaker 3: them ask whatever else they want. But we kind of
Speaker 3: start with four fill in the blank questions. I'm at
Speaker 3: my best when blank, and I'm at my worst win
Speaker 3: blank or one and two, which are strength to weaknesses questions,
Speaker 3: but also like context questions. Right, some people are at
Speaker 3: their best when they're at their office being social, other
Speaker 3: people when they're in like monk mode at home, right,
Speaker 3: So we want to know that. And then the third
Speaker 3: and fourth questions are you can count on me too,
Speaker 3: meaning historically, this is where I make contributions to the team.
Speaker 3: This is where I help most often I'm a whiz
Speaker 3: with Excel formulas or something like that. Right, And then
Speaker 3: the fourth question is what I need from you is
Speaker 3: meaning this is where I've historically needed help. And it's
Speaker 3: funny because I give people those questions and the most
Speaker 3: common reaction I get is somebody goes, well, I don't
Speaker 3: even know the answers of that for myself, Like, great, well,
Speaker 3: you've got a week to reflect and kind of figure
Speaker 3: it out, and then we come back together and share
Speaker 3: out those answers, leave some time for discussion. It's like
Speaker 3: what I like in it too, is it's like taking
Speaker 3: the most in depth personality differences test you could take.
Speaker 3: Whether you want to call that disc or Myers Briggs
Speaker 3: or whatever. You're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for
Speaker 3: a multinational site wide license to administer and doing it
Speaker 3: for free. First of all, you could just steal those
Speaker 3: questions feel free too, and you get the same level
Speaker 3: of conversation about differences and about appreciation for how people
Speaker 3: are and how we're going to change the way we
Speaker 3: collaborate based on this information. So that's like, my that's
Speaker 3: my favorite. You probably can't do that tomorrow. You could
Speaker 3: start tomorrow, but you're gonna have to give them some
Speaker 3: time to it. But you also, if you wanted to,
Speaker 3: can sneak those questions into regular meetings. Right, Those are
Speaker 3: like good ice breakers instead of saying what's your favorite movie?
Speaker 3: Which is helpful to know, those are real questions around
Speaker 3: how you work. So just pick one and ask one
Speaker 3: per week, and that's something you could do tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, David, what's your fun fact? When somebody asks you
Speaker 1: your fun fact about you? As an icebreaker?
Speaker 3: My fun fact, I've actually spent the last nineteen years
Speaker 3: training in this really esoteric martial art called Brazilian jiu jitsu.
Speaker 3: That's my fun fact that I go through.
Speaker 1: Fun fact. Yeah, exactly. Well, we may come back to that.
Speaker 3: All right, welcome to it a little bit.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious. What do people get wrong about team building?
Speaker 2: I am sure you've seen some atrocious team building over
Speaker 2: the years.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing I tell people is
Speaker 3: team building is not an activity. It's a habit. It's
Speaker 3: not a one off thing. The biggest thing people get
Speaker 3: wrong it's like, oh, great, we're gonna do this activity.
Speaker 3: We're gonna all rank the items we need in the
Speaker 3: metaphorical shipwreck, like you've done that activity, right, or we're
Speaker 3: gonna use these wooden planks to cross the imaginary river
Speaker 3: and then magically that's going to turn us into a team.
Speaker 3: The research is really clear on this. Then unless you
Speaker 3: have that. That's not to say don't do any of
Speaker 3: these activities, but unless you have an active and then
Speaker 3: a conversation about how what we learned in that activity
Speaker 3: translates into day to day behaviors I can hold people
Speaker 3: accountable to you don't see any lasting change from those
Speaker 3: team building activities, So it's much more about the habit.
Speaker 3: And so to me, I don't know. Maybe I'm just
Speaker 3: no fun right, Maybe I'm a spoil sport. Maybe, but
Speaker 3: I just find it more useful to jump jump into
Speaker 3: something like the Manual of Me and like, let's just
Speaker 3: jump to the conversation about habits and norms instead of
Speaker 3: have to do the activity first. Right, So that's me.
Speaker 2: It turns out that a trust fall does not in
Speaker 2: fact make you trust your team members.
Speaker 3: Yeah no, no, not not at all. It felt great
Speaker 3: at summer camp when we were all like nine, but now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, past that, not so much.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break,
Speaker 2: and then I'll be back with more from David Burkis. Well,
Speaker 2: I am back talking with David burkis Is, the author
Speaker 2: of several business books, including Best Team Ever. We've been
Speaker 2: talking about some ways to make your team a better team.
Speaker 2: You're also the author of a book called Friend or
Speaker 2: a Friend, which, and I know a lot of people
Speaker 2: are listening to say, like, oh, no, networking not that
Speaker 2: so right up there with team building in terms of
Speaker 2: how much we.
Speaker 3: Enjot me, I've just go right after all the things
Speaker 3: we hate about work, all.
Speaker 1: The fun stuff.
Speaker 2: So what you know, somebody's listening to this and you're
Speaker 2: trying to convince them that they're not terrible at networking.
Speaker 2: What are some practical things we should be doing to make,
Speaker 2: you know, relationship building more fun and yeah authentic?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing I'll say
Speaker 3: is that if you if you hate networking, if you
Speaker 3: feel sleazy and weird and what have you like, I
Speaker 3: totally get it right before. The motivation for writing that
Speaker 3: book was that I read a lot of networking books
Speaker 3: earlier in my career, and then I attempted to apply
Speaker 3: their advice and the thing I ran into was that
Speaker 3: like I feel inauthentic. Well, of course I feel inauthentic
Speaker 3: because I'm doing so and so's version of networking. I'm
Speaker 3: not doing my own right. And so the point of
Speaker 3: Friend of a Friend is it's really a book that
Speaker 3: is kind of a way to explain here's the science
Speaker 3: of how social networks form, how humans actually create interactions
Speaker 3: of what have you. And it's called Friend of a
Speaker 3: Friend because I think the biggest insight in there is
Speaker 3: that you don't actually have to go to any of
Speaker 3: those networking events where you serendipitously try and meet strangers
Speaker 3: if you don't want to. You don't. You don't have
Speaker 3: to make the perfect elevator pitch between the existing network
Speaker 3: that you have and the ones that those people could
Speaker 3: potentially introduce you to. You have everything you need to
Speaker 3: have a robust enough network to achieve your career goals. Right,
Speaker 3: I don't even call it friend of the book actually
Speaker 3: is like friend of a friend of a friend of
Speaker 3: a friend. But that's because we had a great graphic designer.
Speaker 3: But I don't even care about like we talk about
Speaker 3: six degrees of separation, but you don't need to like
Speaker 3: chase down six introductions in order to meet the CEO
Speaker 3: of a major tech company or whatever. One or two
Speaker 3: is usually enough in terms of practical kind of habits.
Speaker 3: What I would say is the single most neglected thing
Speaker 3: that people do is they don't spend enough time continuing
Speaker 3: to nurture what we would call dormant ties. Right, So
Speaker 3: maybe you've heard, if you're listening to this, you've heard
Speaker 3: of the famous paper by Mark Ranovt or the Strength
Speaker 3: of Weak Ties. But there's a specific form of a
Speaker 3: week tie called a dormant tie. Someone we know, but
Speaker 3: because we haven't talked to them in a while, we
Speaker 3: we kind of fell out of touch with right and
Speaker 3: so as a result, they're often their world doing something.
Speaker 3: We're oft in our world doing something. And the truth
Speaker 3: is most of our kind of cool, serendipitous. Hey, I'm
Speaker 3: looking for a new job, I want to make a
Speaker 3: career change. I just need advice on this thing, or
Speaker 3: could somebody please help me get tickets to Taylor Swift
Speaker 3: whatever it is. Most of those opportunities come from those
Speaker 3: dormant ties, because they're people that know you enough to
Speaker 3: want to help you, and vice versa, you know them
Speaker 3: enough to want to help them. And they're in a
Speaker 3: different world, They're in a different industry or sector or
Speaker 3: geographic region, and so they have available to them opportunities
Speaker 3: you can't see. So what does this mean, Like, practically,
Speaker 3: whatever system works for you to make sure you stay
Speaker 3: in touch with them, you know what I do. I
Speaker 3: actually kind of took it to I used to play
Speaker 3: a game I called cell Phone Roulette where I would
Speaker 3: basically just scroll to the bottom of my messages once
Speaker 3: or twice a week and I would send a message
Speaker 3: because you know, it sorts most frequent So at the
Speaker 3: very bottom of your messages app is the person you
Speaker 3: haven't talked to in the longest, that's that you know
Speaker 3: enough to be in your phone, and I would just
Speaker 3: send them a Hey, thinking about you today. Now that's
Speaker 3: true because I scrolled to the bottom and saw them,
Speaker 3: so now I'm thinking about them and just kind of
Speaker 3: a check in that. That worked really really well for
Speaker 3: a time. Now I can't exactly scale that. So one
Speaker 3: of the things I've started to do in pursued or
Speaker 3: pursued persuaded by my friend's v is I send a
Speaker 3: regular update. So about once every four to six months,
Speaker 3: I just send an update out to all of the
Speaker 3: people that I care enough about to keep informed in
Speaker 3: my life and want to hear from, and it says, hey,
Speaker 3: here's what I've been up to. Personally, here's what we did.
Speaker 3: We took a family trip to Hawaii. Professionally, here's what
Speaker 3: I've been doing, doing a lot of work on LinkedIn
Speaker 3: learning courses or what have you. Here's what I've been reading,
Speaker 3: here's what I've been wondering about, et cetera. And at
Speaker 3: the very end of just say hey, what's going on
Speaker 3: in your life? And the coolest part about it isn't
Speaker 3: writing it. It actually feels really weird to write it because
Speaker 3: it feels like I'm writing a Christmas letter, but like
Speaker 3: multiple times a year, right, exactly exactly. The coolest thing
Speaker 3: is when people write back and they say, this is
Speaker 3: what I'm up doing this, so I haven't heard of you,
Speaker 3: and it's just the flood of conversations that happens. Is
Speaker 3: that little check in point. Now I'm doing that before
Speaker 3: I need it, right, there may be a time by
Speaker 3: the end of the year where I'm like, hey, I
Speaker 3: really need somebody who has a connection to this. But
Speaker 3: it's really awkward to do that unless you're constantly kind
Speaker 3: of staying in touch with those dormant TIPE people. So
Speaker 3: that's what I should do. Whether you want to play
Speaker 3: the text message roulette or you want to do the
Speaker 3: quarterly update, either one which everyone feels more authentic to you,
Speaker 3: is probably going to work really, really well to keep
Speaker 3: those dormanties activated.
Speaker 2: Well I'm curious about that because people want to know, like,
Speaker 2: what's the reason I'm reaching out to those people? And
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, you scrolled through your phone and saw
Speaker 2: their number and said thinking of you because you thought
Speaker 2: of them when you saw their number. But I wonder
Speaker 2: if you know, I think I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people struggle with that, like comes up with the authentic
Speaker 2: reason to do it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I get it, I get it, I do.
Speaker 3: And I think part of the reason for that is
Speaker 3: that so many times when we're on the receiving end
Speaker 3: of one of those messages, it's because somebody wants something
Speaker 3: from us and we're just sort of waiting for that
Speaker 3: to drop. And so the idea behind doing this on
Speaker 3: a regular basis is that I'm training lots of people
Speaker 3: that I actually legitimately care about them and don't want
Speaker 3: something from them, which is true and I think it's
Speaker 3: true for all of us. Right. Yeah, So if you're
Speaker 3: doing it on a regular basis, if you're sending that
Speaker 3: update quarterly or every six months or so whatever, you're
Speaker 3: training people that, like I just want to stay in
Speaker 3: touch with you. There might be a need you have
Speaker 3: for me later. I might need you later, but that's
Speaker 3: not what this one is about. And so it makes
Speaker 3: it easier when you actually do have one of those
Speaker 3: conversations where you need a favor or something like that,
Speaker 3: because they're trained to not expect that shoe to drop.
Speaker 3: I totally get why it's awkward, and doing it the
Speaker 3: first time, by the way, always super awkward. But here's
Speaker 3: what I would tell you. Let's roll reverse. Right. If
Speaker 3: you're listening to this, you're like, I could never do it.
Speaker 3: Imagine someone you hadn't talked to that you worked at
Speaker 3: IT in the last company or whatever, texted you out
Speaker 3: of the blue and was like, Hey, I was thinking
Speaker 3: about you today. I haven't talked to you in a
Speaker 3: long time. I hope you're well, I hope everything's going
Speaker 3: on with you. Wouldn't you kind of like to receive
Speaker 3: a message like that, I mean, you're I get that
Speaker 3: some of us are kind of inherently skeptical that, like,
Speaker 3: what do you want from me? But as soon as
Speaker 3: you figured out that they didn't actually want anything from you, Like,
Speaker 3: I can't think of a person, a former colleague or
Speaker 3: an old friend from college that I wouldn't love to
Speaker 3: be on the receiving end of that message from Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2: So you've just shared a couple of things that you
Speaker 2: do to make yourself more productive on the networking front
Speaker 2: to hear, whether it's cell phone roulette or sending a
Speaker 2: regular update on your life. I'm curious if you have
Speaker 2: any other routines, like in your daily life that you
Speaker 2: use to make yourself more productive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, okay, So I kind of have three average days,
Speaker 3: right if you think about it. So, now that I'm
Speaker 3: not teaching full time, I have home days, I have
Speaker 3: on the road days where I'm speaking or working with
Speaker 3: a client, and then I have kind of summer schedule, right,
Speaker 3: which is what we're in the midst of is we're
Speaker 3: recording this right. Home days. I've become a huge fan
Speaker 3: of kind of time blocking. So the average day for
Speaker 3: me during the school year, I have kids that are
Speaker 3: in middle school, in elementary school the average day from
Speaker 3: during a school year, get up, help them, get ready,
Speaker 3: get them off to the school bus, and then I've
Speaker 3: got about ninety minutes or so of kind of the quiet,
Speaker 3: focused time I deliberately try and do like if I'm
Speaker 3: writing a book or working on a piece or something
Speaker 3: like that, I try and do it in that time.
Speaker 3: I find I can get about one ninety minute block
Speaker 3: before I get hungry again and also want to beat
Speaker 3: everybody else to the noontime gym rush. So then I'm
Speaker 3: going into like a snack and exercise, whether that's going
Speaker 3: to the gym, ju ju jitsu, whether that's my wife,
Speaker 3: and I become a huge pickupball fans. It's been terrible
Speaker 3: for my knees, but a ton of fun, right, some
Speaker 3: kind of some way to sweat, right, And then we're
Speaker 3: back at about twelve thirty one o'clock, and that's when
Speaker 3: I try and schedule almost all of my what I
Speaker 3: would say reactive work. If you want, if a client
Speaker 3: wants a phone call with me, if I made an
Speaker 3: exception for you because you know we're old school friends.
Speaker 3: But if you want to do a podcast interview something
Speaker 3: like that, anything that doesn't require deep thought just requires
Speaker 3: conversation that's in that afternoon bit until around when they
Speaker 3: come from school, and then I'm right back into like
Speaker 3: parent mode and we've got soccer practices and tube lessons
Speaker 3: and all that sort of stuff. So that's like home schedule,
Speaker 3: speaking schedule. I'll be honest with you, it's a free
Speaker 3: for all. It's entirely determined on what the client needs
Speaker 3: and what has But one of the things I've been
Speaker 3: learning is i've been getting older, is like a lot
Speaker 3: of us will fly in the night before an event.
Speaker 3: We'll speak in the morning, and then we'll rush to
Speaker 3: the airport home. And I'm trying to do that less
Speaker 3: because I've realized how much stress it adds into my
Speaker 3: life to be like gotta get home, got to go.
Speaker 3: I try and just add an extra day because then
Speaker 3: you can linger at the event, you can hang out
Speaker 3: with people, they tell you how great you were, and
Speaker 3: that's great for the ego, right, and you just don't
Speaker 3: necessarily feel that stress. So I'm trying. I'm not succeeding yet,
Speaker 3: but I'm trying to kind of take back my calendar
Speaker 3: to add more of that kind of downtime. And then
Speaker 3: summer schedule is like total free for all. Right, everyone's
Speaker 3: around all everybody's around. I mean literally, we had to
Speaker 3: sleepover last night. So I have three kids in the
Speaker 3: house as we're recording this, and you just have to
Speaker 3: react to everything. And here's the thing that used to
Speaker 3: annoy the heck out of me. And then I got
Speaker 3: to the place where a good friend of mine, Jim Shields,
Speaker 3: hit me with this a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 3: he said, look, you only get eighteen summers with your kids,
Speaker 3: then whether you get any more is determined by how
Speaker 3: well you did in those eighteen summers. And so I've
Speaker 3: kind of just sort of embraced that, right and just
Speaker 3: tried to say, like, it's a it's a total mess
Speaker 3: for two months out of the year, but we're just
Speaker 3: gonna love the mess and do the best as we can.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, all right, We're gonna take one more quick ad
Speaker 2: break and then I'll be back with more from David Burkis.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking with David Burkis. We've been talking some
Speaker 1: of his routines. Now, are you do you have any
Speaker 1: sort of morning routine other than getting the kids out
Speaker 1: the door or is that that just.
Speaker 3: Not I don't Yeah, I don't have to the younger
Speaker 3: one school bus picks him up at six fifty in
Speaker 3: the morning. I'll be honest with you, I do not.
Speaker 3: I do not have time for.
Speaker 1: A morning There's no morning routine before that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I would say my morning routine happens
Speaker 3: after they leave, right, And it's much more about what
Speaker 3: do I do to kind of transition into that work mode.
Speaker 3: We structured all life such that there's a I have
Speaker 3: to go downstairs from our main living area into the
Speaker 3: basement where my office is, so that kind of feels
Speaker 3: like a commute. I usually now candidly, I'm usually looking
Speaker 3: at my phone while I'm like getting them breakfast, having
Speaker 3: breakfast myself. And I found, even though people say like, oh,
Speaker 3: don't do that, do all of your do of your amazing,
Speaker 3: you know, big work before you ever look, I find
Speaker 3: it actually helps me to clear all of that out
Speaker 3: and kind of have an idea of what I need
Speaker 3: to respond to for the day before I then go
Speaker 3: into that deep work. I just have to tell myself
Speaker 3: none of these are fires. I don't have to put
Speaker 3: them out right away, right, So that's kind of it.
Speaker 3: We do have a pretty strict sort of nighttime routine,
Speaker 3: right in terms of like when we are as a family,
Speaker 3: when we are like okay, computers off, TV off, et cetera,
Speaker 3: we're in bed, we're powering down where I do kind
Speaker 3: of have that in order to sleep a bit better.
Speaker 3: So we do have routines, they just don't usually happen
Speaker 3: in the morning. I know that seemed weird on it
Speaker 3: before breakfast.
Speaker 2: Well I don't either, because I have to also get
Speaker 2: people out the door. I mean, I love writing about
Speaker 2: people's morning routines, but when you have multiple school age children,
Speaker 2: often they.
Speaker 3: Are the morning route.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There's a there's a productivity YouTuber I love named Ali
Speaker 3: Abdall and he just had a son, and I put
Speaker 3: it when he owt or just had a child. And
Speaker 3: when you put it on Twitter, I announced like, congratulations,
Speaker 3: your content has just gotten so much more relevant for me.
Speaker 2: Now, yes, exactly, Well, there is something to be saying.
Speaker 2: People are giving productivity advice and maybe have never even
Speaker 2: been responsible for like a puppy before. Exactly exactly, wonder
Speaker 2: you wonder. But we have a wide variety of people
Speaker 2: listening to this, so we we enjoy all that. But
Speaker 2: I'm curious, when are you in bed to be up.
Speaker 1: For the morning.
Speaker 3: Let out, let's out of ten pm, ten pm. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we we figured this out. Okay, So all right, this
Speaker 3: is probably too much information that I'm going to regret
Speaker 3: sharing on a podcast. But we were one of those
Speaker 3: weird American families that actually co slept until our kids
Speaker 3: were like ten and eight. Yah, right, so we lived.
Speaker 3: We got this weird because my wife is at your
Speaker 3: resident and now you our physician. I left the universe
Speaker 3: like everything. We kind of we kind of went from
Speaker 3: a nice, you know, class family to being blessed with
Speaker 3: with what we do now all at the same time.
Speaker 3: And when I started doing the numbers, I was like
Speaker 3: we were living in a little tiny starter house that
Speaker 3: was supposed to just be for like us in one kid,
Speaker 3: but we stayed in there longer and moved to like
Speaker 3: the dream house, the one we picture the kids being
Speaker 3: like teenagers in. But that house is too big for
Speaker 3: eight or a six year old and an eight year
Speaker 3: old and what have you. And so they didn't want
Speaker 3: to be in their rooms, right, they were used to
Speaker 3: being much closer to us, So we just rigged up
Speaker 3: a mattress like on the floor near us, and we
Speaker 3: slept in the same room. You know, even though we
Speaker 3: had this house that we now they don't. We had
Speaker 3: this house that we're like, you're going to be teenagers in,
Speaker 3: you're going to think of as your home home. It
Speaker 3: was way too big for us. So we all just
Speaker 3: slept in the same room and had to go to
Speaker 3: bed at like nine thirty ten because that's when they
Speaker 3: had to go to bed. And then I realized, like,
Speaker 3: that's sleeping. Actually sleeping for eight hours a night is
Speaker 3: like the ultimate life hack, right, Like there's before you
Speaker 3: try anything else, try that one, right and see how
Speaker 3: that one works for you. And so now we still
Speaker 3: adhere to it. I mean literally, we put them to
Speaker 3: bed nine thirty on a school night, ten o'clock on
Speaker 3: a not school night, and we are we are lights
Speaker 3: out within five to ten minutes after that.
Speaker 1: I am a fan. Although I can't sleep in the
Speaker 1: same room as my kids because they wake me up.
Speaker 3: Oh I don't think I could do it now. I don't.
Speaker 3: They're way bigger now and I could like hear them breathe.
Speaker 3: But absolutely, when they were younger, it was great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well here's a question for you, because going back,
Speaker 1: I always big on life logistics, and your wife is
Speaker 1: a physician and er.
Speaker 2: I'm sure is like random hours. I mean maybe she
Speaker 2: picks up certain shifts on a regular basis. But you
Speaker 2: were talking about how you try to stay at a
Speaker 2: event for an extra day. Yeah, so how does that
Speaker 2: work out with the family scheduling?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Not well as of late.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that's good to know.
Speaker 3: I mean it used it used to work out great
Speaker 3: because generally we would know, like a client would reach
Speaker 3: out and say, can you we're doing this meeting, can
Speaker 3: you be a part of it three to four months
Speaker 3: ahead of time, sometimes even six months ahead of time,
Speaker 3: and that's before you put in for your schedule with
Speaker 3: the hospital. So it would just work like, Hey, I
Speaker 3: have a thing on this day and this day, so
Speaker 3: put in to not work on that day. And we
Speaker 3: still try and do that as much as we can.
Speaker 3: But I'm sure you've run into this too in your career,
Speaker 3: Like some clients reach out like four weeks ahead of time,
Speaker 3: and that's a little more difficult because the shifts are
Speaker 3: already set right er hospitals, a lot of the shift
Speaker 3: work of a physician is actually really easy in perfect
Speaker 3: conditions to balance with what we do because the schedule
Speaker 3: set ahead of time, there's no on call, there's no
Speaker 3: charting you have to do afterwards or any of that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff. It's way easier than being like a
Speaker 3: general practitioner or somebody who have to be on call.
Speaker 3: But when those short term clients things come in, it
Speaker 3: gets a little more difficult. Now I think where we are,
Speaker 3: that's starting to get longer. But that was just sort
Speaker 3: of like a post COVID reaction. I'm sure you saw
Speaker 3: the same thing of like clients were suddenly like, we
Speaker 3: don't even know if we're going to have an event,
Speaker 3: so we're not even going to reach out to somebody
Speaker 3: to be a part of it until we know for
Speaker 3: sure we're going to do it. And that was a
Speaker 3: short timeline, so it didn't work out all of that
Speaker 3: well for a while. But it's starting to get to
Speaker 3: get better and better, which is why I'm starting to
Speaker 3: kind of push for that a bit more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've noticed that too.
Speaker 2: I mean it was in the past it would be like,
Speaker 2: you know, if you wanted a keynote speech in October,
Speaker 2: you were definitely reaching out in the spring, yeah to
Speaker 2: book that, And now I feel like I definitely will
Speaker 2: get people being like, yeah, we want something in yeah,
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks, Like did you not plan this
Speaker 2: event before then? Like or maybe I'm your second choice.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That could be too but it's you.
Speaker 3: Know, you're not too far off. My theory is like,
Speaker 3: especially for an internal event, like we are kind of
Speaker 3: a commodity, don't ever. I mean, if you're listening to this, no,
Speaker 3: Laura and I are the absolute most in demand, best
Speaker 3: people in this field. But the truth is, like everybody
Speaker 3: has to go to that internal company meeting anyway. It's
Speaker 3: not like associations and ticketed events and things like that
Speaker 3: are back to a normal planning schedule because people want
Speaker 3: to know who the speakers are before they buy a
Speaker 3: ticket to it. But like an internal event where it's
Speaker 3: like the company on hands meeting, Like we're like the
Speaker 3: cherry on the cake. People are coming for the cake anyway.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have to be there.
Speaker 2: So if if it works out to have an external speaker,
Speaker 2: that's awesome, and if it doesn't, then they force their
Speaker 2: VP of sales to give.
Speaker 3: The talk exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: Also it's happening regardless exactly.
Speaker 3: Also, Cherry on the Sunday I don't know why you
Speaker 3: would put cherry would be terrible. I wouldn't. I would
Speaker 3: not enjoy that cake.
Speaker 2: So, David, I always ask people a question of what
Speaker 2: is something you've done recently to take a day from
Speaker 2: great to awesome?
Speaker 3: Yeah? You know, okay, I think most days are great.
Speaker 3: And this isn't just because I'm like super but like
Speaker 3: you're still alive therefore a day is great. So the
Speaker 3: thing that I have been doing for like twenty years
Speaker 3: now is trying to remember that. And I don't have
Speaker 3: a sophisticated like gratitude practice. I don't bullet journal or
Speaker 3: anything like that. Here's where I learned this. Twenty years ago.
Speaker 3: I got married, and when you're engaged, you get all
Speaker 3: sorts of marriage advice from people who probably shouldn't give
Speaker 3: you marriage advice, Like I wish I would have written
Speaker 3: it all down and then had a column for be
Speaker 3: like did you get divorced later? Like you know, who
Speaker 3: should I actually be listening to? But the one piece
Speaker 3: of good advice I really really got was actually not
Speaker 3: marital advice. It was wedding advice, and it was Hey,
Speaker 3: that whole day is going to be a blur. So
Speaker 3: as many times as you can throughout the day, stop
Speaker 3: and remind yourself, this is my wedding, right, like and
Speaker 3: literally the only memory I have. I have lots of
Speaker 3: memories of looking at photos and video and what have you,
Speaker 3: But the only memory I have of like that actual
Speaker 3: day is standing there at the altar, looking at her
Speaker 3: and saying to myself, this is it. This is our
Speaker 3: actual wedding. Like that's my one internalized memory, because there's
Speaker 3: something about taking a second and like absorbing the moment.
Speaker 3: Just stop and let's do it right. And so I
Speaker 3: try and do that a lot. Right On a normal day,
Speaker 3: it might just look like walking outside and sitting on
Speaker 3: the deck for a few minutes and be like this,
Speaker 3: this has been a really great day. On a travel day,
Speaker 3: it might be like reflecting on how cool it was
Speaker 3: that we sort of did something. One of the things
Speaker 3: I like about again that trying to stretch out and
Speaker 3: be less stressed traveling to and from work travel is
Speaker 3: it gives you more opportunities to have that moment I'm
Speaker 3: sitting at the like I pack a swimsuit now, And
Speaker 3: part of my thing is like I might swim at
Speaker 3: the pool or sit in the hot time and think like, oh,
Speaker 3: that was a really cool opportunity, and I just all
Speaker 3: I need is like a moment five minutes of not
Speaker 3: having to think about anything other than the fact that
Speaker 3: this day happened, and because it happened, it was already great.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of my favorite speaking events.
Speaker 2: I was at a resort and I brought my swimsuit
Speaker 2: and I went on the Lazy River by myself.
Speaker 1: Like I've been on so many lazier rivers with small people.
Speaker 2: I'm like hurting along too, So I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: just sitting on this tube, follow myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, same to you. I bet In fact, I
Speaker 3: bet you I know what hotel was if it was
Speaker 3: in Orlando. It's the marriout that has the amazing Lazy
Speaker 3: River and the slides. I did the same thing, except
Speaker 3: it was the water slide, and because it was ten
Speaker 3: thirty in the morning, I was the only person and
Speaker 3: it was awesome.
Speaker 1: Who's that dude with no kids with them? Right? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So David, what are you looking forward to right now?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean this, We're recording this in July, which
Speaker 3: is kind of like halftime, right, it's the slow down,
Speaker 3: reflect and then plan. So I'm actually really looking forward
Speaker 3: to the to the next year. We've got from a
Speaker 3: family perspective, We've got some really cool things happening. I
Speaker 3: have one kid who's like, has been aspiring to be
Speaker 3: in marching band since he was picked up for the
Speaker 3: school band. Got another that plays soccer and it's kind
Speaker 3: of moving into another competitive level. Got some cool I'm
Speaker 3: just looking forward to again. Every day is great, So
Speaker 3: I'm just kind of looking forward to the second e
Speaker 3: of the year. I don't have any big plans. I'm
Speaker 3: not in the midst of writing another book or anything
Speaker 3: like that. I'm just trying to make every day great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where can people find you?
Speaker 3: Oh? I'm so I've been really blessed mine. Look can
Speaker 3: you you? Probably the same way. My name is really rare.
Speaker 3: There aren't a lot of David bergers is out there.
Speaker 3: There is a twenty four year old Hungarian filmmaker and
Speaker 3: that's the only one I've met. So if you just
Speaker 3: type it into Google, you will find me. You'll find
Speaker 3: the platform you want to connect with me on. If
Speaker 3: that's too difficult for you and you're listening to this
Speaker 3: in a podcast app like, just swipe up or swipe
Speaker 3: to the side. It's in the show notes. Anyway, while
Speaker 3: you're there, maybe even leave a review, let Laura know
Speaker 3: how great this podcast is, and then then you'll find.
Speaker 2: Me absolutely all right, Well, David, thanks so much for
Speaker 2: joining us, and thank you also to everyone for listening.
Speaker 2: If you have feedback on this or any other episode,
Speaker 2: you can always reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam
Speaker 2: dot com.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, this is Laura, Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: here's to making the most of our time. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback,
Speaker 1: you can reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com.
Speaker 1: Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts
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