Brad Johnson: Welcome back to Do Business. Do Live. Excited to have Daniel Harkavy here with us today. Welcome to the show, Daniel.
Daniel Harkavy: Good morning. Great to be with you.
Brad Johnson: Well, likewise. I feel like we had a podcast before the podcast, but, hey, I’m glad we hit record. We got lots to get into today. So, as we kick this off, we have an awesome mutual friend in Michael Hyatt. I know you guys have written a book together. You’ve coached him. I think he’s coached you in certain ways, helped nudge you to get you the first book written. But you hit me with something, and I love this phrase, and it, obviously, resonates with what this show is about. You said one of the things around your business, Building Champions, an executive coaching program that you’ve run for 30 plus years now, is that you are coaching business and life on purpose.
So, if there was ever a guest that was designed for this show, I think it’s you. So, where did that thought process come from? Was it you needing it yourself in your own life? Like, how did that come to be?
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. So, Building Champions started in 1996, so it’ll be 30 years in March that the way it came about was the previous decade I was in mortgage banking. And while in mortgage banking, I saw how the industry had such allure, and it could pull people completely into one direction and one direction alone. And that is the next deal. And what I watched was I watched people that were my dad’s age, and I was in my twenties when I got into mortgage banking. And I watched people that were my dad’s age that had all the affluence, they had all the money, they had the cars, they had the homes, the tennis courts, the boats. They had it all, but other areas of their lives were nothing that I wanted.
And I was married, still am. At the time, I had young kids. And at the age 30, I took a one-year sabbatical. Left mortgage banking. I had already been named as one of the CEO successor candidates. The company had gone public. They were developing me to become the successor to the founder. And I took this one-year sabbatical. And during this one-year sabbatical relocated from Southern Cal up to Oregon, which is where I am now. It was during that period of time where I really felt the nudge to go back into that industry and to do what I had done in management when I started managing, to help people in that industry to really succeed in business and in life.
I didn’t want to see people throw away the accounts in their life, the areas of their life that were, in my opinion, the areas that bring you most joy, most fulfillment, most satisfaction, and good memory stuff in pursuit of just one or two areas of their life. So, started Building Champions, and I started it with really the first area of focus was I would help people build a life plan before I would help build a vision and a blueprint for their business.
Brad Johnson: Before we get to the plan part, because I definitely want to dive in there, if we rewind, at what age did you get into mortgage banking?
Daniel Harkavy: 2020.
Brad Johnson: And you had a dad that you’d seen have a lot of success there?
Daniel Harkavy: No. I saw leaders that were my dad’s age. My dad was in newspaper publishing. But the individual that hired me, a great mentor, still a wonderful man, and still kicking, he was my dad’s age. And a lot of the people in the corner offices that were really the leaders of the industry, a lot of them were probably a good 25-30 years my senior. And like I said, they all walked with a pretty significant limp as a result of just the allure and the grind of the business.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Did you follow that same path? So, you get in at 20, you take the sabbatical at 30, so there’s a solid decade there. Did you find yourself? Because I remember getting into finance. I was 26. I was a Kansas Farm kid. I didn’t have the stuff, and I wanted the stuff like, let’s go make money and get the things like we could never afford. And I find a lot of people that’s very common when they get into that kind of commission-based, sales-based sort of role. Did you find yourself following that path where you grinded through your twenties to go get those things?
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. If my wife were sitting next to me, she would just be rolling her eyes going, “Uh-huh. Yeah,” I was clearly the big black pager, and I’d be on a date with her before we were, oh buddy, double-breasted suit, the big box pager. I was one of the first to have a mobile phone in my car. It was $2,400, and it was this big thing that mounted on the center console. And, yeah, if somebody paged me because there was a deal happening at any hour, I’d get up. I didn’t care who I was in front of. I would get up to go get the deal.
Brad Johnson: So, you’re at like family dinner, pager goes off, “Hey, honey, got to go close this deal.”
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Like Christmas day? Was there any limits?
Daniel Harkavy: I think, no, there were probably no limits. I mean, there were really no limits. In my young years, I was so hungry, and like you, I was so driven to make the buck. When I was young, I had a lot of rich, wealthy family members that were extended family. And I saw how they lived. And we weren’t wealthy. We were middle-class. I always had what I needed or wanted, but a lot of the cousins and the extended family, they had things that I really coveted. So, I had set some pretty aggressive goals that I wanted to attain by the time I was 30, and I was single-focused, and it started to take a toll. I mean, it really took a toll. I was given an opportunity to run all the branches in the West Coast and then all of production. And I had young kids at the time, 27-28 years old, and I was on the road more than I was home for a while, which led to me ultimately stepping down at age 30 and taking the sabbatical.
Brad Johnson: What was the turning point for you? Because I just look back, even at 30, that’s still young, right? Now, granted, you had a decade run, but was there a mentor? Was there like a turning point where you’re like, “If I don’t change, this is going to eat me alive”? Like, what was it?
Daniel Harkavy: Now, you’re going to get to know me, Brad, and all those that are listening. What I would encourage you to do is to not tune out when I answer the question, regardless of where you’re at in your journey. Every human has some level of faith, right? Every human, whether we’re a radical atheist or a devout follower of a certain religion, a certain God, everyone has faith in that. And I grew up Jewish and, at age 22, had a crisis of faith where I came to believe that the Messiah had already come. And then I became a Messianic Jew, which means a Jew who believes that Jesus was the Messiah. All right. So, now we’re deep into who Harkavy is. Fast forward to age 30, and I was at a men’s conference that was called Promise Keepers, and they had these things all throughout the country, and they would gather all these men, and they had really great speakers.
And I was at a Promise Keeper event with a whole crew of my old high school friends as well as my employees at the age 30. And it was there where I really felt like the nudge was God. I felt like I was being told, “Hey, yeah, you’re on a path that will lead to destruction.” I went to that conference not even thinking of leaving the industry because, I mean, I had it going on at the age 30. And home on Sunday, I told my wife, I’m like, “Hey, babe, I’m going to step down. I’m going to quit.” And she didn’t say, “What are we going to do?” And she didn’t say, “Oh, no.” She just said, “Fantastic.” Didn’t ask what we’re going to do. Yeah, we took the one year, and I surfed a whole bunch everywhere and got to reconnect with my wife and my kids and moved to Oregon, and yeah, it’s a little bit of a crazy story.
Brad Johnson: That is wild because I think a lot of people have that inner calling or like, “Ah, this might not be the path I was meant to be on,” but that biweekly paycheck is a powerful drug, and it’s hard to leave behind. So, had you just dashed some cash where you’re like, “Okay, I can chill for a year,” or was it literally like, “I don’t care, it’s not worth it,” and you just left it behind?
Daniel Harkavy: It’s a bit of both. I went in the following Tuesday, and like I said, the CEO was a very dear mentor of mine who I loved, and he was working on his exit. So, again, he’s my dad’s age. He’s got his home at Huntington Beach, a vacation home. He had built a home in Naples, Florida. He was thinking about how he was going to spend that season of life, and they were banking on me following the path. So, I threw a pretty big wrinkle into their plan, into his plan, but he thought I was having a religious breakdown and tried to keep me on payroll for, well, they kept me on payroll for the rest of the year. I gave them two months’ notice, which turned into four months. But they helped me out even long after that, just as a gratitude.
Brad Johnson: So, they were so scared to lose you. They’re like, “I will not accept your resignation. We’ll wait until this blows over, and then you’ll come back.” That was kind of their thought process.
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah, I heard religious breakdown, they were saying. I’m like, “A religious breakdown or crisis.” Some thought I was going to open up a competitive shop, some of the leaders. Others thought I was going to go open a surf shop and grow my hair long, which if you’re watching this, you’re like, “No, that wouldn’t have been good.”
Brad Johnson: So, what did you learn in that year off?
Daniel Harkavy: Man, great question, Brad. I learned how amazingly awesome it is to have all of those moments to be with my wife and with my kids, to be a husband and a dad, and to actually do like real dad things, parenting things, to adventure. I’ve always had an adventurous spirit, but to be able to do it with the young kids, go out and get dirty, and go explore, and like we were out of a suitcase for months, different places. Yeah, I guess, it was just having the space and the freedom to be who I wanted to be in the other areas of my life, which then carried into how I built the next company, which is the one that I still have the privilege of serving, Building Champions. And it was the framework. It led into the framework that was the impetus to the not-for-profit, as well, SetPath.
Brad Johnson: So, let’s dive into that. So, just context that those aren’t super familiar with you, Building Champions, executive coaching program. You also our mutual friend, Michael Hyatt, nudged you to write a book a few years into that journey, becoming a coaching leader. And was that where you took the framework you developed in Building Champions, and you just put it out in a book? Or how did those two play together? Like, what would you share that kind of frameworks that makes sense there to some of the listeners?
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. So, when I was given the opportunity to manage and lead, I was 23 years old, and I had two employees at the time in my branch, in the Los Angeles area of Southern California. What I did was I began kind of living out a belief that I had, which was, if I can find the most talented, hungry, young competitors in the market, and if I could add more value to them than did their leader, then there would be a high probability they’d want to come work with me. I just made it a standard practice to meet with the best of the best in all the markets that I wanted to open up territory in, when I was in my young twenties. And I would sit down, and I would really get to know my young competitors.
I would find out what their professional goals were, what their personal goals were, what their fears, their anxieties, where they needed help, and then I would work diligently to help them to be more successful while they worked from the competition. So, I started a file system, I was a note taker, et cetera. And you fast forward a couple of years, and the company I worked for, we had 17 offices in my office, which started off with just two of us, became number one, did more than 50% of the entire organization’s volume. There were a hundred consultants in the overall business, and six of the top 10 were recruited by me and worked in my branch. So, what I did worked. So, then you fast forward to starting Building Champions, and I took a lot of those principles and put those into what back then wasn’t a real known thing, a coaching company.
Brad Johnson: I was going to say 1996. It was like you and Dan Sullivan, maybe.
Daniel Harkavy: Dan Sullivan. There was Mike Ferry in real estate, and a few years later, I think there was a Brian Buffini and a Joe Stumpf, and a few others, and Anthony Robbins, but there wasn’t a lot. Yeah. So, I carried those principles forward, started a coaching company, and then I created a Train the Trainer program where I would go into an enterprise, into a business, and help the business to elevate how they managed and turn them into coaching leaders. If companies would’ve fully adopted that, then what would’ve happened was I would’ve went out of business because they wouldn’t have needed my services. So, I wrote that book knowing that there was going to be still a huge market, but if I could help leaders to become coaching leaders, then they would create the same type of culture with the same type of performance results that I had in mortgage banking.
Brad Johnson: How do you define coaching leader?
Daniel Harkavy: Coaching leader is one whose primary objective is to bring out the best in those that work with him or her. So, what he does, or she does, is they serve them in ways that truly bring out the best in them, to where they can operate at peak levels, not just in business, but in life. And what they do is they align all of those talents around a common mission, a common vision, and they create winning cultures. So, a coaching leader is one who truly understands their highest contribution, their greatest value is coaching. It’s investing the time and developing the competencies and having the discipline to truly pour into your people so they become way better than you ever did. And that’s it.
Brad Johnson: I want to rewind because you said something, I think I caught it, but I want to make sure I caught it. You said, so young 23-year-old Daniel, you’re running your three-person branch, counting you, and you’ve got these other mortgage banking competitors in your marketplace. Big market. So, you would seek them out, sit down, grab a coffee, “Hey, Joe, my competitor. We’re fighting over deals against each other. What are you after? Where are you trying to go? Business? Life?” And you’re literally taking notes on this of a competitor?
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. So, what I would do is I had a script down, Brad. I would call you up if you were one of them. I’d say, “Hey, Brad, my name’s Daniel Harkavy. I’m not calling to recruit you. I make it standard, like best practice, to meet with the best of the best in all markets. And I hear that’s you, and I like to idea share, I like to learn, I like to see if I can share something. This is a huge market. So, what would you say? You want to break bread, hang out for a half hour or so? Grab a cup of coffee or a beer?” And 9 times out of 10, people would do it.
Brad Johnson: So, like you could have just lost a deal to a guy, and you’re calling him up saying, “You want to grab a beer and grab coffee”?
Daniel Harkavy: Oh, yeah.
Brad Johnson: That’s awesome. Alright. So, let’s kind of fast forward this because there’s obviously a lot of learnings here. So, you’ve got this network, let’s say your top five competitors, and over time, some of them joined your firm and were opening branches for you.
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. So, they would come into my branch at first, and then over time they would develop so much competence and do so well that it was time for them to go into the territory that they had primarily focused on, so in the LA area, in San Gabriel Valley. My office was in West Covina, but then out of West Covina, opened up Arcadia, and that was 20 miles away. But I had reported up to somebody who had opened offices when I was the branch manager. They had opened offices in probably eight or nine different places throughout California. Then a few years later, Washington, Oregon, Nevada. So, as I was given the opportunity to have more territory, I ended up running all of that and then having all the branch managers, whom my job with them was I was the coaching leader to help each of those branch managers build the best branches they could.
Brad Johnson: So, it was kind of the Ray Kroc program when McDonald’s was rolling out, where he’s going and finding these entrepreneurs in different markets. He’s like, “Hey, I think you could grow this thing.” So, how did you make the transition from, “This is my competitor,” to, “Hey, what do you think about joining teams?” Was it, if we’re not fighting over deals but doing deals together, the pie gets bigger, and we all win? How did that work?
Daniel Harkavy: I just had a belief that if they joined my firm that I would help them to be more successful in business, in life, than they would be at their firm. And I would prove that to them over time. So, some of the time, I would actually offer them a job. Other times, I would befriend them and pour into them, but I remember one time in particular where one of the most amazing young folks that I hired, his name was Larry Davison. And Larry worked for a good, solid competitor, and that good solid competitor ran into problems. I got the phone call at like seven at night from Larry saying, “Hey, I have real problems over here and a huge book of business, my team, et cetera, we’re not going to be able to function within the days ahead, and can we all come over?”
And 24 hours later, they were all over, and we had absorbed their complete pipeline, and we integrated them. And that was a huge win. But the only reason it happened was because I had been adding value, adding value, getting to know him, trying to do everything I could to help him succeed. I just have a genuine belief, “A generous man, he himself will prosper.” This world’s so big. There’s so much business out there. There’s so much opportunity. So, if you have that generous mindset where you truly want to flip switches up and help people to be the best they can be, only good things are going to happen.
Brad Johnson: The abundance mindset versus the scarcity mindset is it’s interesting when you see both sides of that spectrum, how that plays out long term. It’s the Zig Ziglar quote, “Help enough other people get what they want, you’ll get what you want.” So, if we go back to we were talking before we hit record here. And mortgage banking, very similar to financial services. I’m sure when you got in, and you told a piece of the story, you’re grinding, you’re doing deals, but Daniel’s the guy driving the revenue. If Daniel goes on vacation, the revenue goes on vacation. And so, a lot of the needs of what I would call successful financial advisors, they all almost start to become a victim of their own success where it’s like, “Dang, I can’t turn off anymore because I I’ve got all this service, these demands from clients coming in, or I just don’t make money if I stop working.”
And so, there’s this, I would say, almost universal want from just about every financial advisor I’ve ever talked to that says, “Hey, I want to go from financial advisor to business owner, to CEO,” and a lot of the stuff that helped them be successful on the I-me player, one player game, when they go to multiplayer, it gets really frustrating and like, “Why’d I even do this? Like, all these people have issues. I’ve got personnel problems every day. Why’d I do it? I’m going back to the old way. It was a lot simpler.” You’ve helped a lot of people break through that, whether it’s mindset, whether it’s frameworks. What are some things you would share with advisors that might be struggling with that right now?
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. I don’t know if it’s for everybody, truthfully, Brad. I think that people need to understand what a day in the life of a CEO is really like. They need to have a solid answer to the why question. Why would you do it if you don’t have people to manage or to lead? You have so much freedom with regards to what you say yes to and what you say no to. And if you do want to go on vacation, have a solid assistant, have a solid small team that is there to help you to succeed. And that can be a great way to invest the moments of your life in serving clients, if that’s really what juices you is sitting down with the client, helping them to figure it out, and that is where you have some superpower strength.
Just build a strong little team to help you to fill your days with face-to-face, face-to-face, face-to-face, doing the consultation, doing the research that you need to do in order to help me, the client, be the best I can be. And I think that’s a great way to spend a life. Wonderful. There are some of you where you’re actually more energized by building something where others can flourish, and there’s just this like kind of coach thing inside of you where you get more fulfillment by helping other people. You’re okay not being the big dog. Everyone thinks that the CEO, yes, the CEO does come with perks. It does give you a unique stamp on your passport that allows you into certain rooms that without that, you don’t get into. No doubt about it, but it comes with serious, serious weight.
I’ve spent probably the last 15 of my 30 years just working with CEOs. At Building Champions, we have a CEO mentor offering where all we do is we mentor CEOs, and I work with CEOs that lead all sizes of businesses. It’s very difficult to hit an off switch if you have tens of thousands of employees. And for our listeners here, that’s not what their vision may be. They want to have maybe a branch or a team, or they want to build out their business to a certain size. The why needs to be really clear and really strong. And if that why isn’t that you want to build something where others flourish and where it has a high probability of outlasting you, where you can create a sustainable business, it can be really wonderful.
Well, I’m into this thing 30 years now. I don’t manage the company. I haven’t managed the company in years. I’ve got a great leadership team, and I really enjoy working with those leaders. I really love hearing all the success stories from clients everywhere, that they don’t know me, and they have no idea. I walk into a room with so many of our clients, and they’re like, “Who’s he?” They don’t know. Well, back 20 years ago, 30 years ago, that was different. I’m actually excited by that. I want to walk in a room and not be known and have everybody oohing and eyeing over my team. That is, for me, way more fulfilling. So, I think you have to get that really clear, and there’s not a right or a wrong to it. Just be clear on what kind of a life you want to live.
And I would just say, if somebody’s thinking about going from solopreneur or sole contributor to being a team guy or gal, and they’re going to build something, I’d spend time interviewing Fiverr or 10 CEOs of like businesses and ask them, “All right, what are the pros? What are the cons? What do you love? What do you hate? What do you wish you would do different?” And really examine it because there have been plenty of times for over 30 years, I’ve thought I could make more money if I just did the Harkavy thing. I just did my own client list and had a little small team I could probably make more annually. But then there’s the flip side too is I built a business now that’s worth something. So, now I have an asset that I wouldn’t have if it was Daniel coaching.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Because when Daniel leaves, so does the business. Here’s the theme I see, at least in finance, you can tell me if you see it in other industries as well. It’s that grind, that 10-year grind that you did from 20 to 30 where you’re like, “Okay, I’m taking a year off.” I see our industry reward, and I’m sure this happened in mortgage banking. It’s like, I feel good because I go to the conference, I’m top producer, I get this little crystal trophy, they walk me across stage. Everybody’s like, “How’d you do it?” And it’s the ego stroke, and it feels good. It’s like grown-up sports, right? And so, then they hit this kind of red line or maybe their life changes. They get married, they have kids, they want to focus that energy on other places. And then they try to shift to business owner and CEO.
So, they now have a team of advisors, very similar to how you built the mortgage banking. But then they start to have different issues they never had before. And I remember my first year or two of entrepreneurship, I’m like, I had a small sales team, no drama for like 10 years. And then the moment we start trying, I’m like, “Why do so many people have problems?” I’m not even in the office yet, and I’ve got three texts, a phone call, personnel issues popping up, and I’m just trying to build a business people want to show up to and like do great work, right? And I felt myself there’s kind of this, well, statistically, entrepreneurs are more susceptible to all kinds of addictions, right? Self-medication of other, it’s alcohol, drugs, infidelity, which you would see is almost like, man, there is no more brand to go around.
And so, you would almost escape this absent CEO syndrome, or like, “I’m tapped out.” And I see that happen a lot right in that kind of shift from solopreneur to business owner, CEO, where it’s like you’re starting to turn the corner, but it gets really tough, and then people just leave. And then the team’s like, “What the heck? Where’s our leader? It’s like he’s on vacation for two weeks. I can’t even get a hold of him.” So, I’ve seen that happen a lot in that transition where people almost give up before they kind of turn the corner. Is that common in a lot of industries where you see this? Or is that just a finance thing?
Daniel Harkavy: I think it’s probably common in many industries where the compensation structure’s the same, where you can make a ton of money. If you were to break it down to an hourly financial services and all the adjacent industries, where you eat what you kill, and there is no limit, I think that’s pretty darn common.
Brad Johnson: That’s a good point.
Daniel Harkavy: Because what you do is you sit there, and everyone does the math. And they do the math. They’re like, “All right, wait a minute. Two years ago, I made X and I worked these hours.” And you’ll always remember you work less hours than you actually did, and you’ll always remember that it was easier than it actually was, so it’ll have this like, “Oh, it was really good.” That happens. But I think what you need to have is you need to have something that’s going to pull you forward. One of the things that we do with leaders is we really help them to crystallize that vision going forward so that it’s got magnetic pull power. It has to have magnetic pull power. It needs to be both clear and compelling, clear enough to build strategy to and discipline, and compelling enough to pull you through those times of real sacrifice and discomfort.
And, Brad, I can tell you, there were times in my mortgage career as well as over the last 30 years here at Building Champions where I’ve walked down the hall to the office, and you walk down and it’s like, “Oh, I’m on fumes,” like the drama or the culture hit. There’s nothing worse than being a leader of a business when your culture is on fire. It’s horrible. It feels similar to marriage problems because if you’re spending 8, 10 hours a day working and there’s turmoil with everybody and all the emotional yuck and drama, that feels really bad, and it’s on you as the CEO. I mean, it is on you. There’s nowhere else to look. You got to look in the mirror and, all right, what am I doing to create this or to allow this? And it’ll suck the oxygen out of you.
So, when that does happen, or when there’s a real business hardship or when there’s real frustration, the vision is what will pull you forward when you’re walking down the hallway to the office going, “I don’t want to be here”? It’s like, “But I know why I’m here, and I know where we’re going, and I believe in it. So, change your mindset, Harkavy, and don’t trust your feelings.”
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Sometimes that voice inside your head’s the most dangerous one to listen to, right?
Daniel Harkavy: It’s always the most dangerous. That voice inside the head has more power than anyone around us and really understanding that and being good at deciphering it. Feelings are always real, but the narrative that causes them is not necessarily true, nor is it often beneficial. It can be very harmful. So, we have to be aware of the feeling. We have to question the narrative, and then we need to step out and we need to look for other possible narratives. What else could be true in this? Because the feeling’s real, but I have to be very skilled at identifying it and then questioning, “Wait, why? Why? Is there other possibilities? Come on, be more intelligent than just running with the feeling and then assuming the narrative is accurate.”
Yesterday I was driving downtown here in Oregon, and somebody had that old bumper sticker that I still think like if I were to get a bumper sticker ever in my life, it might be the one I put on there, and that is, “Don’t believe everything you think.” And I was like, yep, that’s brilliant. That’s a brilliant bumper sticker.
Brad Johnson: First off, self-awareness as a leader. Like, I think everybody thinks they have it, and then you talk to some people that know you like, “Hey, you probably might want to work on that one a little bit.” If you find yourself kind of getting caught in this doom loop of thought, how would you recommend leaders pull themself out of that?
Daniel Harkavy: Is this an in-the-moment scenario, or is this like it’s been going on for weeks?
Brad Johnson: Let’s call it in the moment because that’s where I see people get kind of consumed. It’s like, “Oh, the room is on fire,” and they lose it and then show up not how they want to as a leader.
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. So, what we’re talking about is emotional intelligence, and we’re talking about understanding the neuroscience of the brain and what happens. And what’ll happen is in a situation to where the voice is getting really loud, what’ll happen is the feelings will start to change, and our vision will become a bit more narrow. We’ll start to feel maybe shallowness of breath. We might feel tingling of hands. We might feel that we’re obsessing on one thought, and we can’t think creatively. And that voice is getting louder and louder and louder. And what’s happening is I’m assuming most listening are familiar with this, but some should study it. But what’s happening is you’re being hijacked, and you have a belief taking place that something really bad’s going to happen.
And the human brain is now going into defend mode, and it’s going to either fight, flight, or freeze. So, we have a lot of adrenaline. We have cortisol pulsing through our body and putting us into survival mode, shuts down our executive functions, and we no longer have the ability to be creative and to examine what else might be true. In that moment, we have to change our physiology. We have to get up. We have to change our breathing. It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to say, “Hey, you know what? I’m starting to feel just slightly tense, and I’m probably not in the best place for us to continue. I need five minutes. I’m going to go outside and take a walk. Let’s take a quick break. Let’s cool the room down.”
If I don’t have the luxury of doing that, alright, I need to just get it together, and I can’t take the break. What I want to do is I want to actually physically move. I want to start breathing in through my nose, not like I’m having a hyperventilation moment in front of people, but slow it down, start thinking about what I’m feeling with my hands and my fingers. I can put them on a desk. I can feel something tactile and just be aware of, “All right, I’m feeling pretty tense. I’m feeling tight.” Now, understand the cause of it. Nine times out of ten, there’s a situation that is happening where somebody’s questioning you. They’re questioning either directly or indirectly your decision, what you’re saying, your motive, your character.
It feels like that in the moment they have a straightforward question, or they disagree. It’s probably not that big of a deal. But your brain is connecting this conversation for me at the age 61 to a very similar conversation at the age 13, where at the age 13, that situation where I was being challenged or being told I was an idiot or whatever it was, it felt like my world was coming to an end and my brain doesn’t have the ability to differentiate 13-year-old and what happened to 61-year-old. And it’s doing the same thing. It’s cortisol, adrenaline, and I have to be skilled in understanding that going, “Okay, slow it down. Let’s slow down the chemical. Let’s begin getting curious.”
We have to move from the defensive thinking and believing to curiosity, intentional curiosity. “I want to understand what you’re saying. Help me to understand. Can you say it a different way because it’s feeling this way to me?” Just awareness, skill, physiology change, breathing.
Brad Johnson: What I hear you saying there it’s that space between stimulus and response. You’re trying to widen it so that you actually can behave in the way you want to. You’ve worked with a lot of leaders over the years, CEOs over the years. I’m curious, have you ever seen a volatile leader, an emotionally volatile leader that was able to build a successful company with a great culture?
Daniel Harkavy: Yes. Boy, is it difficult? It’s so difficult. What happens? You can have an incredibly passionate leader who will, from time to time, hijack. I’m thinking it’s not common. I’m thinking of one in particular who’s brilliant and who had a beautiful heart and people knew it because 90% of the time, there was such a caring demeanor. There were certain times where bam, I mean it, and that was why I was there. I mean, my job was to work global organization, billions and billions and billions in revenue, hundreds of thousands on payroll. What happens is when I feel tense and I go command and control as a leader, and I start to rage and I start to get loud, and when that happens, whether it’s coming at you or not, you as a human in the room will start to feel less comfortable, right? So, now how I feel on my own will change how you feel in the room.
Now, we’re talking about team unity, team health. As goes the leader, so goes the team. As goes the team, so goes the entire organization. So, if I have 12 leaders that are leading a global, or if I have six leaders that are leading something small, how I engage with each and every one of them one-on-one or in the room, the temperature I set, it’s then contagious and it will permeate all the way down through the most recent hire. So, being self-aware and being masterful at how we lead ourselves in all situations will directly impact the performance of the business because it directly impacts the culture that either allows collaboration, innovation, creativity, or it stifles it and it turns us into just perform to the best of your ability, just perform so that you don’t get smacked. Do what you need to do and get the heck out of here, instead of, man, this is an amazing place, let’s create something brilliant.
Brad Johnson: So, it’s interesting because you said, yes, emotionally volatile. Yes, built a great culture, big business. I’m curious if you could wave a magic wand and turn that leader into a non-emotionally volatile leader, do you think it would’ve happened faster?
Daniel Harkavy: Oh, my gosh. I mean, so much energy goes into the repair after the volatility. So, you’re having to do repair, and here’s what happens. Just imagine, everyone listening to us, your business is an octagon, all right? And every wall of the octagon is a different aspect of the business. You have production, you have the consulting, you have the accounting, you have the sales, you have the marketing, you have the QC, you have the research, you’ve got all the different aspects of your business. You the leader is sitting in the middle of this octagon, and then surrounding you is your executive team, your leadership team.
Coming at the octagon – competition, legislation, geopolitical, economic, there are all these forces coming at the octagon trying to destroy the walls, the battles out there. And our job in a healthy organization, I as the leader, we as the team, we want to take ground. We always want to be improving. We want to increase market share. We want to increase revenue. We want to increase EBITDA. We want to increase overall customer satisfaction. We want to– whatever it is, we’re always working on buoying up the strength of those walls so that we’re the best business we can possibly be, as the result of us being the best team we can possibly be, as a result of me being the best leader that I can be. All right. If we’re dysfunctional on the inside of this octagon, all we’re doing is we’re spending a ton of energy fighting an inside battle. Our eyes aren’t on the outside. We’re not strategically advancing. We’re not defending against because we’re fighting all of this garbage on the inside. Healthy, dynamic, magnetic culture is the key to running a successful business.
You have to, over the long haul, have a vibrant culture where people feel pretty darn fortunate to be a part of this, or else they bounce or they show up, but they bounce when they walk through the doors and you’re getting 40% of them and you’ll never build anything great. So, how I feel on my own, what I think, what I believe, how I feel all around my identity impacts my competence, my relationships, my habits and actions, which lead to the results that I get, not just in business, but in life.
You and I could riff on this with regards to, what are you talking about? Her could be as a husband or as a wife, or as a mom or a dad. Same model. Inside gear, identity, who I am, why I’m here, what my overall purpose is, my feelings, my thinking, my belief, this is an inner gear that’s operating that directly impacts that outer gear, which are my competencies, my relationships, and my habits, which lead to the results that I get. So, long answer, bro, I’m sorry.
Brad Johnson: No, that’s a great answer. And what I take from that is if you are showing up as a leader where you’re creating internal battles inside of the business and to your point, repair, because yeah, I may be passionate, I may have lost it in that last executive meeting, but now, I’ve got to take that energy to repair those and hey, my bad guys, I lost it on you. That is taking the energy away from fighting the external battle that you actually need to focus on in the first place to survive as a company. So, that’s what I’m hearing you say.
Daniel Harkavy: And there’s even more to that though, because what happens is, let’s say, don’t repair and it’s a repeat, repeat, repeat, what happens is people are emotionally jacking and positioning and they’re spending all this energy just wanting to get through the meeting, just wanting to get through the one-on-one, or they’re wondering, can I really trust you? And that just requires so much energy and it wastes, so…
Brad Johnson: Let’s go there. So, we’ve talked about culture, couldn’t agree with you more, and there is no company with a perfect culture. It’s like rents do every day, right? But let’s go to, of all your years of experience, let’s say some of the most toxic cultures you’ve seen when that founder came in the first time and they’re like, man, this is not what I wanted to build. We’ve got to steer the boat a different direction here. Trust has been broken, let’s say repeatedly over and over. There’s a lot of baggage. How would you go about starting to correct that as the founder? What would be the steps you would start to think about there?
Daniel Harkavy: So, if we’ve got the founder who has caused or allowed this toxic reality to exist, it’s not going to be an outer gear thing. It’s not going to be, hey, I’m going to work on your competency, your relationships, and your habits, so you get different results. I’m going to have to do some deep inner gear work. You need to find somebody who can help you to really examine what is it that causes you to have those volatile moments to where the feelings are just so big that you find yourself being the one that is surrounding yourself with chaos. Oftentimes, if we think that it’s always everybody else’s issue, no, no, no, no, no. We’re in the middle of it and we have to do some good self-examination. So, what I would say, your starting point is you have to find somebody who can help you to look at previous decades and say, all right, let’s look at the lows and let’s look at the highs. Let’s look at what are the experiences that have formed you into who you believe you are today, because here’s what happens. The best leaders, they assume positive intent as a result of their identity and what they believe about themselves, others, and the world.
If I believe about myself, about you, and the world and the future, if I believe good things can happen and I can author a better tomorrow, well, then I’m not a victim in the story. And if I believe good about me, good about you, and good about the future, I’m going to show up differently. I’m going to invest differently. I’m going to risk differently. I’m going to serve differently. If I believe poorly about me or wrong, poorly about you and the future, well, it’s all coming true. So, you need to find a coach, a therapist, somebody that can just get you to a place to where you have more of the optimism, more of the shalom, peace, more of the joy. Life’s too short. And the work can be done.
I’ve seen transformation for 30 years. That’s why I still do what I do. I love it. I love working with leaders regardless of where they are in the journey, as do my team, there’s 20 of us plus 20 plus coaches and mentors. We do this because we love seeing people who have all sorts of talent. They have all sorts of brilliance. They just need a little bit of help. Maybe, not to get their nose above the water, that’s more of a therapy deal, but you know what? They can see the summit. They just want to get there with the best route possible, you know?
Brad Johnson: Yeah. All right, I’m going to throw a little twist on this. It’s been awesome, by the way. All right. In finance, and I’m sure there was a lot of this in the mortgage banking business too. There’s a lot of partnerships. There’s a lot of father/son, father/daughter, mother/son, mother/daughter kind of business. A lot of husband/wife partnerships where oftentimes what you see is the husband’s the advisor, the wife is the ops, kind of the right hand, the left hand of the business. We’ve talked a ton about just looking in the mirror, problem identified, there it is. Let’s acknowledge it. Let’s work on me. But as you have dynamics and partnerships or family businesses, what are some other things you need to consider with how that plays out?
Daniel Harkavy: It’s funny, I knew where you were going when you started saying it, and I felt myself actually getting nervous. I just feel like, okay, now you’re talking about something that is so– it can be so beautiful, but more often than not, it can be so painful. I’ve worked with husband and wife entrepreneurs. I’ve had my sons work with me in a not-for-profit SetPath that I started in 2020. They both came on. They left their business. They have Harkavy Furniture, which is a beautiful furniture company. But during COVID, they shut it to help me to launch this not-for-profit, to pour into young adults, SetPath. And so, I’ve got firsthand experience in it. When I started my company, my wife was helping me out, Daniel S, Harkavy, Inc., Building Champions. I immediately took my name out because I was like, no, that’s not the kind of company I want to have.
So, partnerships and family, let’s address it that way. Partnerships are something that you want to be incredibly careful before getting into. They can be fantastic. I have had partners at Building Champions for years and plan on adding more because I do believe there is strength in numbers and I want to win with people. The key is to do it with people that are so values aligned. And what you do before you get married in partnership is you figure out your exit, and I’m sure most of your listeners know this. What would be the exit? What would cause us to exit? And then how would we do it? And think about those scenarios and put it in writing.
Keep short accounts. Understand grace is going to be required just like in any marriage, but know that if I own 100% of it, I can make all the decisions I want and I’m accountable to myself, the IRS, and the law. But the moment I allow you to have 1% share, I’ve just given that right up, 1%, because now, if I want to spend 99 bucks, well, $1 is yours and it will require a different level of transparency, higher calling of integrity, potentially more complexity. If I have 100% say, so I can make the D now, I can make the decision now. You have 1% for certain things, I need to make sure you’re cool with it. So, just understand what you’re trading off. Go into it incredibly aligned around your convictions, things you’ll fight for. The behaviors that we together will tolerate and won’t tolerate. What would cause us to blow? How would we exit one another? What’s the formula? What would cause it? And what would the process be? Try to do as much of that in the good times as you can. Document the heck out of it. Keep super short accounts. Know you guys are going to step on each other to have a 24-hour rule. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Don’t let things fester, like don’t. And allow grace. Grace is the key to any sort of marriage, I mean, partnership, marriage, partnership, the same. You got to have grace for one another.
All right, now family, you got to have real rules. You have to have real rules. And we cannot be talking about business when we’re going nighty-night if we’re husband and wife, and we can’t allow it to creep into the kitchen if it’s with our kids. We have to shut it down. Understand that businesses come and go, jobs come and go. Your opportunity to be her husband doesn’t come and go. If it goes, it goes with a whole bunch of body bags and a whole bunch of pain. Your opportunity to have an amazing father/son, father/daughter relationship, mother/son, mother/daughter relationship, that opportunity, it’s once in a lifetime. It’s one aspect of your life.
And now, me, my kids are 22 to 35, four grandbabies, all the kids live within eight minutes of me. We have a gym on our property. They’re there every single day. I’m telling you, five days a week. Towards the end of the day, I’ve got a gym packed with all my kids, the kids’ spouses, which are all my kids, and we’re out there and it’s this connection time. It’s probably one of the best parts of my day. I love being a dad. I love being a husband and I have had those times where my father/son relationship was put at risk because at 11 at night, we’re in the kitchen fighting over which type of technology should be put into the not-for-profit or what’s the process, ah, almost killed us. So, just be careful and set boundaries. Set real boundaries.
Brad Johnson: You said something there that I think is key. Do this work in the good times. What advice would you give either a partnership, and it could be a non-family partnership or a family partnership? From experience, what I see a lot is oftentimes, that work was not done before the partnership. It was kind of the rose-colored glasses. We’re going to do this buddy, let’s go. And then the hard times hit or the friction hits and things aren’t rosy. So, ideally, it was done during the good times. Let’s say that work was not done during the good times and now, there’s some repair and some guardrails that need to be put in place. What advice would you give a partnership like that?
Daniel Harkavy: I would immediately invest in a skilled coach or mediator to come on in and help you to figure it out. You need neutral. You need a neutral skilled party, because here’s what the neutral skill part, it’s marriage counseling, bud. I mean, that’s all it is. The skill is I want to hear you. So, I’m going to ask questions and I want the other partner to hear the answers and to internalize them. A great therapist will say, okay, I really want to hear you and I’m actually doing this so that you can hear. And then I want to ensure that you hear, that you understand, and that you feel what he or she feels. You don’t need to agree or disagree. You need to walk in their shoes. You need to feel it. Put on this experience.
Once you get to that point, whether you disagree or agree, you now have the ability to transfer empathy. And if we can transfer empathy, if we can have empathy, now we can elevate trust because we’re better understanding one another’s perspective and story. Very rarely with your partners that are listening that are already in hot water, very rarely is one of them evil. You know what? I just partner with the wrong person. This person is the most selfish evil human ever. No, they aren’t. What’s happened is there have been some repeated behaviors or there’s some extenuating circumstances that are creating behaviors that might feel evil, but they’re not evil. They’re just in a difficult spot or you are perceiving them wrong.
So, you just need somebody who can skillfully navigate forward so that we can truly hear each other and see if there’s still common ground. And then if there’s not, understand that it’s a business. Businesses come and go. It’s money. You make it and sometimes you lose it, but it’s not your life. It’s not your identity. It will feel like it is, but there’s all sorts of old passages and scriptures. Do everything you can to keep peace with one another. Like really, just do everything you can to keep peace. Life’s way better.
Brad Johnson: You’ve said it a couple times, businesses come and go and that is the reality. But it sure doesn’t feel like it when you pour your heart and soul into something. How do you get an advisor, an entrepreneur that’s consumed? Sometimes being an entrepreneur, you feel like you’re in this pressure cooker. And back to the partnership conversation, now you’re both in this pressure cooker and little things turn into big things just because there’s so much force being applied. So, how do you turn the corner and say, hey, at the end of the day, it’s just a business. If we’re not enjoying this anymore, we can both tap out, sell it, unwind it, whatever, because it’s easily said. And I agree with the logic, but emotionally, so hard to think that way as an entrepreneur.
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. So, what we have to understand, there’s a few concepts that are super easy to talk about and incredibly difficult to digest and own. One of them has to do with truly being clear on identity. What’s at the center of that inner gear? Who I am, who’s I am, why I’m here? There have been times where I have thought I am building champions and I started the company. It was Daniel S. Harkavy, Inc., like I mentioned. And I immediately, like within months, I took that away, I got my name out of it. And it was because I wanted to build a team. I wanted to build a thing that was bigger than me. I’ve started things that are no longer, they failed. And our relationship with failure is one that needs to be examined. So, entrepreneurs, what word comes to you when I say failure blanks me? What’s the first word that comes to you?
Brad Johnson: Defines.
Daniel Harkavy: Defines. Okay, I have asked thousands of business leaders that same question. Defines, intimidates, scares, or teaches. And what we have to understand that nothing great was ever built without constant failure. We just fail and we learn, we adjust, we fail, we learn, we adjust. We have to believe that. So, when you look at life and it’s so short, there’s a Hebrew passage, Psalm 90:12, “So teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” When you invest the most precious asset you have, moments, moments in a day. They’re fleeting, but a vapor, they could go away. Why would we want to waste those moments doing something that we hate to earn something that we have no guarantee will be around to enjoy? Grinding in the pursuit of it in misery, hurting those that we truly love most because we’re not at our best. Why? We have to understand what truly brings joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction.
Now, we go back to that belief. What do I believe about myself, you and the future? For those of us living here in the US and you have listeners everywhere, but for the most part, the folks that are listening to you globally, they’re listening in countries that have a lot of similarities to the US. There is shortage of opportunity here. And what I like to help leaders to see is to come to grips with is, what’s the worst case? Like really, what’s the worst case? Do you believe you’re going to be addicted to meth, pushing a shopping cart, living in a tent down here in Portland? Do you really believe that about yourself?
All right, well, let’s unpack that because when most people can come to grips with their worst case, my worst case is I’m not living in my home that I live in now. Not with the prop, all that I have. I’ve given some of that up, and now I’m living in something that’s smaller. But it feels still very good on the inside. My worst case, unless something catastrophic happens to the health of a family member, right? I’m with that beautiful woman of 37 years and we’re figuring out how to grow old together and we’re in love. We’re hosting a family and instead of having the most beautiful, big, organic this or that, it’s just a little smaller and you don’t get as big a portion.
Like if I really think about my worst case or here’s my worst case, I’m going to work until I’m drooling. You know what? Actually, I want to do that. I have an 81-year-old on my team, CEO mentor, he’s a stud. I have a 79-year-old on my team. Amazing. Elongate the runway, like so many of us are so consumed with we have to have everything in order, so we can retire by the time we’re 50. Really? Why? Like maybe some want to, but you’ve got the ability to contribute and make a difference. Change the weight of it so that it doesn’t feel the same so that you can have a different role, but still contribute, but maybe do it in a modified way. Have the freedom to continue or not continue.
Brad Johnson: The word that comes to mind there is perspective. I think sometimes when you’re in the heat of the battle, it’s easy to lose perspective, but if you zoom out, I love that framing. What’s my worst case? I mean, for me, married to my wife of 20 years, three kids, like, as long as that small little pod is good, I can live in a cardboard box on a corner. And I think sometimes it’s…
Daniel Harkavy: But you never would. You never would. Look at you, like it wouldn’t happen, right? You wouldn’t have a cardboard box. It would be corrugated steel and it would be in a nice little meadow somewhere. I mean, it’s…
Brad Johnson: I could do a mobile home if I had to. It’s all good.
Daniel Harkavy: There’s some nice ones.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, in your neck of the woods, isn’t it tiny homes? Isn’t that kind of like an Oregon thing?
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah, we got tiny homes everywhere. And Brad, honestly, about a week ago, I almost bought a prefab home they could drop on our property to put my 86-year-old parents in. Like, we’ve had a crisis with my 86-year-old parents. They live in that building. This is my office. But that building over there is called The Springs Living, and it’s for independent living, assisted living, memory care, which is part of my journey with my parents. Well, anyways, I almost bought one of those and put it on our land, but instead that gym I just talked about is getting converted to an ADU and we’re building a new gym in the back. But I could live in that ADU. Like my wife and I, we cruise little neighborhoods all the time going, we could live in that. We could do that. Kind of fun.
Brad Johnson: Well, yeah, I’ve got one last question for you, and then I want to– two last questions, I should say. Completely agree with that. For me, when I get stressed, I have to put myself in the zoom-out perspective. Like, hey, the walls are not crumbling down. It’s okay. This too shall pass. And there’s seasons of that as an entrepreneur, seasons of more stressful moments and less stressful moments. And as I’ve had to grow, it’s almost like this, I don’t know if this is the right word, but kind of almost like a callousness, a little bit of like, there’s a rollercoaster as an entrepreneur. Don’t get super excited when things are going good. Don’t get super low when things aren’t. It’s just like, how do you kind of level it a little bit. At least that’s the way I kind of think through it. But let’s go to when things aren’t, let’s say that a death of a family member that you had no control of, you didn’t see coming, like those curve balls that life throws people that’s just not their fault. Any different advice you’d give there where like some of those catastrophic moments happen, because they happen to everybody?
Daniel Harkavy: It’s such a broad question because you know where my mind goes. I am one who have– I mentioned to you before we hit record, wife and I, four kids, married, grandbabies, but we had a dozen or so other young adults living with us from ‘96 through 2022. Many with addiction. We’ve had post-suicide attempts. We’ve had suicide, young suicide. Boy, where siblings and family then live with us, one of the siblings live with us. We’ve had gnarly, all right? We’ve had really gnarly. I have seen gnarly. I have officiated several memorials and weddings for the same families. I’ve sat with young people who’ve passed. They’ve taken their last breath here fighting cancer or watching a young buddy pass a heart attack. I’ve seen all of that.
And I’ve experienced some of the most immense forms of grief. 2021, I experienced something so gnarly that a guy who’s usually defined by like, I’m Pollyanna, joy, gratitude, feet bare, hit the ground all the time. February ‘21 through May of ‘22, I wept every day uncontrollably. I had a dark season, February ‘21 through May of ‘22, as a result of something I experienced and saw with a young person and then the family and then a whole series of too many young people losing hope and wanting to end their lives. It wrecked me. What advice do I have when those things happen? Grief is real and it’s going to hit. It’s going to hit. We can’t live in fear of it. We just have to understand that it is part of the journey and it’s not comfortable.
Grief, I’m a surfer. I’ve been surfing my whole life. Surf Hawaii every winter. Lived over there for years. Just recently sold our home. Waves come, and there’s sometimes, when we are out there, and if it gets really big, like in Hawaii, it’ll happen where it’s four to six-foot and you can handle it all. But you know a swell is coming, especially with technology today, but it shows up a little early. And all of a sudden, instead of four to six, we’re looking out on the horizon. And all of a sudden, it’s 10 to 12 like that. Well, now it’s no longer fun. Now, it’s threatening. And that if you get pounded, there are times where you’ll get so thrown around, you’re held under, you’re hitting things, you’re barely on, and then you come up and get air, and then the next grief wave comes and that grief wave comes and it’ll destroy you. And it will feel like it’s never going to let you up. But then it’ll let you up.
And over time, the swell will pass. It doesn’t last forever. It’s a few days. Or with grief, it can be years. But just to acknowledge that it’s real, and I could get into a whole self-care routine for when difficult things happen. I’m a huge fan of health. I’m a huge fan of energy, huge fan of what I put into my body, how I exercise my body, how I breathe, how I sleep, how I pray, focus, and orient my whole life around principles that are much bigger than however many years I live. And all of that impacts identity, which that impacts feeling and believing, which impacts how I then move through days regardless of what’s happening around me.
So, we can be proactive and intentional and we can react in ways that are in alignment with who we want to be if we’ve done the work to figure out who we really feel like we’re designed to be, and then what does that person need to do. But when the storms hit, it’s okay. I mean, it’s just, okay. Give yourself grace and permission. Surround yourself with some really good people. Do what you need to do on the spiritual side and the physical side. Stay in community, have positive, uplifting people around you, and if you need help, get help. There’s no shame in getting help.
Brad Johnson: Thanks for sharing that. That was beautiful. Thanks for going there.
Daniel Harkavy: My pleasure.
Brad Johnson: We’ve mentioned therapy a few times. You have our mutual friend, Michael. He gave me a gift when I was about 35. I was a farm boy, college football player, not a lot of empathy or, hey, let’s talk about your feelings in those environments. It’s rub some dirt on it, pick yourself up, go strap it on, and go do something about it. And he shared with me, it’s the healthy people that go talk to somebody. And that was a gift. Without that, I probably wouldn’t have done marriage therapy with my wife. And through that journey, especially us males who really struggle with it sometimes, I’m an Enneagram 7, I’m sure you’ve been exposed to Enneagram at this point. I’d rather ignore and go do something fun, right?
And I remember our therapist said, “Hey, Brad, it’s okay to be sad. You can be sad. That’s part of the journey.” So true. Like if you ignore it or stuff it in a closet, never works out well long term from my experience. So, I love that advice.
Daniel Harkavy: Yeah. Yesterday, I was over there at The Springs. I’m sleeping there now. I’ve been sleeping there for a month. My wife sleeps there many of the nights, but it’s not as comfortable. She’s there now with my dad. My mom’s in a rehab center after falling, shattering her elbow and hairline fracture in her pelvis, and both parents are dealing with dementia. And yesterday morning, I was walking down the hall of that place. Walking out of the room that I now sleep in, walking down the corridor to get on the elevator to come. And I was going to go home. I had a meeting at a university yesterday. And I was walking down the hallway and I was just so uncomfortable and so sad. And I’m walking down the hallway and I’m just coming to grips with it, which is what we were talking about earlier. I’m like, all right, what are you feeling, Daniel? Such discomfort. Such sadness. It’s going to pass. It might get worse. No, it’s going to get worse. Okay, you’ve got this. It’s okay. Don’t try to fight it. Just own it. It’s part of the human journey. How are you going to show up? How are you going to show up? Choose how you’re going to show up.
All right, self-talk, you know it’s like, but being aware, walking, I was walking down the hallway, I told two of my colleagues yesterday that they accompanied me to this meeting. Just I was so aware of how uncomfortable this is, and I’ve been in a lot of uncomfortable situations. This one feels gnarly. So, Hyatt gave you really good advice, and I’m glad that you went and did that with your pride, buddy, because we’ve all been there.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. The only thing I wish we would’ve done, I started that year 1 of marriage, not year 15, would’ve saved us a lot, a lot of wrong terms along the way. But yeah, it’s one of my– the advice I used to give newlyweds was never stop dating. And I still believe that’s good advice, but my new advice is to start couples therapy as soon as possible. Because back to everything you just said in the business partnership, I’ve seen so many examples of we are literally in the same conversation with two completely different understandings and outcomes with the same words in the exact same scenario. And it happens in business, it happens in marriage, happens in friendships, and just like being able to process that people don’t always see the world the same way you do. It’s like, say, gifts as a human, if you start to learn that the earlier, the better.
Daniel Harkavy: So true.
Brad Johnson: Well, my man, that’s such a powerful conversation and I really appreciate it. I have one closing question, which I mean, you’ve probably already answered it about seven different ways, but this is the Do Business. Do Life show, where we really want to help the listeners, the viewers think about how they can build a business that blesses their life, doesn’t become their life and serves them. It’s everything you’ve shared on this conversation. But if you were to define what is Daniel Harkavy’s, like, here’s my definition of what that means to me, what would that be?
Daniel Harkavy: My definition of what it means to me to do business, do life, businesses, it’s not my life. Business is an aspect of my life and in our culture, it’s a required aspect for most, but it’s also a get to aspect of my life. So, I’ve made the trade-offs over the years to earn less of a paycheck in order to gain more in moments, to be more present, to have more space. To do business, do life means, to me, that you have truly examined who you want to be in all areas of your life and then you figure out how to give the appropriate amount of energy and time to those areas so that you stack the odds in your favor of having a regret-free, joy-filled future. We got to do that work, though.
There’s a Hebrew passage that says, “The plans of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” Humans, you’re in control. You say yes, you say no. You figure out how you want to show up. What kind of a wife do you want to be? What kind of a husband do you want to be? What kind of a steward of your health do you want to be? No one’s telling you and saying, you can’t be that. No, it’s up to us. We make those choices. Just like, you guys are all financial planners, man, so you make choices with all the different accounts in your life as to what kind of balance you hope to have and what’s the strategy to get there. Well, do that with your health. Do that with your faith. Do that with your marriage. Do that with your family. Do that with each one of your kids. Do that with your community, with your sanity. Do that with all of the different accounts in your life where you play a unique stewardship role. Figure out who you want to be in all of those areas, and then figure out what does that person need to do.
Then you do the business account in its appropriate measure as you’re examining how you invest all of those beautiful moments you have and the energy you have to the other accounts. Do it all business and life with that intentional purpose. And it’s not going to be a little magic lamp where a genie pops out and, oh, Pollyanna life. But no, you will author way more of your future than you would without doing the work and diving deep to pull those plans out.
Brad Johnson: Well said. Well, Daniel, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Can’t wait to get this conversation out to the world. And if Michael keeps doing the fishing trip, I’m going to make sure I get on the next one so we can hang out and do some life together.
Daniel Harkavy: Right on. Well, I’m talking to him right after the holidays. So, when this thing’s airing, he and I are talking about the next fishing trip.
Brad Johnson: All right, I’ll let you guys do the planning. I’ll just show up. How’s that sound?
Daniel Harkavy: That’s smart. That’s wise, young man. That’s wise.
Brad Johnson: All right. Well, really appreciate the conversation, and until next time.
Daniel Harkavy: Thanks for having me.
