Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Most people have never identified all of the things that make you you from day one.

You're good enough.

You're fantastic, in fact.

You don't have to generate something.

You don't have to start acting in a particular way to find extrinsic validation.

You're good enough.

You're more than enough, just the way you are.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Robert and Leila.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review.

Now, let's get communicating with David Ask, who's an entrepreneur and inventor.

He is here to talk to us about how we communicate based on who we are, which is a very interesting concept.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome him to the show.

Hey, David.

Hey, good morning.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm honored to be here with you.

Absolute pleasure.

Welcome.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah.

So I actually live in Nashville, Tennessee.

I grew up in a little town in Minnesota, actually, but I've been in the south here for about 30 years.

I'm married for 25, and I've got two awesome teenagers, one in college and one as a senior in high school.

Like you mentioned, I am an entrepreneur.

I run a small business.

I'm really out of our home.

We, of course, have a lot of partners across the country here, but we, my wife and I, largely run the business.

So about 10 years ago, along with my brother-in-law, we invented a thermostat guard.

It's a box that goes over thermostats, so people don't tamper with the thermostat, usually in a public setting, but people use them in their homes as well, depending on the circumstance.

But we were actually the first ones in the world to come up with a stat guard, as it were, with a combination lock.

So we sell Lowe's and the Home Depot and True Value Hardware, and we're growing that business.

Along with that, passionate guy in general, I run or facilitate a mastermind group within the Iron Sharpens Iron Mastermind, and it's for men.

There's probably 150 men across, I think, four or five countries now.

Walking with guys who are trying to move the needle in their business and in their marriages and parenting and stuff is a real honor.

And one of my really deep passions is helping dads become better fathers.

By the way, when I saw your podcast, quite often when we want to communicate something, right?

We need to consider our audience, but we also need to consider ourselves.

And that self-awareness piece is really, really important on how we show up.

Yeah, that's a bit of a snapshot as to who I am and what I'm up to.

Thanks for sharing all that.

So you moved from colder weather to warmer weather, because I'm still in the Midwest in Chicago.

Are you really?

Yeah.

Yeah, you understand cold.

Your invention is very interesting for me, because as a South African, when I first came here, I used to say, what do Americans have against room temperature?

Why is everyone also adjusting the temperature?

Whatever the weather is, just let it be that.

Well, and it's funny, we were, so a month ago, my daughter is a musician, as well as I am, and she did a violin tour with her group in Austria and Germany.

And of course, Europe really doesn't think about conditioned air like we do.

You know, it was hot, and the hotel rooms were hot, and once in a while, you'd find a room with some air conditioning and so on.

But the restaurants didn't have it, and heck, they don't even think of ice the same way we do.

So it's a much different culture.

So, yeah, we had to adjust to that in a real hurry.

But obviously, with your invention, the entire country is your market.

Now, let's talk about how when you were going to Home Depot, going to Lowe's and saying to them, please stop this.

How do you approach that?

And those who said no to you, do you look back and say, it's because of how I approached the situation of how I communicated?

That's a really great question.

Obviously, on the front end, we were interested in just grabbing some attention from the right person.

You know, obviously, there's different levels of communication, you know, whether that's a strategy where you work through someone to grab, to communicate, whether it's a headline that communicates something, whether that's an email phone call or an in-person type of a meeting and so on.

And so for the longest time, really, for me, it was more of how do we actually access the decision maker in a big box retail store?

I mean, really, the first one we approached was the Home Depot.

And it's an interesting thing.

You can't call them.

They have a phone number, but of course, it's an IVR.

So when you call their number, it's if you know your party's extension, dial it now.

Of course, they give you a menu, but it's not for new vendors.

So it says if you're a potential vendor, you need to go on the website and submit your product idea along with all of your financials and so on, because they want to, along with I'm sure a sea of other people trying to submit products, they want to make sure that not only do you have a good product, but you can actually do business with them.

Meaning, you have the capital to be able to actually sustain business with 3,000 stores or something, 2,000 stores.

Just because you have a good product doesn't necessarily mean that you're the right fit for them, because you have to be able to sustain that level of volume.

That was one thing up front where we didn't have any of that, right?

I had a great idea.

I got some of them made with my life savings.

So up front, I largely followed Richard Branson's advice, where he said, if an opportunity arises, say yes and figure it out.

And that's exactly-

A couple of his books, screw it, let's do it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But that's largely what I did, right?

We ended up finding a connection to get a meeting.

And of course, they were like, wow, this is great, right?

There's thermostat guards out there that have been sold for decades, but they all have a key.

So if you lose that little tiny key, which is a big problem, then you got to rip it off the wall, fix the wall, paint the wall, put another one up.

Well, I solved the lost key problem.

And of course, our StatGuard Plus, it looks a little more stylish as opposed to some of the older units that have been out there.

When they saw it, of course, they're like, wow, this is great.

We get it.

It makes sense.

It's a better mousetrap situation.

And of course, at that point, I need to understand, well, how am I going to pull this off?

They said yes.

So then I said yes, but I needed to make my yes a yes because I didn't have the financial wherewithal to stock the shelves one time, let alone keep another 20,000 units around to restock and understand supply chain and everything.

So I ended up finding a partner and licensing it and so on.

But every step along the way, there was communication happening.

And of course, it needed to be accurate.

We needed to be able to tell the story in a way that gave confidence to everyone involved.

And I knew based upon past experiences that, you know what?

Have an opportunity.

I think Branson is right.

You can figure it out.

There are options.

And quite often, it's not necessarily how to do something, it's who, right?

The book Who Not How.

You just find the right people to sit in the right seat on the bus and it's amazing what you can accomplish.

Did you find that your Home Depot audience, when you were making a presentation and saying, okay, I would like for you guys to stock this product.

What kind of questions did they ask?

Were they technical questions on how this works?

Or does the whole of America want this?

And is it going to sell?

What type of questions do they ask?

There, of course, they protect the real estate, as it were, on their shelves pretty heartily, and you can't blame them.

It's pretty precious space.

I mean, there's so many people wanting to get on that shelf.

It was nice, of course, in kind of my circumstances, they already had a product almost identical to it, meaning they were selling thermostat guards.

I just had a key.

So anybody in facilities management, and that was something where I kind of had a little bit of a leg up because I worked for a large telecom chain in facilities management for over a decade.

And of course, in our stores and call centers and things like that, we had to use thermostat guards because everybody kept messing around with the thermostats.

So I actually had concrete evidence of people losing the keys.

And even the merchant at the Home Depot there, he totally got it, right?

He's like, oh, of course, you know, because when they lose the key, typically you have to break the front cover off.

And then you just see the back plate sitting there in a restaurant or retail store.

Anybody who's anybody that has worked in facilities management or management of any kind in a retail setting, especially, that's a pretty common thing.

So I didn't have to do a lot of convincing.

So of course, they, you know, they wanted to know the quality of the product and what type of plastic we were using and the specs and things like that.

But mine was pretty simple.

My product doesn't have any electronics or batteries or things like that.

So there was really not a huge learning curve for anybody involved.

Not much technical, detail, engineering type stuff where they feel like, oh, we don't understand what this is going to do.

But his story sounds pretty good, especially the tech professionals to say, you're the only one who speaks tech in the room, so make sure that you speak layman's terms when it comes to your customer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So back to communication as well.

You say that we communicate based on who we are.

Yeah.

So kind of a short story.

I met a guy named Dr.

Andy Geerard, who's in my mastermind group.

He's a clinical psychologist out in California, and has become a dear friend.

And we do certain events together.

I'm actually the lead coach for his resiliency program.

But one of the things that after hanging out with him for a few years, that was really been so impactful to me is when he started to kind of unpack this idea of authenticity and identity, and grit, and resilience, and really this idea of intrinsic motivation versus extrinsic motivation.

So what's fascinating is when you want to understand, for instance, authenticity, we often get those things kind of mixed up.

A lot of people would say, I'm acting authentic, but it's just based upon emotions, right?

I'm acting authentic today because I feel this way.

Tomorrow, I might feel something else, and I'm going to act according to my emotions over here.

They label that authenticity meaning.

It's like when a kid throws their toys out of the court because at that moment they're having a tantrum.

Do we call that authentic?

Because adults literally do that sometimes.

Well, right.

So it's really important, for instance, I'll jump into the deep end of the pool here.

So where do we get the word authenticity?

It comes from the word author.

We didn't make us, right?

I didn't make me.

I didn't choose my eye color, my skin color, my taste buds.

I didn't choose my own personality for that matter.

How do we know that's true?

Those of us who have siblings or children for that matter, you can tell a little child's essence within weeks and especially months and of course, years, right?

They're so different.

They're wired so differently than their siblings.

Their little personality and spirit is just so wonderful and precious.

But everything from their taste buds to the things that make them cry to the things that make them laugh.

I mean, all of that stuff is so different and you can literally tell within just a matter of weeks.

You know, when they're six months old or nine months old and they're starting to walk and interacting with, you know, I've got two children and they're vastly different from an early age.

Sometimes even identical twins.

Well, exactly.

Right?

I mean, just because faces or whatever look might look similar or something, we're so different.

Well, this is one thing where I just kind of get a smile inside of me and well, very literally for that matter is when we start to identify, right?

The word identity, when we start identifying our own authenticity.

And again, that's literally mind, body and spirit.

So what do you believe about spiritual things?

What do you believe about your own mind and so on?

So here's what's interesting.

What is it that makes up authenticity?

Well, a lot of people would, for instance, they would say convictions, values, virtues, and they would lump those things together.

Well, they're not the same.

Your values, we talk about core values.

What does your core happen to value most of all?

What is the hierarchy?

In the English language anyway, there's 80 or 100 or something like that of potential core values, and you got to pick the language.

But here's the interesting thing is, is if you were to put a check mark next to the ones that resonate with you, narrow that down to 20, narrow that down to 10, narrow that down to 5, and then put those in priority, your values would be different than mine.

You couple that with a convictions, right?

That means just what you believe is right and wrong, good and bad.

Your convictions are different from your values.

Your values are the matrix at which you make decisions through.

I mean, you would hope so, right?

But most people don't understand that, so their life just absolutely is chaotic because they're making decisions based on their emotions and not their plumb line.

Or whatever is happening at that moment.

Circumstance, just grasp for straws.

Survival sometimes, and we're not going to judge them on that.

You know, life gets tough, and yes.

Yeah.

So here's what's interesting.

It goes even deeper.

So you have values and convictions, but virtues.

What are the highest virtues that you have?

A virtue is outward focused.

It's what type of an impact, right?

This whole dent in the universe thing.

What type of an impact do you want to have uniquely?

Well, I'll be honest, I take it even a step further.

Some of the things that make us unique, it's hard to put language around.

I think I got this from a Nissan commercial, but what is it that gives your goosebumps, goosebumps?

What is it that puts that lump in your throat in a good way?

What is it that just takes your breath away?

And when you're doing it or seeing it or participating in it or becoming it, you're just like, oh my gosh, this feels transcendent.

That's different for everybody.

So you start mixing convictions, values, virtues, goose bumps.

Now, what about strengths?

You start adding in your hierarchy of strengths and how you want to apply those, and you really start to get a snapshot.

Again, it's not, I'll be honest, I don't think it's the totality of what makes someone human, but it's a really great place to start, and I think you're probably 75 percent there.

But most people have never identified.

All of the things that make you you from day one, you're good enough.

You're fantastic, in fact.

You don't have to generate something.

You don't have to start acting in a particular way to find extrinsic validation.

You're good enough.

You're more than enough, just the way you are.

And you can relax into that person and identify the stuff that makes you you, and just be yourself.

How do we know that's true?

I would say when you follow the clues, you know you've found your identity, well, you start to feel genuine.

You start to feel natural.

You start to feel more resilient and free.

But how do you know you haven't found it?

Well, anxiety is through the roof, maybe depression.

You avoid certain people and circumstances, right?

Social anxiety and things like that.

Anger, or maybe easily angered sadness, apathy, all that kind of stuff is front and center.

You act in order to get the external validation.

And that one is a very big, especially with social media.

There's so much that people do nowadays for the external feedback, for the external validation.

And if they were to just take a moment, sometimes be silent and find their identity.

There are so many choices they wouldn't make.

It's crazy.

And so what I think is fascinating, to your question, this idea of starting with who, if you're going to communicate something, it's really important to you, but you've not identified what's important to you, guess what?

You're probably going to be taking on someone else's definition of success.

It could be a mentor, it could be your parents, it could be your older brother, it could be Roberta, it might be Joe Rogan, it might be somebody else that you admire because you don't have that identity.

You've not identified those things that are valuable to you.

It's funny because in some ways it seems kind of complex, but yet it's the most elementary thing when we identify what God authored in us.

We just label it.

We identify it.

Write it down.

That's who you are.

And when you start acting in alignment with that, well, then you start feeling resilient and free and natural and normal and whatever else.

But if you haven't, guess what?

You're going to suffer and you're going to be desperate to have external validation and all the likes and everything else.

By the way, and I want to make sure, again, this is getting really personal, but we have to have external love, especially when we're children.

And those who are not told, I love you and you're fantastic.

You're worth protecting and guiding and growing and pouring into.

And what I see in you is fantastic.

My favorite quote, by the way, is by Benjamin Disraeli.

And he says, the greatest good you can do for another is not to share with him your riches, but to reveal to him his own.

That's already within them.

Exactly.

So as children, if you say to them, you are special, you are loved, you are enough.

Yeah.

Because they just came here.

So they don't know that yet.

That's why you're pouring this into them, right?

When a grown up says, I've never had that growing up.

So I don't know that it is in me.

So I don't know who I am, or I don't know that I'm enough, or I don't know who I am authentically.

And then you find that sometimes psychologists will say, whatever you were not given, give that to yourself to establish who you are, whatever it is.

I think there's some real value there.

I'm a Christian, so I would say, love your neighbor as you love yourself, right?

Kind of what you said.

It's like, and value yourself.

You have absolute immense value.

I spoke to a guy this weekend who's been married for a long time.

He and his wife are just having going through a rough patch.

He was never given any of this.

So we were talking about just being kind to yourself and loving yourself.

But here's what's interesting.

What if you don't know who that person is?

What is to love?

For instance, Roberta, I've known you for 20 minutes, right?

So I could say something.

Again, just knowing you for 20 minutes, I can see something and say something, right?

So I can say, wow, you're so respectful.

We're on a podcast together and your questions are so great.

I love that you prepared in advance.

I feel valued because you put the work in to this podcast to value my time.

And so thank you for that.

I can tell that that's a value of yours because you showed up prepared today, that kind of thing.

But what would it look like for, again, adults who never received that?

It's surrounding yourself with people who can mine for gold.

So when they see you stepping out of your comfort zone or saying something that's meaningful to you, they later in the day, they can say, hey, by the way, Jim or whatever, you know, Jim, I saw that you were acting in a really passionate way earlier when you were speaking to this person.

And I want you to know that that landed really well.

You spoke with conviction and authority and what you said was valuable.

It's those types of comments, right?

That extrinsic love and validation that what?

Ultimately establishes who we are, galvanizes it.

We have to have that external stimulus, period.

I heard someone say the other day, life is about relationships.

Period.

It's the only goal of life.

It's the absolute hierarchy.

It's relationships.

The rest of it is a context to experience people in.

There's no other purpose in life.

That's why when people suffer of anxiety and depression, they start to isolate and it gets worse.

The first relationship is with yourself.

Yeah.

That's what we were talking earlier, which is if you haven't been given what you were supposed to find a way and professionals can help you for you to give it.

Because the first relationship you have is with yourself.

How you communicate with yourself, then translates to how you're going to communicate with David, with the rest of the world, because it all starts here.

It's so true and so many of us were never taught that.

I didn't really understand that paradigm until recently, and I'm 50, maybe my mid 40s.

I started to kind of understand this idea of what does that really mean to know myself and to love myself and honor those things in me, to cause those things to kind of come forth and so on.

And then of course, help others along that path.

I think it's the point of life is to cause others to thrive.

But when we all do it, it's magic.

It's absolute magic.

And we all certainly benefit.

So when we know who we are, we then are able to not only communicate with others.

And you were talking about the Golden Rule earlier, but we also have what they call the Platinum Rule.

So the Golden Rule says, love your neighbor as yourself, or treat them the way you want to be treated.

But Platinum Rule says, communicate with David the way he prefers to be communicated to.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, know your audience.

Yes.

Yes.

I think that's beautiful.

Yes.

So when you know who you are, you said we communicate based on who we are.

How do you then add that, like you said, know your audience at the Platinum Rule to that?

Because you are communicating with who you are.

I'll be honest.

I think that's very wise.

But you're not ceasing to become yourself.

You're just using the highest version of yourself, your intuition, to say, how do I use my highest skill set to communicate something to this type of a personality, or this type of a person, this type, maybe they've got a particular history, or whatever that is, that would land really well.

So I'm bringing forth my values, my strengths, my history, my repetitions, all that kind of stuff in order to navigate loving this person, helping this person, causing them to grow and thrive and understand.

You're just accessing the best parts of who you are in order to do that skillfully, I think.

While staying authentic and knowing who you are.

Yes.

Yes.

Before we get into your book, The Guardians of Grit, any last words for someone who feels that they are still, like you said, you've learned this in your late 40s, now 50.

Yeah.

Who feels like, I'm still trying to find, you know how people like Tony Robbins, and they have this seminars and they say to people, what do you want?

They always say people don't know what they want.

Right.

They think they do, but they don't.

They know what they don't want in their lives right now, what they don't, what they wish would go away, but people don't generally know exactly what they want.

And I think what you spoke about today is also a reflection of that, because they don't know who they are.

So I'm going to make two distinctions.

I spent most of my life trying to generate who I was, accomplishments and things like that.

So I didn't think I had an identity or that I mattered unless I worked really hard and did really profound and cool things.

You know, I suffered under the weight of being a human doing and not a human being for a long time.

So yeah, I'm sure I'm stealing it from somebody else.

I don't know who first said it, but I suffered under the weight of being a human doing and not a human being for far too long.

And I was so desperate to become someone, or at least not be a nobody as opposed to what?

As opposed to kind of what we're talking about here, is just relaxing into the person that, you know, that God made me to be, identifying those things that make me me and operating out of that place and really driving a stake in the ground and having the confidence to say, this is who I am.

This is the type of impact that I want to have.

These are my values.

This is the dent in the universe that I like to have.

This is the things that light me up and give me goosebumps.

If someone doesn't like that for some reason, that's okay.

Wish them well.

We don't have to please everybody.

No.

And a lot of people suffer from that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think there's a big difference between trying to become someone and then just relaxing into who you are.

So to your question, though, if someone doesn't understand that, they don't know who they are and they just feel that inner chaos and anxiety really largely, I would say, surround yourself with people who can help you.

I think it's way more practical than it is this ethereal woohoo type language.

It's very practical, very touchable, very intellectual.

You can literally just start being asked the right questions.

And when you answer the right questions, you've identified who you are.

It doesn't have to be some weird something.

It's very practical and very touchable.

And of course, Dr.

Andy Garrett and I do that.

And my upcoming book, Guardians of Grit, we're focusing on men first, but this is what we're doing.

We're literally introducing people to themselves so that they can do the same thing for their children.

I like to tell people, hi, I'm David Ask.

Let me introduce you to yourself.

They can do that for their kids.

They can look at their kids and say, hey, my son's name is Parker, my daughter's name is Kate.

Hey, Parker, let me introduce you to yourself.

What does that mean?

I'm going to ask you really great questions.

And when you give me an answer that I think is just spot on, I'm going to validate that.

I want to be like, oh yeah, man, you nailed it.

I totally see you doing that.

As parents, right, and I'll just say guardians, we were called to raise our children, to cause them to rise.

Well, what does that mean?

It means causing them.

The word does not rise necessarily.

It's really them.

It's this idea of identifying the greatest good, the summum bonum inside of somebody and pouring life-giving water on it, pouring love on it, pouring validation on it, shining a spotlight on it.

I'll be honest, Roberta, we need that.

We need love, that.

We need something that's very tangible, more than we need air.

And the proof is in the pudding there.

I talked to three people this last week who are in their 50s, who are contemplating, I wouldn't say necessarily suicide, but one of them told me, I guess they kind of all did, you know, if my car got wrapped around a tree on the way home, I wouldn't necessarily mind.

They're just tired of the struggle of trying to just generate, and they're exhausted, and all they really have to do is let the pressure out of the tank.

Hey, you're enough and start answering really great questions.

What do you believe about this?

Well, what do you believe about that?

What is it that lights you up?

What is it that gives you goose bumps?

But then we also need a tribe.

We need, first and foremost, a family, but we need people around us as adults to help us galvanize those things, right?

There's still a 12-year-old in every single one of us, and I don't care how old you are.

We never cease the need of love and validation, period.

And that's what I think is so magnificent about life.

It's all about the relationship.

Absolutely.

And speaking of tribe, I'm from the Zulu tribe, and one thing I've noticed with living outside of South Africa is that, especially in America, no judgment, but I feel that here it's very individualistic, the culture, compared to where I come from.

And that's why people feel so isolated.

Yeah.

It's a really great point, and I think we were missing out in America.

There's some really great things about personal responsibility and all that kind of thing, right?

And so you don't just pass the buck, think that somebody else should be paying your bills and providing for you.

I get that.

But guess what?

The tribe, this idea of community, we'll just say a small town or whatever it is.

Knowing you can reach out to someone, because I have spoken to some of my American friends, and sometimes they'll tell me things that happened for a long time, for like a span of 25 years.

I said, you never spoke to a single soul.

I can count 10 people already that I can speak.

You know what I mean?

And not that they'll always have a solution or anything, but just knowing someone's going to be there for me.

They don't have that.

It's incredible.

I thought that was mind boggling.

Yeah.

And you're right.

You nailed it.

I think that's absolutely vital.

Absolutely.

Be authentic and find your identity.

David Ask, the entrepreneur and inventor, who is also an author of The Guardians of Grit, and has a lot that he has shared with us today based on how we communicate, based on who we are, sorry about that.

Thank you so much for being on the show today.

Please tell us one last time where to find your book and where listeners can reach you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you can go to guardiansofgrit.com.

The book will be done soon.

And then visit my website is davidask, davidask.com.

And ask really good questions, especially so that you can find the right answers.

You know, I've asked.

Thank you so much.

David Ask, entrepreneur and inventor.

My absolute pleasure.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

Please log on to Apple and Spotify.

Leave us a rating and a review and what you'd like for us to discuss on the show.

That will be of benefit to you.

We encourage you to continue to get communicating and let us know how communication skills continue to improve your life professionally and personally.

And stay tuned for more episodes to come.