Behind the Mic With Host David Droogleever '12

Show Notes

In this special episode, get to know David Droogleever's story and why hosting a podcast is an act of building self-trust. Rice Business alum and guest host Scott Gale '19 finds out why joining the Navy was everything David expected and more, and why he starts every day by asking an important question: “Which frog do I eat first?” Check out the episode to find out what that means.

A transcript of this episode is available here.

What is Owl Have You Know?

Owl Have You Know is Rice Business’ podcast created to share the experiences of alumni, faculty, students and other members of our business community – real stories of belonging, failing, rebounding and, ultimately, succeeding. During meaningful conversations, we dive deep into how each guest has built success through troubles and triumphs before, during and after they set foot in McNair Hall.

The Owl Have You Know Podcast is a production of Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business and is produced by University FM.

David Droogleever:
Today on Owl Have You Know. In order to build trust at scale and expeditiously, you need platforms that are one to many. So I'm all about building trust one-to-one, but I want to build trust faster. So I wanted to get on a one to many platform, such as a podcast. There's many other ways to do it as well. So that was the impetus for me.
Scott Gale:
We are launching a special episode of Owl Have You Know. My name is Scott Gale, and I am here with David Droogleever, who you all know as the co-host of the I'll Have You Know podcast, but we're flipping the script a little bit with David and we're putting him in the hot seat to give him an opportunity to tell his story and share a bit more about his journey, his experience with rice, and just thrilled at the opportunity to be here with you today, David.
David Droogleever:
Well, thank you for having me, Scott. I'm glad we set this up. I'm excited.
Scott Gale:
It's going to be a lot of fun. I am here because I sit on the Rice Business Alumni Association Board and helping to look after the podcast, excited about where it's come from and where it's going. And so I just want to get to know you better as a host. And so we're going to spend a little bit of time digging in. So I just want to start right out of the gates and just ask you, why do you get out of bed in the morning?
David Droogleever:
Yeah. Well, that's my question. You stole that. I know you did. Okay. This is my banner cry. I am on the trust war path. The thing that I care about just singularly is building trust. The planet needs trust, our country needs trust, our institutions needs trust, our academia needs trust, our individual relationships need trust. The clear mission and directive for the planet is to build trust with each other and to dismantle distrust period, full stop. That is what we need to do. If COVID hasn't shown to you that trust is the issue, I don't know what else will. So that's clear for me going forward, whether it's doing things like this, getting to know people, my next job situation or work or whatever vocation it is or community I'm looking to build, it's all built on the principle that trust can build anything. You can grow everything through trust and solve any intractable problem through trust. And there is no greater suffering that can be caused by the building of distrust. So trust is the way forward.
Scott Gale:
What are the biggest barriers to trust? Just to double-click in as someone that's thinking a lot about it.
David Droogleever:
Yeah. Just depends how deep you want to go. And I've actually published my own clear text manifesto. It's at trustmanifesto.energy where all these ideas are laid out in about a 6,000 word manifesto. The first issue is actually not out there. Most people think that the trust is out there. It's that person, it's that government entity, it's somewhere out there. Actually, the issue of trust starts with yourself. You cannot have trust if you don't have self-trust, you must trust yourself first, and then you can start to build trust with yourself and other people. So self-trust is where you start.
Scott Gale:
Are there ways to self-diagnose that? Like if I'm listening to this and I'm locked in, I'm like, yeah, trust. That sounds like a thing. What are some of the first ways for people to engage with that?
David Droogleever:
I love that question and this is an ongoing process to learn this and there are certain ways to diagnose. First of all, you can look at your existing relationships. Do you trust the people that are around you? Do they trust you? And frankly, the fastest way to do it is to just ask do you trust me? And have a direct conversation around that, and that's what I propose and advocate for in my manifesto. It's a scary conversation to have because you don't want to hear the other person say actually...
Scott Gale:
It's a vulnerability required to step into that.
David Droogleever:
It requires vulnerability and that is also one barrier to building trust. You must be vulnerable to build trust. Another way to self-diagnose that doesn't require anybody else is how long can you sit with yourself with no external inputs coming in and be still? If you can't get past about a minute, there is something inside of you that you are pushing against. So the more time you can just be still, be mindful, you don't have to do anything. You don't even have to think anything, but can you just be still? That's a really good proxy and direct measurement of how much self-trust you have of many.
Scott Gale:
This is awesome. A lot of actionable insight, I think for sure we should include the link in the show notes. And we'll make that accessible. I'm curious here, like trust is kind of the banner cry, as you said, is there sort of a spark or a moment where that hit your radar as the thing that you wanted to focus on? Was it a series of moments or can you share a little bit of that spark moment?
David Droogleever:
Ooh. Okay. So there's multiple. Of course, growing up, there were moments of trust that was broken in my corporate careers. There's been a lot. I would say if I had to pick one, being in business-to-business technology sales, it's very clear to me you cannot do anything without building trust with your customer. You're not really selling anything, you're actually just building trust because you can't sell anything if you don't have trust with your customer and the organizations don't trust each other.
Scott Gale:
Yeah.
David Droogleever:
So that's the spark moment for me. I'm trying to close multi seven, eight figure deals, and if the customer on the other end of the line or in front of me doesn't trust me or my organization, nothing happens. So that's the spark for me. When I look at my deals that if they're not moving as fast as I want, it's always trust. It's always trust, especially at the end of a sales cycle. It's the classic fight. If you've been in sales for a while, it's fear, uncertainty, and doubt that hockey sticks up at the end of the sales cycle. So if you have enough trust, the customer says, stop talking, send me the DocuSign. But if you don't have enough trust, you have to disentangle the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. So it's really B2B sales for me that became the spark of why trust is paramount.
Scott Gale:
Interesting. And anybody that's been in a sales role understands that there's always some kind of contract or agreement that comes together, but you can't close every risk, every potential upside or downside risk in a contractual agreement. And so ultimately it's yeah, the other person that you're doing business with, can you come to an agreement on all those fringe cases that you're not able to capture and put in the words in an agreement. I'm interested in bringing together these two worlds, one that you've highlighted around trust and how the lens through which you're experiencing the world and see the world and building relationships and that intersection with podcasting. How do those things' intersect in terms of how you think about them?
David Droogleever:
Yeah. I love the questions you're asking because I've spent so long thinking about this already. So here you are pressing all the right buttons. So the reason I wanted to get into podcasting, so of course, we have the I'll Have You Know podcast, and by the way, if you haven't subscribed already, what's wrong with you? And secondly, I have my own personal podcast that I call Soft but Stronger. And then I'm doing certain things with that in the future so that some things are going to change, but here's where it intersects with trust, in order to build trust at scale and expeditiously, you need platforms that are one to many. So I'm all about building trust one-to-one, but I want to build trust faster. So I wanted to get on a one to many platform, such as a podcast. There's many other ways to do it as well.
David Droogleever:
So that was the impetus for me. And before that, I ought to have said, that doing the podcast is an act of building self-trust. How do you build trust? You do things that you're not comfortable with. You do things that challenge you and I was not comfortable with hopping on the mic like I am now. This is like I'm flowing baby. You know? And so with my personal podcast, I mean, I was little jittery on that first episode. In fact, I didn't want to push it out, but after I kept burning those reps, I was billing more and more and more self-trust. So putting yourself out there, being transparent, being vulnerable, which is what happens on a podcast, that's a trust building project. So with yourself and you're letting other people know who you are, what you stand for, so you're building trust with people that are tuning in.
Scott Gale:
Can you share a bit with the audience your process for preparing a guest to be on the show so that you start to establish that foundation so that the conversation goes, we'll say well, whatever that air quotes well, whatever that means, can you share a bit about the process and the goals?
David Droogleever:
Sure. And that's evolved also. Initially I would have a bunch of prep calls and what have you, and then over time I realized that I could just build trust real-time in the conversation. And I don't do much editing because I think that putting things out that are "too perfect" actually doesn't build trust from my view. I think being a little rough around the edges and allowing yourself to be a little raw and imperfect actually builds trust. So I don't try to go for perfection on my podcast. So in terms of preparation, there's really not that much. I share with folks that are coming on my trust manifesto. I also let them know what my principles are, trust, of course, being one of the top ones.
David Droogleever:
And I also just let them know in advance like, hey, we're going to go after huge questions. I'm going to ask big questions that are going to challenge you. And that's pretty much it. And a lot of folks that come on my podcast, they're ready to go. They're rear in to go. And they know that, especially when you just look at something stronger, I mean, it's about being vulnerable and in pursuit of human flourishing, and of course, building trust. So there's really not too much to prepare, especially since most of my work is already out there in public. So by the time they show up, they're ready to go.
Scott Gale:
That's fantastic. I want to pivot just a little bit to dig into the chronology or the arc of your story. And so wherever we want to start that I'm curious in terms of how you've made the decision to go pursue the undergrad that you did, for example, what got you to Georgia Tech?
David Droogleever:
Well, first and foremost, I applied to Rice University and was rejected. So I hold nothing against Rice at all, I promise, the obstacle is in the way right, I love that. And so I applied to Georgia Tech, as well as I think, Carnegie Mellon as well. So I got accepted Georgia Tech. I wanted to go to the most prestigious engineering university I could get into. And I was good with leaving Houston Proper where I grew up. So that was pretty much why I went to Georgia Tech and I figured travel and get out of the house and challenge myself at one of the toughest engineering institutions that's out there.
Scott Gale:
As an engineer myself, I sort of had a journey while in school, I'd just be curious in the sense that what was it that honed you into that first job out of undergrad?
David Droogleever:
Ooh. Okay. Well, so there's a couple of things. Georgia Tech also had a cooperative education program. So I was working full-time for NASA Johnson Space Center after freshman year. So I interviewed with NASA the first year and I got accepted. They liked my 4.0 after the first year, which never happens. I know, I know, I'm like super humble. Right? And so I started working at NASA every other semester in the cooperative education program. In 2003, after my second year at Georgia Tech, I got accepted into the NPAC program, which is nuclear propulsion officer candidate program in the United States Navy. I can talk a lot about what that looked like. You know, if you want to go into that, but that's what I decided to do since I didn't want to work at NASA after I graduated. So after I graduated, I then went from NPAC to officer candidate school out into the nuclear submarine force.
Scott Gale:
Why the Navy?
David Droogleever:
Because the uniforms are cool, man. White, sexy uniforms. All jokes aside, I thought that as I was in good health, I was of sound minds and I wanted to do the hardest thing possible, literally. And when I started learning more about the military and the submarine force, particularly the book Blind man's buff is one of the most amazing books about submarines out there. And it shared some of the stuff that had been classified for a very long time. And I said, that sounds cool. That's novel. So I wanted to do what was hard and what was novel. And so I bird dogged it for the United States Navy.
David Droogleever:
And also when I found out that in order to get in, you have to interview with a four star Admiral. It's the only job in the military you have to personally interview with a four star flag officer to get in. And it was Admiral Skip Bowman, March 20th, 2003, that I interviewed with him at Naval reactors in Washington, DC. That was really exciting. So I thought I knew I was into something big when I was going through that process. So I said, let's do it. I'm ready.
Scott Gale:
That's awesome. Did it live up to those expectations?
David Droogleever:
And more. I signed up for a lot. I bit off definitely more than I think that I can chew. I learned a lot in the Navy and in the end it was best to move on to corporate.
Scott Gale:
How did all of that experience prepare you for an experience at Rice and all of the subsequent things that you've gone and pursued?
David Droogleever:
Yeah, it's really all about leadership and leadership is about building trust with the people around you. And what I saw in the command that I was at was a meltdown of trust. And when the people that you're working with are challenged with trusting each other, it gets very dangerous, especially when you're operating a nuclear reactor, you have to trust the character, the integrity, and the credibility of the people that you're working with. The beauty of the Nuclear Navy is that by way of the structure of how people are trained to get in, first of all, they only pick the best of the best. So that's thing one. Thing two is the training and is so rigorous and arduous and it weeds out the weak. And so by the time you start to work with people, you don't know anything about them, but you know that you've gone through very rigorous, arduous accreditations to get to that point.
David Droogleever:
So what is that process I just described? It's a process of building trust with each other because you can't sit down and get to know each other for 20 years before you say, okay, now you can push the big red button. You have to trust each other the second you start working together. So that's the thing I learned. Leadership is building trust. And when you have enough trust, you can do things like operate $2 billion warships with basically a skeleton crew of 135 people or so. And that's an amazing thing.
Scott Gale:
All right. So tell us a little bit about just your connectivity with the Rice community and how that has evolved over time and what is special about that in your mind?
David Droogleever:
First and foremost, it's a prestigious institution to be associated with. So that's the obvious, right? That's why we're here. The second thing about it is, and this is the thing when I was in business school, what did I focus on? Was it academics? No. In fact, I told myself I just wanted to make straight B's. Why? Because anything above that is I'm taking away from networking and building relationships. So the first thing, and I know it's so cliche, but it's the relationships I want to go in and make lifelong friends and I have done that. And so, of course, that's the most special thing to me. The second thing is, what we're doing right now is this, when we talk about the power of the Rice business community, this is it, it's happening right now. So the fact that this happened so fluidly starting from two years ago when we started this, and now we're here in this amazing studio recording, that's the power of Rice business right there. And we can do so much more too. Oh, by the way. So that's what's special to me when I think about Rice business.
Scott Gale:
I take the opportunity to shout out to the Digital Wildcatters for hosting us here at their site and we're using their facilities. And so for those that aren't plugged into the podcasts that are available there on the Digital Wildcatters platform, we'll make sure to put some of that in the show notes as well, just as an appreciation for letting us come and hang out. They've got one of their energy tech nights tonight, so they've got a little bit of a skeleton crew as well. So it's awesome to be here. I want to round out the chronology a little bit and just you've been on what you've described as a radical sabbatical for a couple of weeks and months. And we'll say, as you look ahead to the future, what's next for you, David?
David Droogleever:
Well, it's interesting when you can do anything and what do you do? And so I've done the podcasting. I've been in cybersecurity in sales, I've done professional services, I've worked in government and the military, so on and so forth. So the ideal next move synergizes all of that. And so there are a couple of options. I think one option is to go deeper into helping the veteran business leaders out there that are in tech. So I'd like to work with more and more startups and early stage companies and help to build out and flesh out their sales strategy. That's something that I would very much love to do. And I'm in a very unique position where I could work with a large amount or portfolio companies. And frankly, I'm not an inexpensive person, but equity is very appealing to me as opposed to cash at this season.
David Droogleever:
So I think that would be really, really great. And similarly going into venture capital and doing something similar would also be of interest to me. The thing that is even of more interest, going back to the first topic that we chatted about is this a high trust organization? Do the leaders have trust as one of their top values? That's the thing I care about the most. Then we can have a conversation around how we can accelerate your organization. There's also a great book out there, just a little nugget for folks tuning in is The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey, so the son of Stephen Covey that you're probably thinking of, awesome book. I definitely recommend reading that.
David Droogleever:
So when you infuse your organization with trust, every business metric that you could possibly care about ratchets up or gets optimized. And this is what I want do with business leaders, it's to put that front and center. So that's the only thing they're thinking about all the time, because it really is the only thing that matters. So whatever it is I do going forward, it's conversations about trust with leaders that have strong influence over large groups of people and I wanted to have conversations just like this. That's what I really want to do.
Scott Gale:
Awesome. Looking forward to seeing where the next steps take you. I think that's fantastic. Is there anything in your journey that we haven't touched on? I want to dig into a few other things, but I like to just think about the chronology. You mentioned you grew up here in Houston, you've kind of been in the Texas area, went to Georgia Tech, any key inflection points along your journey that have pointed you in the direction that you're on today?
David Droogleever:
I think it's the confluence of everything. The one that we haven't touched on is jujitsu.
Scott Gale:
Okay. Talk about that.
David Droogleever:
Yeah, let's talk about it. So I've been training jujitsu for about 13 years, give or take. And I got my black belt from professor Allen Mohler at Mohler MMA, MMA is mixed martial arts in Dallas, Texas last year. Great respect for him as a leader, as a community leader, and of course, as a jujitsu practitioner. And jujitsu, like trust, infuses and colors everything that I think about. Why? Because jujitsu is not about just beating people up. It's not about breaking bones or choking people out. It's a philosophy, first and foremost, and I know I'm going to get so many eye rolls for saying that but if you go back to the history of judo, there's a great book called Mind over Muscle by Kano, last name, K-A-N-O and jujitsu came from judo.
David Droogleever:
So really it's just a next milestone in the progression of the martial art. And what is it really about? It's about creating the most leverage with the energy that you have available to you. So it's really about being more skillful with your energy and you can apply this principle, of course, on the mats, in a fight, in business, and in also your personal relationships and everything in between. The thing is we have one life that we know of and we have only so much energy. The question is not how much will you do or can you do? The question is how skillful are you going to be in the application of the energy that you have available to you? Some of us have high levels. Some of us have lower levels and you have the cards that you've been dealt and do the most with it.
David Droogleever:
And jujitsu is one modality of optimizing your energy and you can apply that into business. It's a strategy to be applied and used, and there's no situation that I can think of where jujitsu is not applicable. So I think that's the one thing that when I think about the domains of knowledge that I've boned up on, jujitsu overlaid onto that, amplifies all other principles in addition to trust. So it's this huge, very, very powerful energy ball that just is applicable to anything that you can do.
Scott Gale:
I love that. I guess I'm just trying to think in the sense of your philosophy of life, you have spent a lot of time achieving, optimizing, getting to that pinnacle of the things that you've set your sights on. For those that are listening, how is your self-improvement approach or methodology? What are some of the tactical day in the life of David? What are the things that you're spending your time on thinking about? How do you put those into practice to accomplish the things that we've talked about?
David Droogleever:
There's a couple of things that's coming up. I did want to talk a little bit in terms of the combination of jujitsu and sales, but I want to answer your first question first.
Scott Gale:
Okay.
David Droogleever:
And the day in the life, this is really fun. So what comes up for me is the hard way is the easy way, the easy way is the hard way. I always go into more and more complexity if you couldn't tell already. I go to complex to then go back to simple. So I widen the aperture of complexity, expanding the length and width of the chess board in order to winnow it down to one piece or one square, if that makes sense. So when I say the easy way is the hard way, or the hard way is the easy way. When I wake up, one of the first things I think about as I plan my day is what frog do I need to eat first? And I'm borrowing this from someone else. So I'm not taking credit for it, but the frog is the thing that you don't want to do, but you know you need to do and you know it's the most important thing to do.
David Droogleever:
And you're so tempted to put it off, but you know once you've eaten that frog, you're going to get a lot of mileage out of that application of your energy. And it's similar with jujitsu. It's I have just a little bit of energy left, what's the most leverage I can create with this move and where should I concentrate all my energy in order to end the fight the fastest? So the eat the frog concept is very, very similar. That's that one project, that one action item, that gives me the most leverage. And you do that first thing in the morning before anything else can clutter up your day and get in the way of your priorities. You eat that frog. You know, you high five yourself, you pat yourself on the back, you go have an extra cup of coffee, and then you go on to the next frog and you just do that all throughout the day. That's what a day in the life looks like for me.
Scott Gale:
How do you know it's the biggest frog?
David Droogleever:
Well, that comes back down to value. So whatever builds trust fastest. So as we talked about, that's my top value, whatever builds trust fastest, that's the frog that I will eat first.
Scott Gale:
I love it. You had mentioned that you wanted to go back to a couple of things on the intersection of jujitsu and trust. Were there some other points that you wanted to share?
David Droogleever:
Absolutely. Jujitsu and sales. So in sales, what is the number one resource of a salesperson? That top resource and it's for all of us, but in sales in particular is time. It's so tempting for salespeople to have nice, easy conversations with that person who loves your product and service and your personality. But it's not the executive. It's not the change agent. It's not even the champion, but, hey, you can run down the clock having a good conversation. Well, that's not a skillful use of your energy. I would much rather, and this is all the sales people out there, it is much better to have one conversation that week with an executive that can be a change agent than have 100 calls with people that are really, really interested, but can't really do anything.
David Droogleever:
So that's jujitsu, that's jujitsu infused in sales, that's sales jujitsu, and you do that one thing, the strongest lever, it's the executive, it's the change agent, it's the person that has the vision, the person that you can trust to make the changes that your organizations are seeking to do together. So when I think about sales, I think about jujitsu. And I think about jujitsu when I think about sales and that's the way to accelerate the sales motion and to get more done and close the deal faster.
Scott Gale:
Is there a say a piece of advice or a mentor or somebody that you carry with you, that you lean on in times of difficulty or moments where there's uncertainty and you don't know kind of which decision to make, or what frog is next or just what kind of advice do you carry around?
David Droogleever:
Okay. So I think that there's an army I've deputized to be my personal board of directors I would say. I would say prior sales mentors are always good people to bounce stuff off of. You also want to talk to people that you disagree with, or you can disagree with, or might disagree with. People that say, for example, don't have the same risk profile as you, for example. You want to hear from all people across the spectrum of opinions out there. So I would say that I have a small army of people that I can use as sounding boards or as extra strategists I would say. If I had to pick one person, and this is going to sound so cheesy, it's my future self.
David Droogleever:
I would say, hey, future self, what do you think I should do here? What would you like to be proud of what I'm doing today? What does that look like? And that's who I really have the first conversation with. And then I go to other people, because again, going back to self-trust, that's a process of asking your higher-self or your intuition or your gut, and following that direction. That's what building self-trust looks like. So that's where I go to first and then my army of mentors and potential coaches and former colleagues.
Scott Gale:
David, this has been a fantastic conversation. I feel like I've learned a ton about just myself and about you along the way. Coming into this, we've been planning to come in and have this conversation for a couple of weeks. Is there anything that you wish that I would've asked that you didn't have the opportunity to showcase?
David Droogleever:
That's the question I asked to my customers. What question should I have asked that I did not ask? I think, and this is maybe a more challenging conversation. I think there's a question around thoughts, opinions, pontifications inside of academia or in the domain of academia and how academia is moving forward. What ought academia think about strategically going forward in terms of intersection with community, government, science, and other institutions. I think there's something there potentially to be discussed.
Scott Gale:
Can we dig into it a little bit?
David Droogleever:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just looking for your permission first.
Scott Gale:
Yeah, yeah, please. I mean, I'd love to. Certainly, universities sit at an intersection of really important, complicated and important things. And, certainly, as established organizations, like all established incumbent organizations suffer from this concept of weight of incompetency and how do you innovate and get out of the track that you're in to address the future needs of students, faculty, et cetera. And so, yeah. What have you observed and what do you think are some of the opportunities sets for universities at large?
David Droogleever:
So I'm going to speak broadly here. So I'm not casting darts at any particular person or any particular institution. What I am seeing from my particular vantage point is the lack of leadership and sort of respect for what academia and the university once was. It used to be starting about the 11 hundreds, a bash in of a safe space to develop knowledge and to pursue knowledge without having to worry about where's my next basket of corn or wheat going to come from? How am I going to eat that day? And that was a very noble cause. And as we progressed forward, I think that concept still is very much valid. And for academia to be relevant going forward, that protective layer for people that are pursuing knowledge must stay there. It must stay there. This relentless pursuit of the bottom line and the profit is it doesn't carry the day anymore.
David Droogleever:
It's not going to cut the mustard in terms of what we need for humanity to evolve and progress. We need people that are not concerned about being censored, not concerned about free speech, not concerned about does this fit into a larger agenda. People that can pursue ideas that are going to protect the species going forward and create a better future. We must have that. And so we must get back to being an institution that is creating the future and is not reacting to what is happening at large. That's what I would like to see. And I think that starts with conversations with leaders in academia, with folks like ourselves, with board members such as yourself, come onto the podcast. Let's talk about it. What are the talk tracks and messages that need to get out there and that need to get at the forefront? Rice and its ilk needs to be at the avant guard of the progression of humanity, not at the back. We need to be at the tip of the spear, and that's my message.
Scott Gale:
I like it. Certainly things that I'm sure organizations are thinking about and considering, and like many organizations over the last couple of years impacted by the pandemic, an opportunity to step off the hamster wheel so to speak and rethink models, outcomes, engagement, and certainly, as Alumni re-stack their priorities and think about what their sort of future involvement in engagement looks like. A lot of those historical paradigms are kind of irrelevant and what is it that we can learn from them and sort of move on from.
David Droogleever:
Something that comes up for me too, and this is tangential, but on the I'll Have You Know podcast, one which is my personal favorite with Bethany Mandel, she talks about conscious capitalism. And this is exactly what I'm talking about, it's thought leaders like Bethany that are going out and saying again, the bottom line is not the bottom line. It's how are we impacting communities, right? We don't need more widgets and iPhones and do hickeys. We need impact on people and our communities, first and foremost, that's the whole point of business. That's what it's there for, and it's the fastest way to create change. If you're waiting on government to make your life better, you are wrong, period, wrong, right? It's business that is going to create change first. So listen to episode one and shoot Bethany a note and tell her how much you loved it. She was awesome.
Scott Gale:
That's a fantastic recommendation certainly for those that are catching the podcast. Now, lots of opportunity to go back and listen to some of those stories. Those are fantastic stories and great perspectives and things that idea of conscious capitalism, you see sort of venture funds that are out there that talk about the double bottom line, that it's not just the PNL, but that it's also achieving some kind of mission, some kind of outcome for humanity and how critical that becomes. And I think you're seeing a lot of talent, self-select and migrate in that direction. And as that happens, you're challenged to the university systems to be aware of that and to address the needs in educating and facilitating the environment from which those ideas can come forward. And those connections can be made and that the community at large can help to evolve humanity into it's next state and era. I mean, that is the highest of ambitions.
David Droogleever:
And on that too, transparency is the answer. I mean, if trust is too loaded for you, just start with transparency. Okay? And that goes for the university systems, that goes for science, that goes for government, and everything in between. Start with transparency, let people know what you're looking to do, what your vision is, where the park marks, where you're missing the mark and what you're looking to do better. Have conversations with people that are willing to have conversations. I'll send you a Twitter saying, hey, Mr. And Mrs. CEO, let's have a chat. I'm really curious, I would like to know. Let's have better conversations and more of them, this whole closed door thing where decisions are made in dark smoke-filled rooms, it's not going to carry the day anymore. We need better, faster, higher-quality, higher-trust conversations. And we need it yesterday.
Scott Gale:
Fantastic. David, it's been a privilege to be here and have this conversation. I want to encourage those that haven't had an opportunity to subscribe, to do so. Dig into the podcast, send recommendations, David and Christine co-host of I'll Have You Know and we're just thrilled to be able to pull this together. Anything that you would want to say to the audience?
David Droogleever:
Yeah. One last thing, just a general reminder. Again, my trust manifesto that I wrote, it's clear text, and so it's not an ebook, right? It's just trustmanifesto.energy, type it in your browser, it'll pull up right now. Trustmanifesto.energy. And my call to action there is send me a message, but preferably a volley, so it's a video message. So talk.volley.app/david, send me a message that number one, you've read it. Number two, how do you build trust faster? What does building trust look like to you? And let's have a conversation about that, especially if you're a leader in your community. And if you don't want to do that, then send it to a leader in your community to do the same thing. And then send me a volley on talk.volley.app/david, so that's my call to action.
Scott Gale:
Create a movement. I love it.
David Droogleever:
Absolutely.
Scott Gale:
All right, David, it's a been a privilege.
David Droogleever:
Thank you for having me. Hey, folks. Thanks for tuning in to I'll Have You Know. This is your co-host David Droogleever. Thanks for subscribing if you have, and if you haven't, please subscribe to check out future episodes of Owl Have You Know. If you'd like to leave me feedback or send me a message, send me a note on LinkedIn or preferably send me a volley, a video message at talk.volley.app/david. Again, it's talk.volley.app/david. Thanks for tuning in.